


Say Hello to Miss Miracle

by MirrorKing96



Series: Miss Miracle [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 39
Words: 591,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorKing96/pseuds/MirrorKing96
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iris West is struck by lightning and becomes a metahuman who can move things with her mind and teleport. A genderflipped AU of the Flash with some interesting twists. Season 1/Season 2 AU, with elements from Season 3. Barry and Iris POV, but Barry will be the first few chapters. Appearances from Team Arrow, characters from other earths, and other superheroes from DC comic canon. There'll be stuff from the TV show, some divergence, and storylines/characters from the comics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> This is my take on what would have happened if Iris became a metahuman instead of Barry. Hope you like it!

Iris is coming home, and Barry is excited.

It has only been a few days, but already he is getting tired of that antsy, restless feeling that shows up when they’re far away from each other for too long. He would be mad at her because she’s gone, but he misses her too much. She went off to Star City to find proof of the impossible like she always does, and Barry knew and never told his mother and she’s already yelled at him about it. Captain Singh has already threatened to fire Iris West a million times and Detective Nora Allen is probably – no, definitely, which is what she tells Iris when she comes over for dinner on Sundays – running out of reasons to convince her not to. But everyone knows nobody is going to fire Iris. She is the best forensic scientist in the CCPD, and all her research into criminal psychology means that she often guesses exactly what the criminals are thinking before some of the detectives do. She could have gone off to work for the FBI right after she graduated. But she didn’t.

“Dude, calm down.” Tyler, who works with him at Jitters, looks at him as he drops a load of plastic cups. “What’s with you?”

“I have to finish these,” Barry said quickly, “then go see my dissertation supervisor before Iris gets back.”

“Oh, your sister?”

“She’s not my sister, idiot,” Barry snaps, even though he knows Tyler is teasing like he always does. It’s just…Iris isn’t his sister. She’s his best friend and his favourite person and – and his Iris. But she’s not his sister and he hates it when people think that.

“Relax. Listen, I’ll finish up here – you go meet Iris.”

Barry high-fives him, grabs his stuff and leaves. On the way out he sees one of the detectives from the precinct – a tall blonde woman with pretty blue eyes. He smiles at her, and she smiles back.

***

Iris is too tired to meet him but she messages him after dinner. His mother is downstairs cleaning up and from her mood and Iris’ texts he knows that Captain Singh _and_ Nora have already yelled at her.

Are you sure you’re okay?

_I’m fine Barry. I’m just tired_

Okay

_Okay_

Wanna know what you missed?

_Sure_

Me

Barry knows that Iris is laughing in that way that she does, maybe with the snort that she thinks is embarrassing but he’s always found adorable. He grins at his phone, lit up by the light of his bedside lamp.

_That’s true_

I missed you too, you know

_I know. So, tomorrow?_

Right, your Particle Accelerator thingie

_It’s not a thingie Barry_

It is, I’ve seen it. It’s a big round shiny dome thingie with lasers coming out of it

_Remind me to leave you somewhere if I get to meet Dr Wells_

Nuh-uh. You’re not leaving me, I’ll die of boredom. I’ll be quiet, I promise

_Okay_

_So_

_I have to talk to you_

Aren’t we doing that now?

_Properly. Face to face. It’s important._

Are you okay? Whose face do I have to beat in with a two by four?

_We’re not in high school anymore, Barry_

I would have done it

_I know_

He deserved it

_I know_

It still makes him angry, what her high school boyfriend said to her, even though it was nine years ago and they’re both grownups now.

_It’s nothing like that. But you have to promise me something_

_ Of course _

_Promise me you’ll still be my best friend afterwards_

Barry sits bolt upright in bed and calls her. She answers on the first ring. “Barry?”

“Iris, what happened?” he demands. “Are you okay? Is it your…Is it your mom?”

He goes quiet on that last part, because Francine West has been a sensitive topic in their house ever since Nora Allen found Joe West dead in their living room from blunt force trauma to the head and Iris told the police that a strange woman had ordered her to do it. Nora and Iris have always been close but it’s the one thing they can’t agree on, so they never talk about it. Barry, for his part, never believed that sweet Francine who always gave him books from the publisher she worked at could ever murder her doctor husband. But nobody cared what Barry and Iris thought, so she is in the women’s medium-security section of Iron Heights.

“No, it’s not my mom,” she replies. Then she laughs. “God, Barry, you’re the most impatient person I know. I’m going to tell you tomorrow.”

“Hmph,” he huffs. “You can’t worry me like that and not expect me to want to know. And there’s nothing on this planet that could make me not want to be your best friend, Iris.”

“You promise? Even if I make you watch all eight seasons of _Desperate Housewives_ again?”

“I will complain and I will be loud about it, but I’ll still be your best friend.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Night, Bar.”

“Night, sunshine.”

***

“Okay, I’m ready to see the lasers!”

Iris looks up from her computer, pushing her glasses up her nose, and smiles at him. “Barry, there aren’t any lasers. If there are lasers, something’s gone wrong.”

He shifts his bag and scrunches his face up. “That’s kind of boring.”

“Besides,” Iris shrugs, “with all this work your mom and Captain Singh gave me, I’m not sure we’ll be able to make it to STAR Labs.”

Barry, who has put Iris’ lab goggles on and is rootling around her desk, looks up at her. “What? But what about the lasers? And I cancelled a date for this.” He doesn’t remember her name, though. Iris turns to him.

“I – Barry, quit eating my brownies!”

He grins at her. “What? Oh, because I’ll get fat and ugly?”

She looks up at him. “You’re never going to get fat and ugly, Bar.”

And he rolls his eyes and grins, because she’s his best friend and she’s supposed to say that – she’s always said that. Her glasses have fogged up and before she can start the ritual of looking for the cloth to clean them, he slides them carefully off her face and does it himself. Iris has gone through so many pairs of glasses that Barry carries a spare pair with him and a cloth to clean them. He does it carefully, like he’s done since they were children, and then slides them back onto her face. She’s looking at him in that Iris way, slightly open-mouthed and a little wistful. She’s probably thinking about carbon chains or something.

“Yo, Iris,” he says, and she shakes her head slightly.

“Sorry.”

“So, explain the Particle Accelerator to me. I’m all ears.”

Barry listens as Iris rambles about particle physics and singularities and reactors, marvelling at how exuberant one tiny person can be about science. She’s practically bouncing on the balls of her feet and, even though he’s pretty certain he’s going to be the dumbest person in the room today, he’s glad he gets to go with her. “Did you memorise all that?”

“I read a lot.”

“Maybe we should get _you_ a date.”

Iris’ face falls a little and then someone’s heels click into the room. “Maybe, Bartholomew,” his mother says, “if you stopped bothering my CSI and actually went to some classes, you would have graduated by now.”

“Ouch, mom,” he laughs. “What’d I do?”

She ruffles his hair as she walks past him, her own red hair swinging around her shoulders. “Nothing, that’s the problem. You got that report on the Mardon sisters, Iris?”

“Yeah,” she replies. She taps a button on her computer and walks to the printer. His mother shakes her head at the goggles still sitting on his head. “Right…here. Range Rover, probably one of the farms on the outskirts of town.”

“So mom,” Barry says slowly, taking the goggles off his head. “Can Iris and I go see the lasers? Since she got all her work done?”

Nora studies the piece of paper in her hand and then looks at her two children, who look exactly like every single time they wanted to go play when they were kids and had finished their chores. “Okay,” she concedes, “you can go.”

Iris grins and hugs her. “Thanks, Nora!” Then she grabs her coat and bounds out of her lab, Barry close behind her. And Nora Allen smiles at the receding laughter of her incredibly oblivious children.

***

“So, Iris, did you find proof of the impossible in Star City or did you make my mom really, _really_ mad for no reason?”

Iris laughs and looks at the ground. They are walking in the crowd towards the stage, where Dr Helena Wells will turn on her Particle Accelerator. People are pushing in on them but Barry has his arm securely looped around Iris’. “Not – Not exactly.” She pushes her glasses up her nose. “But while I was there I had a chance to think about – about relationships, and stuff. And I’m not in one, and you’re not in one-”

“I disagree,” he says gravely. “I’m currently in a relationship with my dissertation supervisor and he won’t let me leave.”

“No, um…You – You’re my best friend, Barry-”

“You’re mine too. Why else would I be here? And anyway, I think I know what you’re gonna say.”

Iris looks up at him and she looks a little frightened and…maybe a little hopeful? But that can’t be right. “No, I don’t think you do.”

“I know that we grew up together, and everyone thinks that makes us brother and sister, but I’ve never seen you that way. So you can talk to me about when you meet that awesome guy who treats you the way you deserve to be treated, okay?”

Iris gapes at him and then smiles. “I-I guess you did know what I was going to say.”

He nudges her shoulder. “Aren’t you glad I know you so well? So, did you see him? Did you see your Prince Charming?”

“No,” she says quietly. “No, still waiting for him to see me.”

“Well, he’s out there. And he better be a goddamn Prince Charming, or I’ll hit him with that two by four. But he will be – you have excellent taste.”

Iris beams at him. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Hey, it’s starting.”

Everyone starts clapping as Dr Wells makes her speech, and Barry studies Iris as she watches, rapt. It is a running joke in their little blended family, ever since Iris came to live with them. They had watched Beauty and the Beast, which was her favourite Disney movie, and she mentioned that it was a shame that princes like that didn’t exist. But then Barry said that of course they did, and Iris was going to marry one. She’d laughed shyly and looked down at her chicken pot pie, but for some reason Barry didn’t like that, because he was serious. Iris deserved someone like a prince.

“She can be like, like…What’s the name of that American lady who married the prince from Morocco?”

“Monaco,” Nora corrected. “And it was Grace Kelly.”

“Yeah!” he said excitedly, waving his fork around. “Iris is Grace Kelly. And some really rich and nice and awesome prince will marry her, like in all the movies.”

“B-But we don’t live in a movie, Barry,” she stammered.

“So? It happened to Grace Kelly. And besides, princes always pick girls like you.”

“Like who?”

He shrugged and grinned through a mouth full of pie. “The best ones.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. Barry looked at his mother, who was smiling, and frowned. “What?” he demanded, swallowing. “What did I say?”

“Nothing. Finish your pie.”

And he still teases her about it, but she hasn’t had a boyfriend in a while, and a selfish part of him is glad because he’s never been particularly good at sharing Iris. But – But he’ll be happy for her when that happens. He will. And then-

“Hey!” Barry shouts. Someone has snatched his bag with his laptop in it and streaks off through the crowd. He tears after him, Iris close behind. He almost catches him but then he hears Iris slip and fall, hears her cry out in pain, and stops.

“Iris!”

She blinks up at him as she picks herself up – her glasses have fallen off and her eyes are all unfocused. “Are you okay?”

“Your bag, Barry-”

“Forget about that – Shit, are you bleeding?”

She frowns – she still can’t see properly, so she doesn’t know her hands are scraped. Barry looks at the ground and his heart sinks when he sees Iris’ glasses are broken.

“ _Freeze_!” a female voice calls from a little way away. They look up into the street illuminated by lamps to see a woman pointing a gun at the mugger, walking towards him. “Or do you wanna find out the hard way you’re not faster than a speeding bullet?”

***

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Barry.”

He frowns at her as she studies her glasses. They are the spare pair he keeps in his bag and he thinks the prescription is a little old, but they will have to do for now. She has cleaned up her bloodied hands and bandaged them, and they’re at the precinct to file a report.

“So, who’s the new cop?” he asks, gesturing to the woman who’d caught the mugger. He recognises her as the woman who smiled at him yesterday, but he doesn’t know her name.

“Oh, she’s a transfer,” Iris says, putting her glasses back on. “From Midway. Patty Spivot.”

“Oh, that’s Model Behaviour.”

“What?”

“That’s what mom calls her. Perfect record, perfect cop, perfect-looking. Model Behaviour. Apparently she keeps scores of her arrests.” He rolls his eyes. “She _does_ look like a model though.”

“Mm,” Iris says quietly, and Barry looks at her.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to see the Particle Accelerator turn on.”

“S’ok,” she shrugs. “Wasn’t your fault.”

Iris will forgive him, because she’s Iris, and that will make him feel worse. He makes a note to try and make it up to her – maybe they can go to that new science exhibit that she keeps babbling about. She stands. “I’m gonna go lock up my lab, okay? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

***

He’s still in his pyjamas.

That’s what Barry thinks when he gets the call, when that woman said – That Iris – She was -  He is still _in his goddamn pyjamas_. It is midnight and the hospital have called him and he’s racing through the parking lot shouting Iris’ name. She only has two emergency contacts – him and his mother, and his mother is out finding the Mardon sisters and he wishes she were here with him because they’re saying that Iris got _struck by lightning_ and Iris is too small to get struck by lightning, she has glasses and she walks into doors and she forgets things…

 _How will she survive being struck by lightning_?

He doesn’t want to answer that so he follows the paramedics who are rushing people inside.

“ _Female, 24, African-American_ …”

“ _What happened_?”

“ _She was struck by lightning_.”

 _Iris_.

He follows their voices and suddenly he’s in a room with IV bags and lots of doctors and Iris – Iris is there, she’s on a bed, she could be asleep, but her clothes are ripped and one of her shoes has fallen off and he’s forgotten how _small_ she is. He moves towards her, wanting to protect her from all these people who have obviously forgotten that Iris is one tiny person-

“You can’t be in here,” someone tells him, shoving him back. Barry pushes past – “I’m _family_ ” – and he sees that Iris-

Her heart has stopped.

“ _CLEAR_.”

“ _IRIS_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, no idea where that came from. I have several ideas for this, so let me know what you think! like i said, it will be Barry and Iris eventually, but i thought it would be cool to explore things from his POV before we do both. hope you stick around ;)


	2. Keep Listening, Are You Listening?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry deals with Iris in a coma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so I had a massive bit of inspiration and wrote this in a few hours. I had to cut down this chapter a little because I realised the way I was writing it meant this chapter probably wouldn't be ready for WEEKS lol. I hope everyone likes what I'm going for with this.

Nora finds him an hour later and she’s shouting at someone – anyone – to tell her where Iris is. His mother is wild-eyed and frantic; she’s obviously just come from arresting the Mardon sisters. “Barry? What – What happened? The hospital said-”

Barry opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He would tell her, he would, but one of the nurses gave him Iris’ broken glasses about five minutes ago and he’s not sure he can breathe. One of the nurses tells her and that’s when Barry realises what happened, that the Particle Accelerator did something and now there’s a lightning storm, but Iris – She’s the only one who –

“She’s going to be okay, right?” he sniffles. He’s crying and he doesn’t care, and the nurse looks afraid to answer him. Barry doesn’t blame him, since he was yelling at all of them right up until they gave him those damn glasses. He is sure they were getting ready to sedate him. “She – you have to save her.”

“I can’t say until she’s out of surgery.”

“But you have a plan, right? People survive being hit by lightning all the time.”

The nurse can’t reply and Barry sort of sits there, staring at the floor while everyone talks over him. Captain Singh and Patty Spivot, he learns, are the ones who found her, with the skylight broken and her little body on top of her racks of test tubes, bleeding into the floor. When she wakes up he’s going to be _so mad_ at her, and he’s going to make sure she knows it too, because he’s been telling her that those shelves are too big and that they could fall on her for months. He’s going to hug her, of course, but then he’s going to lecture her on proper safety and make sure she listens. Right after she wakes up. He might not even let her get out of bed.

 _Oh God, please let her wake up_.

It’s like the world’s worst nightmare. Every time they stabilise her heart, her brain monitor starts to beep because she’s seizing; once they get that under control, she starts to code again and all the doctors start shouting. It’s the worst six hours of his life, and he has Iris’ broken glasses in one hand and his mother’s shaking hand in the other. And it’s weird, because every time Iris flatlines, half of the lights in the hospital go out. Finally, a doctor comes out to talk to them.

“Are you her family?” he asks. Barry wants to hit him, because that must be the dumbest question he can ask. Of course they’re her family; why else would they be sitting here all night and crying? He looks down at the glasses.

“Yes,” his mother nods. “I was her legal guardian until she turned eighteen. Is she…”

“Miss West is stable, for now.”

“For… now?”

“Miss West was hit by a very high-powered electric charge at a very high speed, and her heart and brain are not used to that much electric activity. Right now we won’t know anything until they stabilise for a period of more than-”

Everyone starts yelling and rushing into her room – she’s seizing again. His mother lets out a sob because they can see Iris jerking uncontrollably, her eyes still closed, as they try to restrain her on the bed. Someone gets out a large needle and Barry frowns.

“They can’t – She’s _tiny_!” he snaps. Surely they know that needle is too big for her. “You can’t stick that in her!”

“Mr Allen-”

“Iris!”

They sedate him after he accidentally hits a doctor when he’s trying to run inside, which he is genuinely sorry for, and when he wakes up he wonders if it’s all just a dream. But no – his mother is beside him and her green eyes are red-rimmed from crying. “Is she…”

“Still in flux,” she replies quietly. “They – Her finger was broken and she’ll need stitches in her shoulder from where she was cut by some glass. Everything else is…Is the same.”

Barry apologises to the doctor, who tells him not to worry, but Iris is still coding every thirty minutes so all he can do is worry. Her glasses are still on his bedside table, and his mother looks like she’s in hell. He can’t go back to sleep and he hates staying awake, so he just sits there in a kind of in-between state. Then, when the first rays of sunlight creep in through the windows, the doctor comes back in.

“She’s stable,” he says. “Her heart hasn’t stopped for the last two hours and her heartbeat is regular.”

“And her brain?” Nora asks. “You said that her brain wasn’t working properly.”

The doctor’s face falls and Barry’s heart drops like a stone. “I think it would be best if you see her.” He leads them back to her room and his mother chokes out a sob again, her hands flying to her mouth. They’ve cut away Iris’ clothes and put in in a hospital gown, but he can still see the stitches in her arm and a bruise on her forehead from where she must have banged it on the shelves. She is hooked up to about a dozen machines and there are so many tubes and wires Barry can barely see her. There’s one going into her mouth, wires on both her hands, an IV in her arm… “What’s with all the tubes?”

“Her brain has stopped swelling, which is good, but the electric shock caused extensive damage to her nervous system – she cannot regulate her own temperature or breathe on her own, and she isn’t responding to any kind of stimuli. What I’m trying to say is-”

“She’s in a coma,” Barry interrupts flatly. That must be what the tube down her throat is for – if they take it out, she’ll stop breathing and die. If they take just one of these things away, Iris will die. He clutches her glasses in his hand as he watches her chest rise and fall, like she’s about to sit up and hold her hand out for them.

“Yes,” the doctor sighs. “It’s not uncommon for victims of electrocution.”

“And what’s her prognosis? What do we need to do?”

“Mrs Allen, your daughter is in a coma, so there isn’t much we can do except wait for her to wake up, if she will.”

Barry’s world darkens for just a moment. “She has to wake up,” he says forcefully. “She has to.”

“That is the hope, and people have recovered from this before. She will remain on life support until her brain overcomes the damage and is strong enough to control her bodily functions, but until then she will remain under observation.”

Barry walks towards Iris as the doctor starts talking to his mother about medical bills and visiting hours, ignoring them both. Her black hair – which has very artful highlights that he’s always liked – is splayed about the pillow, and she looks so peaceful that she really could be sleeping. He touches her cheek very lightly, just to reassure himself that she’s still warm.

 _Iris has been struck by lightning_.

It’s the story he has to repeat to everyone when he finally manages to go to work on Monday – his mother called Jitters and told them what happened because he still wasn’t really functioning – after he’s spent the weekend in this horrible state of not-mourning. He’s forgotten how much of his life Iris takes up, from the random coffee dates in the middle of the day, or the long hours in Central City University Library where he writes his dissertation and she does her reports, or the times they hang out and watch Desperate Housewives or X-Men movies (Iris) or Sherlock and Godfather movies (Barry). He hasn’t felt like this since she went to Keystone for college and he went to Coast City for his undergrad, but at least then he still got to hear her voice. At least then she was still _awake_.

And it’s not just him, he learns over the next few horrible weeks, which makes it worse. There’s an army sergeant who was killed, a college professor that Barry _swears_ he’s heard Iris talk about before who’s gone missing, and Helena Wells is apparently paralysed, all because the Particle Accelerator malfunctioned and caused a lightning storm. A vicious little part of Barry is glad because she’s the reason that he and so many other people have lost their Iris, have lost their person, but he feels guilty because he knows how much Iris loves her. He doesn’t know which will be worse to tell her when she wakes up – that her hero put her in a coma, or that her hero’s decades long project that everyone and their nerdy mothers was looking forward to has been destroyed, and Helena Wells had to let all the employees go so she can pay off all the lawsuits.

Someone is with Iris everyday – most of the precinct have come to visit her. Captain Singh comes and barks at all the doctors, so much so that her girlfriend has to remind her to be nice; DA Cecil Williams comes to make sure that Nora is eating, even Patty Spivot comes and brings her flowers, which Iris can’t see but at least makes her room look nice. They always find Nora asleep in a chair next to Iris, or making sure she has a silk headscarf so her hair stays neat or just sitting with her, holding her hand. Barry reads her scientific journals and tells her about his day and plays the latest music that she’s missed – because he knows for a fact that Iris will kill him if there’s new Bruno Mars or Kendrick Lamar or Florence + the Machine and she doesn’t have their CDs, because she still buys them – if he’s too tired or upset to talk. Or he just wants to drown out the sound of the heart monitor.

“Mom?” Barry whispers, opening the door to her room. He’d gone to the precinct to look for her – he’s had a long day and missed their time to go see Iris together. “Mom, I brought you the quiche that DA Williams made you; he said it’s your favourite.”

“I’m not hungry, honey,” she says, yawning. She has what must be her fifth cup of coffee in her hand and she’s watching Iris – who after eight weeks has less wires but still has the tube in her mouth – with her cheek balanced in her other hand. “But thank you.”

“Mom, you have to eat something,” he says. He tries to smile. “Remember that lecture Iris gave us on nutrients?”

His mother laughs. “She kept saying our meals weren’t varied enough.”

“ _You’re not getting enough Vitamin D_!” they said together, parroting a phrase Iris kept repeating to them when they were both teenagers.

She starts seizing again then, grunting around the intubation as her small body jerks.

“What – They said she was stable!” Barry shouts, leaping to her side. But he can’t do anything and he hates himself for it. His throat is tight. “I-Iris?”

“ _Help, my daughter’s coding_!” his mother calls, and the next second he’s being shoved out of the room again as they go back in with more needles and a defibrillator.

“I don’t understand how she’s still seizing – all her brain scans are normal!”

When Barry has stopped shaking and come out from his hiding place by the coffee machine on the seventh floor, he’s allowed to see Iris again. She looks exactly the same as she did before, but now there’s a wire attached underneath both her ears with electrical nodes. His mother is outside talking to the doctors again, but he doesn’t think he can do that without getting angry. So he sits with Iris and puts her glasses on the bedside table and holds one of her hands in both of his. He’s gotten the lenses fixed and the prescription updated.

Because when Iris wakes up she’ll want her glasses.

***

They want to turn her off.

It’s been four months and Barry can finally get through the day without feeling like he’s about to tip into a black hole, and his mother calls him to come to the hospital. Tyler lets him go without a word on pain of the promise of an update and he runs straight there because there’s no point in taking his car. He knows that she’s not awake, if she was awake his mother would have said ‘She’s awake’, not ‘Come to the hospital’, but he runs anyway. Maybe they’ve found some way to fix her, or maybe her scans are showing something new…

“You want to turn her off?” Barry demands, standing up from the hard plastic chair he’d slumped in when he arrived. “You can’t do that! She’s still breathing, she’s still _alive_!”

The leader of the team of doctors who are dealing with Iris – all of whom are by now accustomed to the man who comes in to shout at them when he visits; it’s a wonder he hasn’t been thrown out yet – steps forward. “Iris is alive and breathing, yes, but she’s also made no progress in the past two months apart from the removal of her intubation tube. Her brain shows minimal activity apart from the regulation of her lungs and heart.”

“She’s brain-dead?” his mother breathes. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, her brain stem is still functioning, but…She is minimally conscious. Based on her medical test scores and observing her over the last few months, nothing short of a miracle will wake her up.”

No air. There is no air in this goddamn room – that must be why Barry can’t breathe and his vision is going fuzzy and he feels like he’s going to throw up. He’s stopped listening to the doctors, but when he looks up his mother is shaking her head, and when he makes himself listen he realises why.

“…will be hard, but removing life support-”

“NO!” Barry shouts. He stands between them and Iris, as if he can protect her from them and their incompetence, because of course Iris will wake up, they just need to help her get better first. She’s doing her best – Barry is _sure_ she’s doing her best to wake up. “You can’t!”

“Barry…” his mother says softly.

“ _They want to kill her, mom_! You can’t- If they turn off the machines they’ll kill her!”

He flinches away from them and turns to Iris, grabbing her hands. “Iris? Iris, come on, you gotta wake up now, okay? You gotta wake up and smile for me. Smile for me, sunshine, _please_.”

He keeps begging her even after the doctors realise that he’s not going to listen to them and leave, but nothing works. His mother puts her hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “I’m gonna get some coffee, okay? When I get back we can…We can talk about what to do.”

Barry slumps in the chair again as his mother leaves. _Talk_. Talk about turning off the machines so that Iris dies, taking her away from him and his mother and Francine, who still hasn’t been allowed to see Iris even though he applied for furlough _weeks_ ago and he’s seriously considering asking the DA to threaten the prison or something. If he can do that. He wipes his eyes on the back of his hand and takes hers again.

“So I think I’m going to get banned from the hospital,” he begins, smiling ruefully. “I keep yelling at your doctors. It’s a good thing they took that doctor oath thingie or I think they’d stop treating you because I’m so shitty to them.” He pauses. “Are you listening, Iris? Can you hear me? I hope you can, even if it does mean that half of the conversations you’ve heard are me bitching about our new coffee machine. I just, um…I really need you to wake up. Everything’s boring as fuck without you. Like, the other day, Tyler got me to go to this bar with some of the baristas at Jitters and we met up with all these people from the precinct and I don't think I had any fun at all and Patty – Well, I think she might like me. I don’t know whether I like her, though. I don’t think I know anything without you.

“My mom told me this story, you probably already know it since it’s about you, but I figure now’s a pretty good time for a reminder. Your mom told mine that you were premature when you were born, and you were really underweight and not breathing properly, and you had to have all these surgeries and stay in the baby intensive care unit for weeks and all the doctors were sure you would d-die and it would be a miracle if you – didn’t. And your mom said that she…She said she went in and held your hands through the big glove things and she asked _you_ for a miracle because she didn’t know who else to ask. And you gave it to her. Obviously.”

Barry pauses and rubs at his eyes again as her heart monitor continues to beep. His voice wobbles a little when he speaks, but he knows Iris won’t mind. “And – And I know I’m always asking you to help me with math or fix my computer or do dumb things with me, but if you can, if you have any more m-miracles left in you, I’d really appreciate it. And so would my mom and your mom and all of us, even Captain Singh. So, yeah. One miracle with large fries, please,” he laughs weakly. Then he gets up to kiss her on the forehead, because he’s pretty sure that his world is collapsing, and that’s when he thinks he hears it.

 _Barry_.

It’s so natural and normal for Iris to say his name that he just says “Yeah?” until he realises that Iris’ eyes are still closed and her mouth hasn’t moved. _God_ , he needs sleep and someone to ban him from drinking espresso if he's hearing things. He rubs his face tiredly. That’s when his mother walks in, coffee in hand, and he takes a deep breath. “Mom, I really don’t want to talk right now, and-”

Then he cuts himself off, because his mother is not alone. There is a woman in a wheelchair with her, with wavy black hair and electric blue eyes and sharp, straight features. “Mr Allen,” she greets him quietly.

“Barry, this is-”

“Dr Wells,” he interjects. “I know who she is.” He moves to stand in front of Iris again.

“She says…She thinks she can help.”

***

It takes a couple of weeks, but Barry decides he likes Chesca and Dr Snow.

It helps that Dr Snow took one look at Iris and started coming up with all these ideas to improve her condition, even though the doctors are still trying to persuade his mother that they are prolonging the inevitable and that Dr Wells isn’t even a medical doctor and they could be putting Iris in more danger. Dr Snow ignores them all and asks when they can move her because he already has a med bay prepared for her. Barry thinks that he and Dr Snow will be friends straight away – they both seem to think that Iris’ doctors are idiots, from the cold looks he keeps giving them, but Barry quickly notices that Colin Snow doesn’t talk much. He’s tall, but not as tall as he is, with serious brown eyes and neat chestnut hair with a side parting. He’s also quick and efficient as they load Iris into the STAR Labs van with even more medical equipment, and gives them a list of thing that they’ll require for her care.

STAR Labs is big and bright, and looks like it belongs in a comic book movie. Barry swallows when he realises that Iris is finally where she’s been talking about for close to a year, and she’s not even awake to see it. When he and his mother get there there’s already a team of nurses ready to wheel Iris away and he wants to follow them, but Dr Wells stops them.

“You’re not going to want to watch,” she says coolly, and Barry glares at her.

“It’s hard for loved ones, this part,” she explains. “Iris will need to be put through more tests so we can ascertain her condition. Dr Snow is conducting them.”

“More?” Barry says in disbelief. “She’s already had lots of tests.”

“For now, but he’ll make them quick and her pain will be minimal, I assure you.”

That’s when a cheerful voice comes floating down the corridor. “Hey, Dr Wells, she’s all hooked up and ready to go! She’s doing awesome, she-” Barry turns to see a petite woman about his age with light brown skin and bright eyes, a headset over her jet black, curly hair.

“Chesca, this is Detective Nora Allen and Barry Allen, her son,” Dr Wells says formally. “They are Miss West’s family. This is Francesca Ramon, our best structural engineer.” It’s the first time Dr Wells smiles, and Chesca grins back.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she says sunnily, shaking their hands. “Iris is in excellent hands, Colin is like, a dozen different kinds of brilliant. We’re gonna take really good care of her.”

Nora nods once, her green eyes unreadable. “Good to know. But could you excuse us for a moment? I’d like to talk to Dr Wells.”

“Yes ma’am,” she says, and smiles at Barry before walking off.

“Dr Wells,” his mother says, and the way she says it makes Barry stand up straight because that voice means someone is about to get jumped. “I want you to know something.”

“Oh?”

“I do not trust you,” she says. Dr Wells doesn’t seem surprised. “I want you to know that you are my last resort and if I had either the jurisdiction or the justification I would throw you in jail. But I know how respected you are and what you can do, and if you’re smart enough to blow a hole in the goddamn city you’re smart enough to save my kid. You’re right, the doctors at that hospital had no idea what’s happening to her and I’m pretty sure that’s why they wanted to turn her off. But if Iris doesn’t – If my daughter dies in there-” Nora’s voice drops to a whisper. “Make no mistake, I will not hesitate to put  _several_ holes in _you_.”

Barry knows his mother is dead serious and Dr Wells must it realise too, because she looks at her hands before taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. “Mrs Allen-”

“Detective Allen.”

“Detective Allen. I’m truly sorry for what you’ve been through and I can’t apologise enough for the fact that we’re the ones who caused it. But I will do everything in my power to make sure she wakes up again. No matter what it takes.”

“You’d better.”

Dr Snow collects them then, saying he’s done his preliminary testing and he’s ready to talk. Iris looks the same as before, but this time there are only a few nodes on her chest and a breathing tube in her nose. The nodes are hooked up to a series of computer panels around her bed.

“Iris’ coma is severe, but not fatal,” he says calmly, showing them screens that Barry isn’t going to pretend he understands. “The doctors incorrectly misdiagnosed Iris as flatlining and then having seizures, causing the electrical shortages in the hospital. It’s medically impossible to flatline and _then_ have a seizure, which is why I’m convinced the doctors at Central City Memorial are unforgivably idiotic-”

“Colin, be nice,” Chesca interrupts from the computers.

“Sorry,” he says shortly. “I’m sure their idiocy isn’t unforgivable.”

Barry frowns. “That’s not what was happening? Her heart wasn’t stopping?”

“Not at all. Iris has managed to retain the electrical impulses in her body but she isn’t used to it. She wasn’t flatlining, her heart was just going too fast for the monitors to pick up, and the extra electricity discharged to her brain, and that’s what was causing the seizures. In layman’s terms, the lightning bolt that struck her has taken residence in her body and wants to get out. I should have a medical plan to help her soon.”

“How soon?”

“Two hours.”

Colin Snow might be Barry’s new favourite person. “Wait, she has _lightning_ in her body,” Nora says, her voice shaking. “Won’t that kill her?”

“No. I'm sorry, when I say lightning, I don’t mean the high-powered charge that hit her at at full speed, I mean the electrons that give it it’s energy. All I have to do is discharge the electrons so they aren’t running along her nervous system.”

“Is that all?”

“It’s a task, to be sure, but Dr Snow is one of the best,” Dr Wells says, and Nora looks at this woman who’s managed to destroy a city and yet look so very, very calm.

“Like I said, Dr Wells. You’re my last resort.”

Barry likes them both, Chesca and Dr Snow, especially because they usually leave him to be alone with Iris. It’s five months since she was hit by lightning and he’s there to make sure the nurses are washing her hair properly (because Iris broke her arm when they were teenagers and that’s when he learned how to wash her hair with the right products), and they’re walking around, talking about her progress. She hasn’t seized since she got here, and Chesca always looks optimistic when he shows up with coffee. And she’s sweet and helpful and always tells him jokes, but there’s one thing that still kind of irritates him.

“So…you’re not her boyfriend.”

Barry sighs, because right after people stop assuming they’re brother and sister they assume they’re dating. He remembers once when he went to visit Iris at college and everyone asked whether that was her boyfriend, and the tips of her ears went red and she stammered, no, no, of course not and wouldn’t look him in the eye. Probably because she was embarrassed by the thought of dating him. And even though he always teases her about marrying princes he knows that she’s really going to end up with someone as smart and brilliant and adorably nerdy as she is, like that Freddie Smoak she met in Star City. Barry is just a criminology major who hasn’t graduated yet, and… Anyway, Iris has never looked at him like that. He doesn’t say that, though, even though it’s the third time Chesca has asked.

“No, we’re just friends,” he replies. “Best friends. I’ve known her since I was six.”

“Well, she’s really lucky to have you,” Chesca says earnestly. “The closest thing I have to a best friend now is Colin, and _he’s_ not going to watch the Walking Dead with me.”

“Thanks. Um, where is Dr Snow? I thought he said he had an update for Iris.”

“He does,” Dr Snow himself says, striding into the room. He has a little iPad with a series of charts and moving diagrams that he shows Barry. “As of two hours ago, Iris’ vital systems are all stable, her heart is steady, and her brain shows no signs of abnormalities.”

“So…”

“So now we wait,” Dr Snow shrugs. “Iris just has to wake up.”

“And she’ll be okay? She’ll be normal?”

“Well, as normal as can be expected with a traumatic brain injury and as many seizures as she’s had.”

Barry blinks and Chesca clears her throat, but Dr Snow isn’t done. “As always, there’s a risk of an aneurysm developing, or the brain could be prone to swelling. Right now I don’t see any damage to her nervous system, but that doesn’t mean some won’t develop in the future. Plus there’s the neurological damage.”

“W-What?”

“Well, Iris wasn’t flatlining, but she _did_ have seizures. She could wake up with a completely different personality. She could have gaps in her memory or forget her life entirely-”

“Colin!” Chesca interrupts. “Ixnay on the negative talk! Jesus.”

“I’m not being negative, I’m being realistic,” Colin says. He turns to Barry. “I am very good at my job and I’m going to try my best to save your friend, but you need to prepare yourself. Iris went through a lot of trauma, and sometimes people don’t come back from that.”

“I think what Dr Snow is trying to say,” a voice says calmly, “is that we are all hoping for the best despite all Iris has been through.”

Barry turns in his chair. “Dr Wells.”

She nods, her blue eyes serious. “Mr Allen. How are you?”

“Good. As good as I can be, I guess.”

Iris had two boyfriends in high school, one in college, and one after that. Barry never thought that any of them were good enough for her, but there’s only one that he hated. _Still_ hates, even though Iris never talks about him anymore. He remembers when he got his very first story in the high school paper and he couldn’t wait to tell Iris, because she’d stayed up all night the night before to help him proofread it. She wasn’t in the science lab or the computer room, and they _always_ waited for each other after school unless he had track or she had to tutor freshmen, so he knew she was still on campus. He looked for her everywhere, and that was when Meredith Day, one of her friends from the science club, found him in the corridor. She looked glad to see him but also a little scared, and he wondered why. “Barry?”

“Hey, Meredith. Have you seen Iris?”

“Yeah, that’s why I came to get you. She’s, um…”

“Meredith. What’s wrong? Where’s Iris?”

“She’s…Just come, please.”

So she led him to the girl’s locker rooms, and he recognises the sound of Iris crying anywhere, so he knew that something was really really wrong if she was crying and he was the last one to know. As soon as he walked in, the girls surrounding and comforting her all filed out and left them alone. Iris was obviously trying to stop crying but she couldn’t, and he knelt next to her and gave her some tissues, and tried to get her to look at him.

“Hey, sunshine, what’s up? What happened?”

But Iris was crying so hard she couldn’t breathe, so he just sat next to her and held her until she stopped sobbing. Then he cleaned her glasses and her face and made her tell him, hiccupping and gasping a little. And Barry was and is a pretty chill guy because confrontation isn’t really his thing, but Iris upset and Iris crying has always been his limit. So when he hears what Iris’ asswipe of a boyfriend tried to force her to do and what he called her when she didn’t want to do it, he called Meredith back in the room to look after Iris and marched straight to the boy’s locker room in this haze of red that still scares him and punched Lance Burke so hard that he broke his nose.

All three of them ended up in tears – Iris because of that word, Lance because he had to stop all those modelling jobs that he always bragged about, and Barry because of his broken thumb – in the principal’s office, and they still were when all their parents got there. Lance’s parents wanted to press charges but then his mother chose that moment to reminded them of the definition of the word ‘assault’, especially when it was on a girl, and both of them shut up. (And later, when Iris went to bed early, was when his mother told him that Barry was white and a boy and Iris was black and a girl and the world wouldn't treat them the same, and he adds that to the list of things he has to protect Iris from).

“The two of you are best friends,” she said in the car on the way home from the hospital. Iris was eating ice-cream and Barry had a sundae because his thumb was broken and he couldn’t hold a spoon. “So that’s why I’m not mad that you punched Lance, Barry, because you were protecting Iris. One day I won’t be around to protect you both, so you have to protect each other, okay?”

“Okay,” they said.

“Do you promise?”

They glanced at each other and nodded. “We promise.”

“Good. Barry, you’re grounded.”

“ _What_? But you said-”

“Bartholomew Henry Allen, I’ve had you in boxing gloves for eight years and you still can’t throw a punch without breaking your thumb. You are lucky I don’t leave you on the side of this damn road, I’m so ashamed.”

Barry would have complained but Iris laughed for the first time that day, so he just sucked it up while they made fun of him. That’s always been his job, to protect Iris, and so every time he sees Dr Wells he remembers that she’s the newest thing he has to protect Iris from because she put her in the coma. He squeezes her hand tightly.

“Dr Snow, why don’t you go check on the delivery of medical supplies?” she suggests evenly. He shrugged and walked out, and Dr Wells looked at Barry.

“You’ll have to forgive Dr Snow. He is generally very blunt, but I’m afraid he’s taken the death of his fiancée quite hard.”

Barry gapes at her. “His fiancée died?”

“The night of the explosion.” Chesca is the one who answers, her voice uncharacteristically sombre. “Ronnie was in the Particle Accelerator when it exploded.”

“And he still-”

“Works for me?” she finishes, and Barry swallows.

“It seems that not everyone thinks quite so little of me as you do, Mr Allen.”

“I don’t-”

“I don’t blame you. Your best friend has been in a coma for four months and it’s my fault. But I will say that I’m only human, as you can see-” she gestures to the wheelchair, her still legs “-and as much as you are helping Miss West get through this right now, Dr Snow and Miss Ramon are helping me get through it.”

Barry knows that she’s right and that Dr Snow was just trying to help, but he can’t quite look at him because he keeps thinking of what he said. Iris could forget him. She could wake up and …not know him. He’s so distracted by the thought of a world where Iris _doesn’t know him_ that when Patty comes in for coffee later that evening he actually takes her invitation to talk. Because he feels like he’s drowning a little again and he just wants it to stop.

***

Barry spends Iris’ birthday with her and that’s when he finally starts calling Dr Snow ‘Colin’. He has no idea how – maybe he mentioned it – but somehow they found out that Iris’ favourite colour is green and he puts green carnations on a vase next to her bed.

“Ronnie always got him flowers,” Chesca explains when Colin walks off to help Dr Wells with his physical therapy. “Used to stick them in random places to make him laugh.”

“Ronnie?”

“Well, if you called her Veronica she’d throw a wrench at you.”

He waits until they’ve left for Iris’ present. It’s from when they were kids and she’d just come to their house, and she had nightmares. She always woke up, gasping and shaking, and she was always exhausted the next day from not sleeping or crying quietly when she thought they couldn’t hear her. So he got out of bed and pulled her into his arms and sang to her, the only song he could think of.

_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine_

_You make me happy, when skies are grey_

They never tell anyone about the singing – it’s one of the secret best friend things that they have, like that Iris always knows what food to make whenever he feels upset, or that time in junior year of college when he was drowning in work and he thought that he wasn’t going to get through the semester and she stayed with him on the phone for four hours until he calmed down. It’s a best friend thing that they never tell anyone, but it always works.

_You never know, dear, how much I love you_

_Please don’t take my sunshine away_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be up as soon as I can! (I am making all that science nonsense up).


	3. Hakuna Matata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have finally figured out a direction and plot for this story - some of it will follow canon and some of it will diverge, but I hope everyone likes it!

Barry will never forget his first date with Patty Spivot.

Well, technically it’s not a date, not really, but later that’s what they’ll both call it. He’s working late at Jitters and everyone else has gone home because they’re about an hour from closing, and that’s when she walks in. She smiles at him, fresh-faced and cheerful, and pulls out some cash for her regular order – café au lait with extra cream. Barry looks at her, unimpressed.

“What?” she asked.

“No.”

“No, what?”

“You can’t keep doing this, Patty. You’re the one who found Iris after she got struck by lightning, and you keep covering my mom’s shifts so she can be with her in the hospital. I’m not letting you pay for coffee.”

“Okay, if you’re sure,” she laughs. “Can I at least put it in the tip jar?”

“The tip jar is acceptable.”

Patty drums her fingers on the counter idly while he gets her coffee, trying to remember what his mother told him about her. “So, you’re originally from Midway, right? What made you decide to come here?”

“Honestly, I just felt like a change. I’d spend my whole life in Midway and wanted something different, you know? Besides, nothing ever happens in Midway.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but Central City is pretty boring too,” Barry shrugs. “If you wanted excitement, you probably should have gone to Coast City, I hear there are aliens there. Or Star City! Maybe you’d meet the Green Arrow.”

Patty grimaces. “I don’t think the Green Arrow is a fan of cops – didn’t she put an arrow in one last year?”

“You’d have to ask…” Barry says it automatically, even though today means that Iris is the last person he wants to talk about. “You’d have to ask Iris. She knows all about that kind of thing – the Green Arrow, the woman who could talk to fish, and she even has a theory on who Superwoman is.”

“Yeah, Iris like an adorable little encyclopaedia,” Patty agrees. “She knows _everything_. How…How is she?”

Barry shrugs lightly, trying not to let the memory of that day show. “The same. But anyway, we were talking about you. Did you always know you wanted to be a cop?”

She nods. “Yeah, I think so. I used to get bullied a lot in school, and I guess I just wanted to grow up and help people, you know? Why not do some good, if you can?”

“And the detective part?”

“I’m very curious.”

“Is that just a polite way of saying you’re too nosy?”

Patty gives him a look. “Maybe. Your mom thinks it’s the mark of a good detective.”

“That’s because she’s been poking her nose in my business for years.”

“And what is your business, Barry Allen?”

“Duh,” he says, holding up a tray. “Coffee and donuts. You’re a cop, you should be falling all over me right now.”

“Maybe I am,” she says smoothly, and that’s when Barry realises that they’re flirting. It’s an odd feeling, but he also notices that he’s not thinking about Iris. Visiting was particularly painful today. He smiles brightly at her to hide it.

“That earns you a free one,” he continues. He slides the finished latte across the table with a donut on a plate, and she smiles at him. Barry looks at her, marvelling at how that smile takes away the pain of the day he just had.

Just a little of it, anyway.

“So, Spivot, what’s _your_ business?”

Patty laughs and tells him about herself, and that’s how they spend the time before her shift. And Barry is glad, because when she smiles at him he doesn’t have to remember that time this morning when he’d handed his dissertation in – finally – and he wanted to keep his promise to Iris that he would spend the day with her afterwards to make up for all the times he couldn’t while he was writing it. He’d walked into STAR Labs and smiled hello at everyone, not knowing they had chosen that day to hook up electrodes to Iris’ forehead and discuss her long-term prospects. He can forget that Colin wouldn’t stop talking about brain deficits.

When Patty laughs at his – terrible, as Iris is never afraid to tell him, even though she laughs anyway – jokes and brushes her knee against his under the table, he can forget that Dr Wells is worried that Iris may never regain her motor skills and that the amount of seizures has irrevocably damaged her nerves.

And when they’re leaving Jitters so she can go to her shift and he can lock up and go home, and she kisses him softly, he can forget that horrible, gnawing terror that whispers to him that the last seven months have all been for nothing, that they are wasting their time, and that Iris is already lost to them.

That his best friend may never wake up.

So he talks with Patty and laughs with Patty and kisses Patty, and he’s able to forget that pain of the possibility of losing Iris.

Just for a little bit.

***

“Hey, Barry,” Chesca greets him sunnily a few days later. She is wearing a Game of Thrones tee today and Barry remembers Iris forcing him to sit through all of the episodes with her, and then trying not to admit that he enjoyed it more than he thought he would. “How’re you doing?”

“Pretty good, just had a long day. You?”

“Better, now I have my café mocha,” she replies, grinning as she takes it from him. “You just missed Freddie, actually. He asked how you were doing.”

Barry gives her a surprised smile. “He did? Oh wow, that was nice of him. I’ll email him or something.”

“Awesome, I have his details. Colin’s out but there hasn’t really been any change so you won’t need him grumping up the place anyway, and Dr Wells is…Well, she’s rolling around here somewhere.”

Barry laughs as they make their way to the Cortex. He doesn’t so much mind that he missed Freddie Smoak, even though everything that Iris told him about the IT assistant from Star City made him sound wonderful. It’s just that he prefers to be alone or with his mother when he visits Iris. It has taken him this long to tune out the noises of Chesca, Colin and Dr Wells as they work, and he’d rather meet Freddie Smoak when Iris is awake and it’s less awkward. Even after Barry’s furlough application for Francine was finally approved and she came to see Iris, Barry hadn’t been there. His mother hadn’t allowed him to go anyway, saying that it was best for Francine to have some moments alone with her daughter without Barry there too, but he knows that it was really because he couldn’t look into sweet Francine’s eyes and accept her hugs and reassurance when he’s failed to protect Iris – the one promise he never allows himself to break.

“What are you making?” Barry asks after he’s settled himself in a chair next to Iris’ sleeping form. Chesca, who is at a workbench across the room, looks up at him.

“Uh, something for the police department,” she explains quietly, taking off the goggles. “I figure if STAR Labs could do something nice for them, everyone wouldn’t be so mad at Dr Wells.”

Barry isn’t so sure about that because he still hears his mother muttering dark things about Dr Wells around the house, but he doesn’t say that to Chesca. “You guys really love her, don’t you? Dr Wells, I mean. Iris talks about her all the time.”

“Dr Wells is incredible,” Chesca says simply. “I mean, I know everyone hates her right now, but she was planning on doing some really cool things for all these different kinds of scientific research.”

“Yeah, Iris told me about that,” Barry replies. Well actually, Iris bent his ear about it for over a year before it actually happened. “Like, apparently this thing was even going to help research looking into curing cancer.”

“Yeah! It was so cool, watching it turn on after all those months of work,” she says earnestly. Then she glances guiltily at Iris. “You know, until…”

“Right.”

They are silent for a while before Chesca speaks again, her eyes still on whatever she’s working on. “Everyone said I should quit, when the Particle Accelerator exploded. That I should get a job somewhere else before everyone realised how much damage it caused. But…I couldn’t leave Dr Wells. She was all alone and – did you ever have someone who always believed in you, no matter what?”

“Iris,” Barry admits. “And my mom.”

“See? Well, Dr Wells was like that for me. Everyone in my family cares about Danita, the piano prodigy,” she shrugs. “Dr Wells is the only one who ever believed that there was a brain behind all these dumb jokes.”

Barry sits with that before saying, “Well, you’re saving my friend’s life, so I guess I’m the second person. And your jokes can’t be any worse than mine.”

“Oh yeah?”

“How do you make a Kleenex dance?”

“Put a little boogie in it,” Chesca answers, rolling her eyes. “I’ve heard much worse than that.”

“Okay, I’ve got another one. How do you make holy water?” Barry asked. When Chesca shrugged, he said, “You boil the hell out of it.”

She grinned. “Okay, Allen, okay. Two peanuts are walking down the street; one was a salted.”

Barry laughed. “Two guys walk into a bar, the third one ducks.”

“What time did the man go to the dentist?” Chesca giggled. “Tooth hurt-y.”

“What’s Forrest Gump’s password? _1Forrest1_.”

Chesca and Barry laughed so hard that they both started crying. “Thanks for that,” Chesca said, wiping her eyes. “The last person to make me laugh that hard was Ronnie.”

“That was Colin’s fiancée, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she sighs sadly. “She and Colin would have gotten married this month, actually. If you’re wondering why he’s a little…colder than usual.” She pauses. “Listen, Barry, I know Colin can be a little standoffish, but just know that he’s doing everything he can to get Iris to wake up. He knows how important she is to you, and your mom.”

“I know,” he replies quietly. “I just…I miss her.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think _she’s_ trying her hardest too wake up, too.” Chesca grins. “Someone has to vet all of those dumbass jokes.”

***

 _This is Iris, she saved my life_.

The memory comes to Barry unbidden while he chops up the nuts for the chicken and cashew meal they’re having for dinner, and he stops for a minute, smiling. His mother, cutting up the chicken on the countertop, looks at him. “You okay, Bar?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just…cashews.”

Both of them share a smile over the soft sounds of Norah Jones playing over the speakers. Barry and his mother have taken a while to get used to having Sunday dinners without Iris in the nine months that she’s been in the coma, as is their tradition, but there are still some days when Barry accidentally sets the table for three people, or pauses with a tightness in his throat whenever his mother gets down the ingredients for her favourite meal. Cashews, though, bring a different type of memory.

Barry had been excited for his first day of first grade, like most kids were, and he remembers wanting to make lots of new friends and show them all the cool things he’d learned to do over the summer after kindergarten. It was also the day he met Iris West. Barry noticed that she was sitting by herself, reading a book through her black glasses with a flower pattern on the rims, when he sat next to her and gave her his biggest smile. “Hi!”

Iris lowered the book, blinking her pretty brown eyes at him. “H-Hi,” she said quietly.

“I’m Barry. What’s your name?”

“Iris.”

“I like your glasses, Iris.”

Iris just looked at him before smiling. “Thanks, Barry.”

That was when Mrs Grant came in and told Barry to sit with the ‘A’ people at the front of the classroom. But for the rest of the day, whenever he caught Iris looking at him that day – Barry calls that look her daydream face, because it honestly looks like she’s never paying attention when he catches her wearing that look – he smiled widely at her and she smiled shyly back. That is, until snack time.

One of things that Barry had learned over the summer was a trick with cashew nuts. Admittedly, looking back, it’s a pretty dumb thing to be proud of, but six-year-olds aren’t known for being incredibly intelligent. Well, apart from Iris, apparently. Barry always teases her about the fact that she was looking at him at the time – “Everyone was looking at you, Barry, you were the idiot who said he could swallow five cashew nuts in a row _without chewing them_ ” – but the school nurse later told him that if it weren’t for Iris he would have died. As it stood, none of the children had ever seen a choking person before, and Mrs Grant had been called out of the room to do something. So when Barry started turning pink and making weird noises, it was Iris West with her glasses and her book and her pretty manners that thumped Barry on the back, grabbed him from behind, and gave him the Heimlich manoeuvre.

Then when the cashew nut came flying out of his mouth, Iris took his hand and led him down the corridors until she found the nurse’s office. The nurse looked looked down at Iris in alarm, but she opened her mouth first. “Barry choked on a cashew. You should check him.”

“Young lady, why aren’t you in your classroom? You shouldn’t be roaming the halls without a hall pass.”

“Barry,” she repeated, “choked on a cashew.”

“She’s right,” Barry added helpfully, his voice hoarse. “I did.”

So even though the nurse told her that she’d be in trouble for walking around without a hall pass, Iris refused to leave and instead sat on the little chair next to the examination table where the nurse was checking Barry’s throat. Then when she went to the next room to get some cough medicine, he leaned over and poked Iris in the arm.

“Iris.”

“Yeah?”

“I think we should be best friends.”

She blinked at him from behind her glasses. “You do?”

“Yes,” he nodded seriously. “You saved my life, so I think we should be best friends now. Do you want to be best friends?”

And Iris smiled at him. “Okay.”

Barry took his role as best friend very seriously, being polite and asking questions about Iris the way his mother taught him when he asked how he would make new friends. He thought he had picked a good best friend – Iris was smart and kind and funny, and she was generally content to do whatever he did. So, at the end of the day, he grabbed Iris’ hand and pulled her over to his mother when she came to pick him up.

“Mom, this is Iris – she saved my life!” he said breathlessly. “We’re best friends now.”

Nora frowned at them. “She saved your life?”

“Yeah! I swallowed a cashew-”

“Barry!”

“No, it’s okay! Iris did this thing where she gave me a hug – the hinnick…the heinrick…”

“Heimlich manoeuvre,” Iris supplied, pushing her glasses up her nose. “My daddy is a doctor – he taught me how to do them. It’s nice to meet you, Mrs Allen.”

“You too, sweetie. Where are your parents? I’d love to meet them.”

“Mom, can Iris come over to play?” Barry asked, jumping up and down as Iris led them to her parents.

“She can come over next week, honey.”

“Why next week?”

“Because you’re grounded for swallowing cashews.”

‘Eating cashews’ is still code for being in deep shit between the two of them, and Barry has lost count of the times Barry has texted Iris ‘I swallowed a cashew’ when he was in serious trouble and didn’t want to go into details, and she was always there to bail him out. Even when they are in the midst of their longest, most stubborn fight (which, admittedly, are never really that long), either one of them saying that will bring the other one right to their side.

“Are you seeing her today?” his mother asks quietly. “It’s late, but I’m sure the night-nurse will let you in.”

“No, I need to go over to her apartment, check her bills and make sure the place is clean,” he replies. He hasn’t done it in a while, and even though Iris has managed to make sure her bills go out on time (which he never fails to marvel at, given the fact that she routinely forgets to eat lunch), he still wants to make sure she doesn’t get any random letters that she can’t deal with. His phone buzzes on the countertop and his heart stutters in his chest when he sees that it’s Patty. Glancing at his mother out of the corner of his eye, he slides the phone towards him and reads the message. _Are we still on for tonight?_

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, just Tyler,” he shrugs nonchalantly. He sends back a quick _Yes_ and then pockets the phone so she can’t see. “He wants me to pick up an extra shift tomorrow.”

He is also seeing Patty tonight, which he’s grateful for because he’s pretty certain he needs something to cheer him up after he’s spent time in Iris’ apartment which, even though it has stopped smelling like her because of all the times he and his mother have traipsed through there, still reminds him of all the times they spent hours playing Assassin’s Creed on her PlayStation (Iris won’t get an Xbox; it’s one of the few things they don’t agree on). He and Patty have been on three dates and kissed five times, and Barry is starting to feel himself opening up to her.

Now, if only he knew how to tell his mother.

“That reminds me,” she says suddenly. “The university called – you need to choose an elective by the end of the week so you’re registered for the semester.”

“I still can’t decide,” he shrugged. “It’s just the sociology requirement, so it’s not like it’s even that important.”

“Of course it’s important, Barry,” his mother says sternly. “It’s your education. Besides, they won’t let you graduate without it. Just don’t forget to call them, okay?”

Barry walks quickly to Iris’ apartment instead of driving, enjoying the cool autumn night. Iris moved out of their house a few months after college, even though Nora insisted that she could stay there to avoid paying rent somewhere else. But Iris had refused to budge, even when Barry asked her about it; she just got a weird look on her face and said that it was best for her to move out then. He still isn’t sure why.

Iris’ apartment is neat and clean, with the living room and kitchen combined into one and a nice-sized bedroom and bathroom down the corridor. Barry vacuums the place and then goes through the bills, rolling his eyes at the junk and putting the scientific journals and magazines on her desk. True to form, it looks like a hurricane hit it, and he knows that she’ll kill him if he tries to tidy it. There is one corner that is always neat though, with a ring box that Barry knows holds Iris’ parents wedding bands and her mother’s engagement ring, a picture of Iris with her mother and father as a child, the picture from her graduation from the police academy, and a picture of her and Barry after a trip to Disneyland.

Barry picks it up and runs his hand over the frame. His mother has a copy on her desk at the precinct, and he has a copy in his locker at work. It’s a ridiculous picture – both of them are pulling weird faces and they’re wearing Mickey Mouse ears (his mother has the version where they’re smiling like sensible adults, no ears). It was taken a month after their college graduation, as they both wanted to do something utterly ridiculous before Barry went to graduate school and Iris started training for the police academy. Since neither of them had ever been before, they chose to do it while they still had some time free. Barry had dared her to wear the ears all day and she did, even when they had to get the train back to their hotel. He puts the picture down quickly, swallowing around the painful lump that has formed in his throat.

He should go and meet Patty.

***

“Tyler? Tyler – quit flirting with the customers!”

Barry rolls his eyes and grins as Tyler comes back around the counter with a tray of empty cups and dirty plates. “Really, you’re leaving me alone to do the afternoon orders myself?”

His co-worker shrugs. “I will when they’re as hot as that.” He smiles and winks at the pretty petite woman with short black hair, who Barry has no doubt is enjoying a free coffee that will come out of Tyler’s pay.

“Did you get her name before the drooling started?”

“Linda,” he says dreamily. Barry shakes his head.

“You sure she’s not just using you for free coffee?”

“She can use me for whatever she wants. We’re going out tonight, so I guess not.”

“Whatever. Take over orders.”

Barry slips through the afternoon crowd of people, wanting to get through his shift as quickly as possible. He has about a million things to do this and he should have done them all already – go to the academic office to tell them about what he was going to pick for his sociology module, meet Patty for coffee, and think about whether it will be worth it to apply for furlough for Francine again, seeing as it is September and the last time she saw Iris was July. He picks up cups and plates, takes out orders to people, refills coffee mugs, and slumps at the counter that Tyler is cleaning when the afternoon rush has finally calmed down.

“You okay, man?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he yawned. “Just tired. Hey, the coffee machine broken yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s keep trying.”

They laugh together and Tyler walks off to the back. Barry glances at the door, freezes, and looks back, his mouth falling open in shock.

 _Iris_.

She’s there, walking through the door in a black and white dress and smiling tentatively at him like she’s been there the whole time, just waiting for him to see her. He blinks twice – he can’t believe she’s awake and in front of him – maybe if he moves too suddenly he’ll wake up and realise this is a dream. But then she pushes her glasses up her nose and the look she gives him – pretty brown eyes wide behind her glasses and the best friend smile she only wears for him – is so familiar, makes her look so much like _Iris_ that he’s up and walking towards her with his arms held out before he even knows what he’s doing. She grins because she’s already skipping towards him, and she leaps straight into his arms and wraps her arms around him as he lifts her off her feet. He closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of her hair and squeezes her small body tight to him for a moment, needing to feel that this is real, that she’s alive and breathing, before setting her down, his arms still around her.

“You’re awake,” he breathes, looking her up and down. “They didn’t – No one called-”

“I just woke up,” she says, smiling up at him radiantly.

“Wait, should you even be walking? Why are you on your feet?”

“Barry, I’m okay,” she shrugs, still smiling. He frowns at her forehead and then down at her body, and swallows.

“They- They said that your brain might have…deficits,” he said quietly. “That you could forget how to walk or forget your life or forget me…”

Iris scrunches her mouth to one side and places her hands on his face, tilting it down slightly so she can study it. “Green eyes, big smile, goofy hair,” she says in a mock-serious tone, and smiles. “How could I ever forget you, Barry?”

Barry grins at her, grabbing her hands, and is about to say something when he hears a crash; he turns to see that Tyler as dropped a coffee mug on the floor. He frowns, Iris’ hands still in his. “You okay, Tyler?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” he replies easily. Barry turns back to Iris, who’s frowning at the floor with a slightly confused look on her face.

“Let’s go see my mom, okay?” he says. “Just let me get my stuff.”

They walk to the precinct, talking like there aren’t nine months between them, and Barry can’t stop grinning at her, marvelling at the fact that she’s there in front of him after so long. He pokes her in the ribs. “So, you wanna know what you missed?”

“Sure.”

“Me.”

Iris smiles and rolls her eyes. “Right. But seriously, Bar. What went on while I was gone?”

Patty. He should tell her about him and Patty. But there’s something in him that doesn’t want to say anything about her yet. If he tells Iris, it will be real and scary and it’s something that he’ll have to navigate alone, and he’s done that before. He pushes it to the back of his mind.

“Well, Obama’s still president, the Winter Olympics were in Russia, and Beyoncé released an album on iTunes without telling anyone and broke the internet.”

“Oh my God,” she gasps. “Are you serious?”

“Don’t worry, I got the CD for you. Uh, you…You’re twenty-five now, Iris.”

“…Oh,” she says quietly. Her birthday had been in June. “That’s so weird. I can’t believe I’ve been gone for so long. Wait, Barry, I missed your graduation, didn’t I? I’m so sorry!”

“Ah,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not exactly. I didn’t graduate. I flunked one of my classes and I have to take it again this semester so I can graduate after Christmas. I was kind of in a bad place.”

Iris looks up at him, her big eyes concerned. “What happened?”

He raises his eyebrows at her. “My best friend got struck by lightning, Iris.”

“Oh. _Oh_!” Iris giggles, snorts, and claps a hand over her mouth, and Barry bursts into what feels like the first good laugh in months. “I missed you, sunshine.”

“I missed you, too. Or at least, I think I did. I mean, I’m _assuming_ I did. Technically my brain was asleep so my faculties weren’t functioning at their highest capacity, like, all I was doing was regulating my body temperature so my temporal lobe was _totally_ doing a lot less work compared to my hypothalamus and… I’m doing the nerd thing, aren’t I?

Barry laughs again as they walked up the steps to the precinct. “Yes, you were, it was adorable.”

“Well, work is still the same,” Iris says, looking around. “Do you know if my lab is still intact?”

“I think so, but I haven’t been up there since last year,” he replies. He spots his mother through the glass and grins. “Hey, Mom! Look who I found!”

The entire precinct stops and turns around. “Um, hi everyone,” Iris says. “I’m back.”

Nora is the first one to envelop her in a tight hug as everyone gathers around them. “Iris, you’re awake!” Then she steps back and gives her a stern look, grasping her arms. “You are not to scare me like that again, young lady.”

Iris blinks behind her glasses. “No, ma’am.”

“Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Nora smiles and hugs her again. “Oh, I missed you, my sweet girl. Are you okay? Dr Snow said there could be some complications.”

“I feel fine,” Iris nods after a second. “Completely fine.”

“Are you sure?” Barry adds, narrowing his eyes. “Because he kept talking about how you wouldn’t be able to walk.”

“That guy has no tact whatsoever,” she says. “You know what the first thing he said to me when I woke up was? ‘Pee in this cup, Iris’. Then he kept poking me with things and shining lights in my eyes and demanding to know why I wasn’t falling over.”

“That sounds like Colin. So, did he figure it out?”

“According to him, my muscles should be atrophied, but instead they’re in a chronic and unexplained state of cellular regeneration.” When everyone just stares at her, Iris adjusts her glasses and says, “Um. Lightning gave me abs. Apparently.”

“Too bad they didn’t fix your eyes,” someone says, and she laughs along with everyone else.

“Yeah, I actually think they’ve gotten worse,” she says, taking off her glasses to examine them. Captain Singh smiles and squeezes her shoulder. “Well, it’s good to have you back, Iris. You take your time coming back to work, okay?”

“Thanks.” Just as everyone is getting back to their desks, Justin, one of the cops, calls Barry’s mother.

“Nora, we’ve got a 211 in progress at Central City Bank,” he says. “Possibly armed. Grab your gear, it’s looking like there’s a storm on the southside.”

She sighs and grabs her jacket and holster. “Sorry, sweetie,” she says to Iris. “We’ll catch up later, okay? Hey, partner, let’s move!” she calls, before kissing them both on the cheek and striding out. Barry takes a deep breath as Patty approaches. She smiles at Iris as she puts on her jacket.

“Hey, Iris,” she says. “It’s really good to see you.”

“Thanks, Patty.”

“Barry,” she nods at him.

“Detective. You should go, my mom will kick your ass if you keep her waiting.”

Iris raises her eyebrows but doesn’t say anything, instead looking around the precinct. She frowns and walks over to the memorial cabinet in the middle of the atrium. “Faye…Faye died?”

“Yeah,” he sighs as he looks at the picture of his mother’s old partner, Faye Chyre. “They were tracking the Mardon sisters the night of the explosion and she was shot. The Mardons died when their helicopter crashed.”

Iris touches the glass and bites her lip as Justin calls him from across the precinct. “Hey, Barry? Could you come give me your new home number?”

Barry walks over to Justin and fills in some forms, when suddenly there’s a loud crash and a criminal who was struggling is flat against the table being restrained. “Screw you!” she screams as she’s dragged away. When Barry turns back to Iris, she’s staring at her hands.

“Hey, sunshine, you okay?” he asks. She looks up at him, blinking rapidly, and her eyes look odd.

“Fine,” she says. “I’m fine, I just – I need some air, and I should go to the eye doctor to tell her I need a new prescription. But, um…” And that apprehensive look is back on her face again. She fiddles with her glasses and gestures with her hands. “We should meet tomorrow. I have to tell you something.”

“Sure,” he nods, smiling. “Whatever you want.”

She stares at him with that Iris look – all wide eyes from under her eyelashes – for a second, before blinking and shaking her head slightly. “Sorry, these glasses really are terrible. I don’t know what I did to deserve such terrible eyesight.”

“Whatever it is, I think the lightning was a big enough punishment,” he laughs. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” she smiles.

Barry has really missed that smile.

***

Barry recognises the tell-tale flash of blonde hair through the window and Jitters just as his shift the next day is ending, throwing his apron into his locker and walking outside. He raises a sardonic eyebrow as he sees Patty leaning against the wall around the corner, her arms folded. “Can I help you, detective?”

“You can stop pretending you can’t stand the sight of me whenever anyone we know is around,” she quips, and Barry grins, pulling her towards him by the waist and kissing her.

“What, you thought I was kidding when I said my mom would kick your ass?” he says after they’ve broken apart.

“For being late, not for making out with her son.”

“If you don’t think that’s worse than the late thing-”

“Barry? – Oh, sorry,” someone interjects, breaking them out of their embrace.

Both Barry and Patty turn to see Iris staring at them both, a surprised look on her face. She pushes her glasses up her nose and looks anywhere but at their faces. “Sorry,” she says again quietly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Just, um, Tyler told me you were out here, and we were supposed to meet and – You know what? I’ll just, um – I’ll wait for you to…finish. I’ll be over there.” And she walks quickly to the other side of the street. Barry groans.

“Well, that was awkward,” Patty says.

“Yeah, I really didn’t want her to find out this way,” Barry sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I should go talk to her.”

“I’ll call you tonight,” Patty tells him, kissing him goodbye.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?” Iris asks in a voice dryer than the Sahara dessert as they walk towards Central City Bridge a few minutes later. “Because that definitely wasn’t happening nine months ago, Barry.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. It kind of just…happened. But you can’t tell my mom, okay? She’ll freak.”

“Yeah,” Iris agrees. “You’re dating her police partner in secret – she’s going to hit the roof. How long?”

Barry grimaces – Iris is never this upset with him. “Two months.”

“Right.” She pushes her glasses up her nose and folds her arms before looking up at him again. “And are you sure this is a good idea? You don’t think it’s going to get messy?”

“Why would – Wait, is this about Patty or something else?” he frowns. Iris sighs and looks away from him.

“What else would it be about, Barry?”

“I don’t know; you just seem really upset.”

“You’re asking me to lie to Nora,” she points out. “Which isn’t exactly what I wanted after not seeing her for nine months.”

Barry frowns down at her. She’s still avoiding looking him in the eye and she’s biting her bottom lip. He grasps her shoulders to make her look at him. “Iris, come on, I don’t want to fight when I just got you back. Can we talk about something else? Like – whatever you wanted to tell me yesterday. It seemed pretty important.”

Iris looks off down the street again. “Nothing, it’s not-” Then her eyes widen and she shoves him backwards. “Barry, _move_!”

Suddenly he’s sprawled on the floor and disoriented as he hears a car scream past on the tarmac. When he gets up, he can’t see Iris anywhere. “Iris?” He looks up and around, but she’s gone, and the entire street is enveloped in fog. Barry hears a crash his heart leaps into his throat; he fishes for his phone and starts shouting her name when she comes back around the corner, running straight towards him as she talks on the phone.

“…Iris West, CSI division at Central City Police Department, calling in an 11-80 on Central City Bridge, ambulance requested. Yeah, thanks.”

“Hey, are you okay?” he demands, checking her over as she hangs up. “Iris, your head is bleeding.”

“It’s just a scratch, I’m fine. Besides, there’s a patrol car and an ambulance in the area.”

“What were you doing?”

“I wanted to get the plates off that car, but it – crashed.”

Barry stares at her, at the way she said ‘crashed’, like she doesn’t quite believe it. Her arms are wrapped around herself and she looks completely freaked out. “Iris?”

But that’s when the patrol cars and ambulance come around the corner and cops leap out, cordoning off the area from the crowds that are already gathering. Barry frowns, noticing that the fog has almost completely disappeared, when he hears someone shouting their names. “Barry! Iris!”

His mother marches up to them, her eyes tight with anger. “What the hell were the two of your doing out here? Iris, you just got out of a coma, and for God’s sake, Barry, you’re not a cop!”

“Right, because I let you talk me out of it,” he snaps back, feeling the familiar heat behind this argument.

“You’re damn right I did! You-”

“Nora,” Iris interrupts, her voice shaking. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Not now, Iris-”

“Yes, _now_.”

His mother looks at her in surprise before walking off to the side with Iris, and one of the cops takes the opportunity to ask him for his statement. “It was really weird, the car came out of nowhere,” he explains. “And there was all this weird fog that disappeared as soon as you guys got here. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Anything else?”

“I didn’t really see much. You should ask Iris, she-” Then he sees that Iris and his mother are arguing – Well. Nora is yelling at Iris, who’s jaw is set with that expression on her face that he could usually get rid of by and saying ‘smile for me, sunshine’ when she and Nora had this argument when they were teenagers. But he isn’t so sure that will work now they are adults. He walks towards them quickly, catching the end of their conversation.

“…the jury knew it, and now she’s paying for what she did!”

“Mom – Mom, that’s enough!”

“No, Barry,” Nora says tiredly. It’s moments like this, when he remembers what happened to Iris when she was eleven and what everyone thought about her afterwards even as she continued to fight for her mother’s innocence, that Barry truly remembers how small she is, and that he can’t protect her from everything. Like right now, when she’s facing Nora with that devastated look in her eyes. “I took you in when no one else did, and I did it gladly, and I raised you without expecting anything else in return, not even a thank you. But I am asking you now, Iris, to see things as they truly are. For you own good.”

Barry watches, his heart twisting, as Iris clenches her jaw and rubs her eyes behind her glasses, probably to stop the tears before they mist up the lenses and she can’t see, before she turns from them without a word, ducks under the police tape, and strides off into the crowd without looking back, hands fisted in her jacket pockets.

She’s so goddamn _small_.

His mother turns, takes one look at the anger on his face, and sighs. “Not today, Barry.”

“You couldn’t go easy on her for once?” he demands, following her to her car. “You couldn’t lay off her for one day? She just got out of a coma!”

“But that apparently didn’t stop either one of you from running headfirst into the first crime scene you could find,” she replies. Barry rolls his eyes.

“That was an accident – how were we supposed to know some lunatic would crash his car into someone? Her mother is in prison and we’re all she has, we’re supposed to be protecting her-”

“I _am_ protecting her!” she says. She pulls him to one side, away from the other cops. “Do you think I like yelling at her? Do you think I enjoy seeing her look at me like that, like she hates me? But I need her to accept the truth and I need her to do it fast, because there is no way in hell I can watch people in the precinct think of her as some lunatic that thinks that women with mind-control powers asked her mother to kill her father. Because you know what will happen if they do.”

Barry does know, and he’s certain he can’t take it either. Can’t take another day of watching Iris slip into the house, her eyes glassy with unshed tears, from another session with a psychiatrist where she’s gone through millions of tests and questions to prove that there is something wrong in her brain that explains what she says she saw. He sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

His mother rubs her eyes and looks around. “I have to deal with this, but I’ll see you at home, okay?”

Barry remembers to nod – he’s just been distracted by Patty and he doesn’t want his mother to see – and hugs her briefly. “Okay.”

***

Barry doesn’t see Iris for two days after that.

They text each other – Iris suggests he take the journalism elective because they always have more fun – but he knows that she doesn’t really want to see anyone right now. He knows that she will visit her mother in prison, which will be a nice surprise for Francine, and that she’ll want to be by herself for a while. Maybe she’ll go see Colin and Chesca and Dr Wells to thank them for everything they did for her during the coma. Barry will give it some time before he goes to see her, or wait for her to come and find him.

He’s never really questioned why believes Iris as strongly as he has for all these years. He just…does. He remembers when Iris first came to their house in the middle of the night, her eyes wide with fear and confusion as she clutched at the straps of her favourite backpack – gold, like Belle’s dress from Beauty and the Beast – and his mother asked him to show her where everything was.

“Barry,” she said, looking up at him. “What they’re saying about my mom – she didn’t do it. She didn’t kill my dad – the woman in grey made her do it.”

“I know,” he said simply. “I believe you. Come on, your room’s this way.”

Barry doesn’t particularly know or care why he’s never needed any proof to believe Iris. If Iris says that her mother didn’t do it, then she didn’t do it. What the explanation is he doesn’t know, but he does know that Iris has gone to the ends of the earth looking for it. It’s something that she likes to do by herself – which is good because he’s never known the first thing about how to find the impossible – and has been doing since they were both small. Even when she was studying to be a forensic scientist so she could figure out a way to prove her mother’s innocence, she has never turned her back on trying to find that mysterious woman in grey.

Iris told him the story exactly once, but it was so chilling that he still remembers it, almost as if it happened to him. Iris came down the stairs after she’d been sent to bed because she heard a crash. She came downstairs to see a woman in grey surrounded by black lightning; the woman told her to stay where she was.

“My whole body went c-cold,” he remembers her saying. “Like that time Miss S-Simpson took us swimming and they forgot to heat up the p-pool. She told me not to move, and I couldn’t. And my m-mom, she told her to pick up a candlestick and-”

Barry closes his eyes as he walks the familiar route to Iris’ apartment. He knows the sound of her voice as she tells him that story; it is etched into his bones. That was when the woman ordered Francine West to hit Joe West over the head with a candlestick; he then bled to death on the floor while the woman in grey disappeared and Iris was left to call the police.

It had been bothering him all day, enough that Patty noticed when they met. She waited for him outside Jitters and she asked him how Iris was doing; she had seen some of their argument before she and Nora went to go investigate what had happened.

“Family stuff,” Barry had said; he didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone else about their business. “I’m just worried about her, you know?”

“I get it,” Patty had nodded. “It must be hard, coming out of a nine-month coma. You think there’s anything you can do to cheer her up? Make her feel better?”

Barry had frowned, deep in thought. Iris had seemed much more upset about her mother. “I guess.”

“You’re her best friend, Barry. I’m sure you can think of something.”

He’s still thinking about it at work, when he sees on the news that some sort of mysterious tornado has destroyed a farm on the outskirts of town. “Hey, Tyler,” he says. He gestures to the television screens. “You hear about this?”

“Yeah, actually,” he replies. “Apparently it was a freak thing and nobody can really figure out what happened. Something weird about it, though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Some woman said she was over at the next farm and saw a streak of green lightning all around the tornado right before it stopped.”

“A freak storm and green lightning?” Barry repeats. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, and that’s not even the first. Central City’s been getting weirder these last few months.”

But Barry doesn’t hear anymore because he has to go to the university to hand in his application for the journalism class (Patty suggested European folklore, but he thinks he’d rather have fun being nosy and asking questions than learning about dwarves), and then goes to see Iris, because it’s been two days. He hasn’t yet figured out how to cheer Iris up – yet – but he does have his go-to of brownies and pizza. He’s supposed to return her spare key, so he might as well see her. He knocks on the door, but he’s sure that Iris can’t hear him over the pounding sounds of Janet Jackson that are practically making the door vibrate. He opens the door and steps tentatively inside. “Iris?”

Yeah, Iris definitely can’t hear him. She’s dancing around her kitchen with her back to him, singing along to her iPod.

_“All for you, if you really want it_

_It’s all for you, if you say you need it_

_It’s all for you, you gotta have it_

_It’s all for you if you make a move_

_It’s all_ – Barry!” Iris squeaks when he’s finally gotten her attention. He had watched her for a while, laughing because Iris really is ridiculously adorable, but the pizza is getting cold. “I, um – What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to cheer you up,” he said, gesturing to the bag of food. “But it looks like someone did that already.”

She shrugs, smiling, as she turns down the volume. “I went to go see my mom. And…Dr Wells and everyone at STAR Labs gave me some really good advice.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and then you’ll be ready do to the impossible,” she says simply.

“I like that.”

“Me too. And then Chesca said ‘Hakuna matata’, which is also pretty good advice. I worry too much.” She looks hopefully at the pizza boxes. “Is that ham and mushroom for me?”

“With jalapeño surprise for me.”

“Awesome, let’s – hey, get your sneakers off my couch!”

Barry sticks his tongue out at her, but obliges and takes them off. “Do I have to remind you that I helped you move this couch up here?”

Iris gives him a look. “Yeah, and then you ate all my potato chips and fell asleep on top of it.”

“I was hungry after I moved the couch.”

“I don’t know why I even asked you to help – you hate lifting things.”

“Because you love me.”

She rolls her eyes and throws a pillow at his head – which despite the fact that she’s across the room hits him in the face. “Hey, how’d you do that? Your hand-eye coordination is terrible.”

“Asshole.”

“ _Nerd_.”

They grin at each other, and Iris grabs two beers from the fridge and plops down next to him as they start eating. “I missed a whole year of Game of Thrones,” Iris says, settling into the couch. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“Uh huh,” he says. He’s just gotten an email from his journalist professor with the first assignment – that was fast. They have to find one news piece from the last week that has piqued their interest. He looks at Iris, about to ask her advice, when he remembers what Tyler told him earlier. He googles the farm and the freak tornado and gets over a dozen hits.

_Mysterious green lightning spotted over Cochran farm_

_Woman witnesses flying streak of lightning; claims it stopped freak storm_

_Impossible happenings in Central City? Claims of green and gold lightning streak pick up steam_

“Hey, Iris?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you hear anything about that storm over at Cochran Farm?”

“Uh, no,” she says, shrugging. “Your mom didn’t…She didn’t need me for that. Why?”

“Just curious. It made the news.”

Barry grins at his phone again. Maybe he _does_ know how to cheer Iris up.

She looks at him then, pushes her glasses up her nose and frowns. “What are you smiling at?”

Barry pockets his phone and reaches for some pizza. “No reason. Just glad to have you back, sunshine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun writing this, especially the WA moments. Thanks for reading, liking and commenting!


	4. Number One Fan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry meets Blink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter because I had a lot to get done, but I hope everyone likes it!

“You are _so_ lucky we’re best friends, sunshine, or I’d be really, really mad at you.”

Barry strides into Iris’ lab, fiddling with the tie that Patty suggested for the science thing he was going to, and stops in front of her table. “I could have taken European folklore and learned about vampires from the 18th century, but you said journalists have more fun. Guess what, Iris? They don’t do anything fun. They’re allergic to fun. There is no fun. I’m bored, and it’s all your fault.”

Iris blinks a few times at him, her mouth partway open, and he narrows his eyes at her. “What? Why are you staring at me like that?”

“Nothing,” she says quickly, adjusting her glasses before gesturing vaguely at him. “Um, your suit looks nice. And your hair. You…You look nice.””

He frowns. “Thanks. Why don’t you look nice?”

Iris raises an eyebrow at him. “I always look nice, Bartholomew.”

“Well, nicer. Like, ‘take your best friend Barry to a science thingie because you promised to explain what the hell is going on’ nice.”

“Um…”

“You forgot, didn’t you?”

“Kinda.”

“How fast can you be home to change?”

“Blink of an eye, I promise,” she replies, flipping her hair out of her face. Then she looks up and bites the inside of her cheek. “Hey, Patty.”

“Hey, Iris. Nora wants the report on the Cochran farm storm.”

“The one with the green lightning?”

“Yeah,” she nods, then looks over at Barry. “Oh. Hey, Barry.”

“Detective.”

Iris glances between the two of them and rolls her eyes. “Is this you guys trying to be subtle? You’re lucky I already know. Just kiss already before you hurt yourselves.”

Patty grins and leans over the kiss Barry as Iris goes back to her board. “Thanks, Iris. You have no idea how hard it is to keep a secret like this.”

Iris gives a small smile. “Oh, I kind of have a little idea.”

“Hey, is that the report about the lightning person at the Cochran farm?” Barry asks, going over to Iris’ desk, and Patty sighs.

“Barry, quit it. We can’t tell you anything about that case.”

“ _You_ can’t tell me anything about that case,” Barry corrects. “Because some asshole hit you in the head.”

“What makes you think I can tell you?” Iris demands, hiding the report from him. “I was asleep at home when it happened. Besides, you’re not a cop.”

“Yeah,” Patty adds, grinning at Barry. “You’re just a civilian.”

“The pretty girl in the movie that everyone’s trying to rescue,” Iris shrugs, her eyes shining. “With no access to police files.”

“Since when, blabbermouth?” Barry shoots back, poking her. “You tell me everything.”

“Not everything,” she says, and the light kind of goes out of her eyes. “Anyway, no report for you. You’ll have to find your sources for your mysterious green lightning saviour somewhere else.”

“Blink,” Barry corrects her. “They’re calling it Blink.”

“And they’re going to call you grounded if you don’t stop bothering my colleagues, Bartholomew,” a commanding voice interrupts, and they all look up. Barry and Iris have become so accustomed to Nora’s ‘I’m about to ground you’ voice that they both stand up straight as soon as she walks in.

Patty looks at them, an eyebrow raised. “She’s not really going to-”

“Yeah, she will,” Barry and Iris say together. Barry clears his throat. “Hey, mom, what’s up?”

“Patty and I get to go re-examine that robbery down on fifth,” Nora answers, sharing a look with Iris. Then she glances between Barry and Patty, who are standing right next to each other. “The one at the gun store. Ready to go?”

“Sure.” Patty walks off with Nora. “I’ll see you guys later.”

“Bye, Patty,” Barry says, and just in time remembers to add, “Bye, Mom.”

Iris looks at her best friend. “Subtle, Barry. Subtle.”

***

“I’m still mad at you for making me pick this.”

“Quit being a baby.”

“I could have been learning about vampires.”

“You’re _afraid_ of vampires, Barry. When we went to go see Twilight, you spent the entire thing holding my hand.”

“That,” he points out as they make their way through Central City University, “wasn’t because he was a vampire. It’s because he looked and acted like a serial killer on drugs. And in possession of too much hair gel.”

“And what about the Vampire Diaries? The only one you like on that show is Bonnie.”

“Bonnie is reasonable – she doesn’t go around biting her friends at all hours of the day.” He pauses as everyone starts clapping and a well-dressed, middle-aged woman makes her way up the stage, flanked by half a dozen bodyguards. Barry whistles. “Is that her?”

“Yep,” Iris replies. “Simone Stagg, founder and CEO of Stagg Industries. Like Central City’s version of Bree Wayne, but older.”

They listen as Simone makes her speech – thanking everyone who ever worked for the company, listening to how long it is, and then makes her way off the stage. Iris links arms with Barry as she begins to explain everything she knows she wasn’t listening to.

“Okay, so Stagg Industries may be small compared to Queen Incorporated or Wayne Enterprises,” she begins, pushing her glasses up her nose, “but its work has been immensely important to organ donation.”

Barry has spotted a waitress and takes two glasses of champagne from her. “I think,” he says, “we should drink while we do this. I think if I drink I’ll do better on this assignment.”

“And _I_ think,” Iris says, taking them away from him, “that drinking and then working only worked for your philosophy midterm, not trying to understand the science behind cellular regeneration.”

“I totally aced that midterm.”

“You were hung over.”

“Tequila or not tequila?” Barry says in a mock-serious voice. “That…could have been the question. I don’t remember.

Iris laughs, shaking her head, and Barry nudges her. “I missed you, you know. I feel like we haven’t done this in weeks.”

“What, listened to me ramble on about science? Because I’m rereading Martina Stein’s book on time travel, and since you keep showing up at me lab to distract me…”

Barry laughs shortly and rubs the back of his neck. “No, I mean just hang out like this. I kind of thought you were avoiding me because of the whole Patty thing.”

“No, Barry-”

“ _Get on the ground, now_!”

Barry instinctively grabs Iris and pulls her behind him as a group of masked men burst out of the crowd and start firing shots in the air. Everyone starts screaming in horror as they spread out, backing everyone against the wall.

“How considerate!” one of them growls. “You’re all wearing your finest jewellery! Almost like you knew we were coming to rob you!”

Barry isn’t wearing anything but a watch but Iris has to give up her earrings and necklace before they’re both shoved back into the crowd, gripping each other’s hands. Iris looks up at him. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. What are you doing?”

“Calling the police, I-”

One of them spots them and marches forward, gun raised. “ _No talking_!” The crowd screams and pushes back, and Barry loses grip of Iris’ hand just as a security guard bursts out and points a gun at the group of men.

“Freeze!” he shouts, shakily pointing his gun at all of them. By the time he’s turned around, he can’t see Iris anywhere. Then the group raise their guns as one, and everyone gasps as they all shoot the man together.

And that’s when a flash of green and gold blinks into the room, and the security guard disappears. Barry gasps in shock along with the rest of the crowd as the men run out of the room. Seconds later, they hear the screech of car tyres as the men escape. Everyone explodes into noise and panic, and Barry looks around frantically. “Iris? Iris, where are you?”

But she isn’t anywhere. He runs outside, his heart beating with a panic that’s all too familiar after her coma, and then sees Iris lying on the floor outside of the building. “ _Iris_!” He runs to her side, tapping her face lightly and is about to call an ambulance when her eyes fly open behind her glasses. “Barry – what?”

“I turned around and you were gone,” he says, pulling her into a standing position and helping her dust herself off. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I followed them to get the plates, but I got this headache and then I fainted, I guess.” She rubs at her eyes tiredly. They walk back to the conference room to see that the police have already arrived – Patty and his mother are already there interviewing people. Nora frowns when she sees the two of them. “What happened to you two?”

“Iris fainted,” Barry answers. “She was wanted to get the plates.” Patty frowns.

“Are you okay, Iris? You want me to get you a paramedic?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she says tightly. She looks at Nora, who raises an eyebrow.

“What did I tell you about taking it easy? Are you trying to get yourself hurt?”

“Mom, chill,” Barry says tiredly, but Iris shakes her head.

“No, she’s right. I keep getting headaches like this – I think I should go see Colin and Dr Wells, maybe it’s something to do with the coma.”

“Do you need me to take you?” Nora asks. “Or Barry?”

“No, I’m good. Besides, you’re busy here and Barry has work.”

“You sure?” he asks, and Iris smiles brightly.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll see you later, okay?”

***

“So, your mom’s pretty protective of Iris,” Patty says, when she and Barry are taking a walk later that night, their arms linked. He laughs.

“You noticed that?”

“Well, I mean, you both are, but Nora’s like a lioness protecting her cub.”

Barry laughs again and doesn’t answer for a while. He doesn’t tell many people this story – thinking about it, actually, Iris is the only person still in his life outside of his mother who knows – but he and Patty are a thing now, and they’ve said ‘I love you’ and he’s met her parents. Granted, he hasn’t worked up the courage to tell her mother about them, but he likes spending time with her and talking to her. It’s easy and uncomplicated. So he takes a deep breath. “It’s, um, probably to do with…with my sister.”

As he expects, Patty stops and looks at him. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

He looks at the ground briefly. “I don’t. When I was five my mom was pregnant, and the baby was stillborn. The doctors took it away before my parents could see it, but my mom was…” He sighs. “Well, you know. And after that my parents couldn’t really get past it – I guess they couldn’t find anyone to blame, so they blamed each other – and my dad left. So when Iris came to live with us, I guess she was happy she got to raise a daughter, even if it wasn’t hers.”

“Barry…” Patty says softly, squeezing his hand. He shrugs.

“It’s…Well, it is what it is, I guess. It was a long time ago and I don’t really remember it. But mom has always loved Iris, even from the time we became best friends. And with everything that happened when she was a kid, she’s always going to be protective of her in a different way than she is protective of me.”

“Wow,” she breathes. “But…I mean, you don’t see Iris as a sister.”

Barry shakes his head. “No way,” he says forcefully. “Iris is my best friend, not my sister. And I wouldn’t mention that to her.”

“But she adores you guys.”

“Yeah, now. But you’ve gotta understand, when she first came to live with us, it was because nobody believed that her mother was innocent, and she hated everyone for it. And my mom was the one who arrested hers, so that just made it worse. I mean, they love each other now, but she told me a few years ago that even though she sees my mom as _a_ mom, she doesn’t like it when people think that I’m her brother because it’s just another way for people to forget her real mom, because that implies that we adopted her. I remember when the social worker suggested it and that’s one of the only times I’ve ever seen her lose her temper.”

“Oh,” Patty says quietly. “And are you…Are you sure that’s the only reason she doesn’t like people calling you her brother?”

Barry slurps his drink. “Sure. What other reason would there be?”

Patty smiles and shrugs. “Nothing. It’s just that it has to be hard for her, that’s all. I’m surprised she told you that much.”

“We tell each other everything.”

They’ve stopped in front of his house and they both sigh, knowing the routine they’ve worked themselves into over the past three months. They kiss, slow and steady, and then Patty walks off and Barry goes inside to see his mother working on a case. He notices that he’s left his jacket in Patty’s car, and makes a note to get it later. “Hey, honey,” she says as he walks in. “How was dinner with your friends?”

“It was fine,” he shrugged. “Tyler still eats like he’s never seen food before, but whatever. What are you working on?”

“That robbery at Simone Stagg’s speech today,” she answers. “Apparently, someone has it out for her, since she’s been threatened at home and at her office. We’re trying to get her to accept some form of police protection, but she’s proving to be more than a little stubborn.”

“That sucks. What about the witnesses? Did they see anything?”

“All they’re talking about is the golden blur,” she answers.

“ _Blink_ ,” he stresses. “Am I the only one who watches the news?”

“Barry, you know full well that the only reason you’re watching the news is because your grades depend on it,” his mother laughs. “And you sound like Iris.”

“Those are both true,” he admits, grinning. “But that might be because Iris could be right.”

***

Even when Barry and Iris are mad at each other, they’re never _really_ mad.

Like when Iris was angry that Barry had spilled coffee on one of the first scientific journals she’d gotten with her own money, she was only angry for a few hours before they forgave each other. It was an accident, Barry seemed guilty, and he did buy her another one. Or there was the time when Iris put his running shoes in the washing machine because she wasn’t sure how else to wash them and they shrunk. He was mad, sure, but that did give him an excuse to get his mother to buy more. Iris was sorry. Whenever the both of them have arguments, knowing that the other is deeply sorry is usually enough to work off the guilt. This is why Barry wasn’t so mad when Iris forgot that she was supposed to meet him to discuss a new topic for his article – he knows she’s sorry.

What he doesn’t know, however, it’s what’s going on with her.

Iris has never been a very good liar, and he’s generally able to figure out what’s up with her. But this is different – ever since the coma, there have been times when he swears she’s thinking hard about something, but she always brushes it off when he asks. Plus there is the fact that she’s never late for anything they want to do, and she doesn’t ever forget. It’s like an unspoken rule they have with each other – they never let each other down. Until now.

Barry sighs and keeps wiping the table before they’re supposed to lock up. Whatever it was, he’ll figure it out eventually. Or maybe Iris will just give in and tell him. Then Tyler nudges him and points at the screen. “Dude, look!”

Barry looks and his mouth drops open. Stagg Industries, according to CCPN’s Scott Evans, has been attacked again, but was saved by the mysterious golden blur that everyone keeps talking about. Patty is onscreen because she saved Simone Stagg herself – the headline ‘Cop hero saves CEO’ is running underneath Patty as she talks to Scott – but everyone is talking about Blink. Barry glances at his laptop on the far side of the counter and smiles, before taking out his phone and setting up a Google Alert for ‘Blink’. Maybe he doesn’t need to write about Stagg Industries after all.

“You think it’s real?” Tyler says, looking up at the screen.

“Well, if it is real, I sure as hell didn’t see it,” a voice from behind him says, and he turns to see Patty stride into the room and kiss him lightly. “Hey, Tyler. You heading out?”

“Yup,” he grins. “Got a date with Linda.”

Barry rolls his eyes. “Dude. Totally surprised she hasn’t dumped you yet.”

“Whatever, Allen,” he laughs, slapping him a high five after he’s thrown his apron under the counter. “See you later.”

“So, what happened there today?” Barry asks. “Mom said something’s going after Simone Stagg, and it was the same group of people who attacked us at the university this morning.”

“Exactly what you said. Plus, Ms Stagg still isn’t accepting police protection, which is making it hard to make sure she isn’t killed with a murderer still on the loose. Did Iris tell you about the evidence we found?”

“Surprisingly, no,” he replies. “She said ‘I’m not at liberty to discuss an ongoing investigation with you’, which has never stopped her before.”

Patty shrugs. “Maybe she gets that we’re not supposed to discuss police business with _civilians_.”

“Ha-ha,” he says, and is just about to kiss her when he hears the door open. He turns, thinking it’s Tyler, but it’s Iris, looking apologetic. “Hey,” she says quietly. Patty looks between them.

“I should get back,” she says. “Singh wants all hands on deck with this.” She pulls him in for another kiss – which Barry notes is longer than usual – before wishing them both goodbye and striding out. Iris takes her hands out of her pockets.

“Listen, Barry,” she says carefully, rubbing her head. “Look, I know I’ve been really weird lately – Well, weirder, I’m always weird. Not like, the time I started CSI school and all I could talk about was blood weird, that was a different kind of-”

“Iris.”

She blinks at him and then laughs, adjusting her glasses. “Sorry. I’ve just been bad at getting back into the rhythm of things since the coma, and it’s been kind of hard. But what comes most natural is being your best friend, so I’m here to help you with whatever you want.”

Barry folds his arms and grins at her. “Anyone ever told you that you’re awesome at apologising?”

Iris makes a face at him and he laughs. “You want some food?”

After Iris polishes off two Panini’s and a blueberry muffin – and for some reason she still wants more – Barry looks at her. “Hungry?”

“Um. Stress eating,” she said, wiping her mouth. “So, your article? Because I was thinking you could write about Tony McGhee and-”

“Actually,” he interrupted, “I have an idea for one already. You know the thing saving everyone? Blink? Well, I was looking into it last week, and this week it’s done even more stuff.”

Iris lets out a laugh. “I thought I was the one who liked science fiction writing.”

“Iris, it’s _everywhere_. At a building fire, at a bank heist – even that thing that saved the security guard at the university. He said he was teleported out of the room by a golden blur.”

“Teleportation?”

“Teleportation.”

Iris gives him a sceptical look. “Barry, I don’t know…This all seems kind of conspiracy theory-ist.”

“Iris, for as long as I’ve known you you’ve always believed in the impossible. What if you were right about the night that your dad died?”

“Well, I’ve been one to-” She breaks off, looking at her phone, and swears. “God. Look, Barry, I have to go, but you wanna hang at yours out tonight? I can make mac and cheese.”

He grins and pokes her. “I’m never going to say no to mac and cheese.”

It’s another best friend thing that they have, mac and cheese, because the only person who knows how to make it the way he likes is Iris – she puts black pepper in it to enhance the flavour. He tried to make it himself once but he ended up choking, so now he just lets Iris make it. Later he and Iris are in the kitchen, and she’s making dinner in her bare feet and yoga pants and one of his old jerseys that she stole from him years ago with her hair wrapped up in a scarf, and even though Iris got out of the coma weeks ago Barry finally feels like his life is back together. His mother is working late, so tonight they can do one of the things that they’ve always done – watch movies and talk all night.

“So guess what I did after you left?” Barry says, getting the pasta out of the pantry. Iris looks up from mixing all the cheese.

“What?”

“I started a blog.”

“Welcome to 2002 – _ow_. Why are you always poking me?”

“Because I can.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s your blog about?”

Barry grins at her. “Blink.”

Iris raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Right.”

“Listen, ye of little faith,” he says, pointing at her, “I happen to be very good at this blogging thing. I’ve already got several hundred hits, and its only been a few hours.”

Barry is surprised by how much this excites him – he wrote about watching someone get saved by the mysterious Blink as soon as Iris left to go do whatever it is she does these days, and sent the blog post out. Within minutes, he got comments confirming not only what he saw earlier in the day, but reports of Blink everywhere else, all over the city. He thinks that this will certainly make all his boring journalism classes seem more fun. But he knows he’s not just doing it for himself.

“Really?”

“Really. In fact, I think I’m going to see if I can find more of this stuff – I keep getting all these messages about more people like this.”

Iris scrunches her mouth to the side in the way that she does when she’s about to say something she knows Barry won’t like. “And you’re sure it’s not going to bring the crazies to your door?”

Barry shrugs. “Eh, my mom, my girlfriend, and my best friend are cops. I can hide behind them if I need to. I’m the pretty girl in the movie, right?”

“Right,” she laughs quietly. “So, um, what does Patty think? About your blog.”

Barry shrugs again. “I haven’t told her yet.” He doesn’t exactly know why. Of course Patty is the kind of person who would be supportive, but he’s not sure if she would take it seriously. “Hey, Iris?”

“Yup?”

“You like Patty, right?” Barry watches for her reaction. Somehow, what has become more important to him than his mother knowing is Iris liking Patty. Because if Iris doesn’t like Patty, he’s not sure he can have such a serious relationship. His entire life, Iris has been there to support him in everything. He hasn’t asked whether or not Patty likes Iris. Everyone likes Iris – she’s the personification of sunshine.

“Of course I like Patty,” she says slowly. “Patty’s nice. Plus, there’s the whole ‘helping to save my life after I got struck by lightning’ thing, so it’s not like I can ever _not_ like her.”

“Right – how was your thing with Dr Wells? Did she explain why you’re getting headaches?”

“Oh, she said something about the lightning doing weird things to my metabolism,” she says. “Like, I need more water because I get dehydrated easier, and I need more food to keep my energy up. But other than that, nothing special.”

“Good. I’m glad it’s not anything more serious,” he replies. He rubs the back of his beck. “I just, um, you know. I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you.”

“I do,” she replies. “Eat subpar mac and cheese and then cry yourself to sleep.”

“I would not.”

“Would too. Cry over your burnt mac and cheese,” she teases. Barry raises an eyebrow at her.

“Are those fighting words?”

She pushes her glasses up her nose, the bowl still in her hands, and looks at him walking towards her. She puts the bowl down. “No, what – Shit. Barry, I was kidding. I was _kidding_ , Barry, _stop_!”

Barry’s tickling her, which only works because she’s still so much smaller than he is, so she’s crying behind her glasses and can’t fight him off. “Take it back.”

“Asshole!” she squeals breathlessly, but she’s still laughing as he picks her up and tickles her more. “You’re an _asshole_!”

 “Do you take it back?”

“God, _fine_! Just put me _down_.”

Barry grins and does as she asks, and she goes back to mixing the cheese, for some reason unable to look at him. She’s still a little breathless, but before Barry can ask her whether she’s okay the doorbell rings.

“I’ll get it,” she says quickly, still not looking at him. “Will you watch the stove?”

“You don’t think I’ll burn it?”

“It’s boiling water and salt, Barry. You’ll be fine.”

She walks off to answer the door and he peers at the boiling water. “I don’t know, Iris, this looks pretty hard, I hope I don’t set fire to the kitchen.”

“Um. Barry.”

He looks up. “Oh, hey mom. I thought you were working late.”

And then his mother steps aside and he sees Patty, holding the jacket that she left in his car a few days ago.

 _Oh, crap_.

“Iris,” Nora says calmly.

“I’m going,” she says in a high voice. She turns off the stove, mouths a ‘good luck’ at Barry, and speeds out of the door. Barry turns to his mother. “Uh…”

“I was wondering when you two were going to tell me.”

Both of them stare at her. “You knew?”

Nora laughs. “I’m a detective, Barry, and I’m also your mother. I’ve known since the beginning. You know you’re both terrible liars, right?”

“Great,” Patty smiles. “So you’re not mad.”

“I’m mad,” Nora disagrees in the same calm voice. “If it weren’t for the fact that I’m in a very good mood we’d be having a very different conversation.”

Patty laughs nervously and then stops at the look on Nora’s face. “O-Okay. So, I’m just gonna leave this here,” she says, putting the jacket on the kitchen table, “and I’ll, um, see you tomorrow. Nora,” she adds quickly. “I’ll see _you_ tomorrow, Nora. Uh, Detective Allen. Ma’am. Your… Highness. Okay, bye.”

Nora turns back to Barry as she leaves and he smiles apologetically. “Sorry.”

“Barry,” she says, rubbing her face. “This is going to get complicated. You know I don’t like complicated.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to go this long without telling you, I just…didn’t know the right way to to it.”

Nora sighs and smiles at him. “Do you like her?”

Barry grins. “Yeah.”

“Then I will try my damndest not to shoot her.”

***

“She’s still ignoring you, isn’t she?” Iris says a few days later. Barry looks over at the coffee his mother rejected sitting on Iris’ desk.

“She’s being unreasonable.”

“She’s being pretty reasonable.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side.”

Iris laughs, sipping the Americano he got her. “Barry, your mom is still pissed at me for not telling her. You’re lucky I’m even talking to you.”

Nora said she was okay with Barry dating Patty. But he remembers that she’d also said she was okay with him applying to join the police academy and he remembers weeks of the silent treatment and Iris trying to make awkward conversation until he withdrew his application. And the same thing is happening now, a few days after Nora found Patty at the door with his jacket.

Barry has been at CCPD since Iris let him in, coming in on his day off to nail all her shelves to the floor like he’s been threatening to do since she got out of the coma. He looks up at her from where he’s kneeling on the floor, worried. “How long do you think she’s going to to keep up the cold front?”

“You remember that time we drank all her whisky at Thanksgiving and never told her? Multiply that by, like, a hundred.”

“I think that was more because we threw up all over Great-Uncle Rudy, not because we never told her.”

Iris snorted. “It was _his_ idea to drink the whisky in the first place.”

He’s silent for a while, hammering and drilling, before he says, “You think she’ll be okay with it eventually?”

“I…Do you like her? Is she important to you?” she asks quietly. Barry nods earnestly.

“Yeah. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t want to screw it up.”

“Well, then your mom will understand eventually. Just, um, you remember how to make chicken alfredo baked ziti?”

“You mean her favourite meal?”

“Make that. A lot. Like, the next four Sundays.”

Barry exhales and grins at her. “You know, I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“Good thing you don’t have to learn, then.” He hammers some more and she rolls her eyes. “You know I can’t work with all that noise, right?”

“And you won’t be able to work if these shelves fall on top of you,” he replies, gesturing at her with his power drill. “Because you’re so _wittle_. Besides, Captain Singh has been meaning to get someone in here to do this anyway, and I said I’d do it for free, so…”

“But it’s your day off,” she says. “You didn’t have to come in today.”

“Of course I had to. Your super adorable nerdiness might make everyone fall in love with you, but it’s not going to save you from a steel shelf that’s twice your size.”

“I can attest to that,” someone says, and Barry turns. Standing in the doorway is a tall, neatly-dressed blonde man smiling at them. Actually, he’s smiling at Iris, who’s gotten out of her computer chair. “Nerdiness can only go so far.”

They look at each other, grinning, and Barry smirks. Then the blonde seems to remember that Barry’s in the room and holds a hand out. “Uh, Freddie Smoak.”

“Barry Allen.”

“Iris West,” she says, and then laughs nervously, looking at the two of them. “But you both…I mean, you both already knew that. Freddie is-”

“The guy that you met in Star City. Computer guy, right? I’m sorry I missed you, Freddie.”

Iris frowns at him. “What do you mean?”

“Freddie came to visit you a couple of times,” Barry replies, still smirking. “I was working a lot so I couldn’t be there, but isn’t that nice, Iris?”

“Really nice,” she says. “Um, what are you doing here, Freddie?”

“I came to see you,” he shrugs. He looks up at the skylight. “Whoa…So the lightning came through here?”

Iris nods, still looking at Freddie, and Barry stifles a laugh. “So, Freddie, have you gone to see Chesca and Colin? I know they went to see you in Star City.”

“I have, actually,” he replies. “They showed me the Particle Accelerator. I mean, what was left of it, anyway. Actually, Barry, I read your blog – it’s awesome.”

Barry smiles, surprised. “Thanks, Freddie.”

“Yeah, I’m really interested in Blink, and who better to talk about it with than her number one fan?”

He laughs. “First of all, thank you for the compliment. And second of all, I guess I’ll put you down on the blog for ‘Blink is a she’.”

“There was doubt?”

“Well, given that no one’s actually seen her before – or him,” Iris adds quickly, adjusting her glasses. “Plus, you know. Lightning person in a golden blur?”

“Sounds like something out of Star Trek.”

“Star _Wars_.”

“You think Blink is more likely to come from a galaxy far, far away than a galaxy from the future?”

“I think lightsabers work better than whatever it is your aliens have.”

“Dork.”

“ _Nerd_.”

Barry grins at them both, an idea coming into his head. “Hey, Freddie, are you busy tonight?”

He shrugs. “Nope. I was just going to hang out with Iris, if she didn’t mind.”

“Well, that’s great!” Barry pulls a flyer out of his back pocket. “We’re having a quiz night at Jitters tonight – you should join us! I think Iris, Patty and I could use you on our team. You could win a year’s supply of free coffee.”

Freddie’s eyes widen and he grabs the flyer enthusiastically. “Free coffee? _Yum_. I mean,” he says, handing the flyer back with a blush creeping up his cheeks, “that sounds awesome. You know. Cool.”

Barry gives Iris a knowing look. “Great! It’s a date.”

“N-no, it’s not,” Iris says, turning to Freddie. “I mean, not if you don’t want-”

“It’s fine,” he says. “I mean, I want.”

“You do?”

Freddie smiles shyly at her. “Kind of. I mean, is that okay?”

Iris gives Freddie a a breathless smile and Barry resists the urge to take a picture of these two adorable nerds. “Yeah,” she replies. “Yeah, it’s great.”

“Awesome,” Barry says, packing up his toolbox and pulling on the shelves. “These are all done. Why don’t I go back to work, and you two can catch up?”

“I thought it was your day off?” Iris frowns.

“Nope,” Barry lies. “Nope, you must have misheard. See you guys tonight!”

***

“ _Why_ didn’t you tell me about Freddie?” Barry asks later.

Iris, sitting at the counter at Jitters as he wipes it in preparation for the quiz night, shrugs her shoulders. “I mean, there was nothing to tell. When I left Star City – and then got struck by lightning – I thought he was into someone else.”

“Well, he’s obviously forgotten who they are, because he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

“Barry, it’s not…” Iris sighs. “I mean, yeah, I like him, but I don’t think we’d work out.”

“Why not?” Barry wants to know. “He travelled hundreds of miles just to see you, he’s a pretty good-looking guy, and he obviously likes you for the wonderful, amazing person you are. I mean, I know he’s not an actual prince of an actual country, but anyone who adores you as much as he obviously does is a keeper, sunshine.”

Iris stares at him for a moment and then sighs, smiling, and he grins back at her. “Hey, Patty’s here.”

“What are we called again?” she asks as they sit down.

“E=MC Hammer,” Iris replies excitedly. “Because Einstein’s formula for kinetic energy is ‘E=MC2, and you know, ‘can’t touch this’!”

Barry and Patty both give her a confused look but then someone comes over and gives her a high five, saying “Awesome name!” and she grins at them triumphantly. “See?”

“Well, I’m glad to be here with you, Iris,” Patty says. “Seeing as my knowledge of geek culture tops out at who Darth Vader is.” She pauses. “It’s Anakin Skywalker, right?”

“Right,” Iris laughs.

“Thanks. And thanks for inviting me, I – _Whoa_! Who’s the hottie in the waistcoat?”

Everyone turns to see Freddie walk in and look around uncertainly, before he spots them and walks over, grinning. His hair is neatly-styled and he’s shaved since this morning. His eyebrows knit together as he sits down. “So, I totally overdressed for this.”

“No way, I’m sure Iris thinks you look great,” Barry says. “Right, iris?”

Iris smiles at him, pushing her glasses up her nose. “You do look great, Freddie.”

“Thanks. Hi, Freddie Smoak.”

“Patty Spivot,” she replies, shaking his hand. “You’re Iris’ friend from Star City?”

“Yep. Your city’s a lot cheerier than ours though, we never have quiz nights for free coffee.” He picks up the little placard that has their team name on it. “E=MC Hammer. That’s…That’s pretty funny.” He laughs and snorts before covering his mouth, and then Iris does the same thing, and pretty soon they’re just two adorable nerds laughing and snorting together. Patty grabs his arm. “My God, there’s two of them.”

“Right?” Barry grins. “This is gonna be awesome.”

They continue like that for the rest of the night, with Iris and Freddie answering most of the questions and having little nerd-outs. Later, when they’re going up to claim their prizes, Patty is still staring after them. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more adorable. How do they even exist?”

“I _knew_ they’d be perfect for each other,” Barry says triumphantly. “Look how happy she is.”

Patty studies him, an odd look on her face. “What?” he says.

“I just wasn’t expecting you to be like this about Freddie. Considering you and Iris…”

“Me and Iris what?”

“Well, it’s just that when I first got here I kind of thought you and Iris were a…thing.”

“What, are you kidding? Barry laughs. “No way, that’s…We’re best friends. That’s it. Besides, I’m not her type.”

He doesn’t notice that Patty is still frowning at him because Freddie and Iris are back to give them their prizes (even though it’s not like Iris needs them because Barry always gets her free coffee anyway). “One year’s supply of free coffee for all,” Freddie says as they sit down. “Enough to fit on the Enterprise.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “The Millennium Falcon would be a better fit – you think Spock would let that much caffeine on his spaceship?”

“ _The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few_ ,” Freddie quotes.

“I think he was talking about a radioactive chamber, not cappuccinos.”

Patty looks between them with a confused expression on her face, and Barry kisses her, laughing. “You look so sweet when you’re confused.”

Iris is looking at her phone, biting her cheek, and Freddie is looking at her. He wants to suggest that he and Patty leave so they can be alone, but then her phone beeps and she stands up, putting on her jacket. “Lena Snart’s been spotted down by the train station,” she says quickly. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“See you,” he says. Freddie clears his throat. “Hey, Iris, can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” she says, glancing at Barry. “If that’s okay with-”

“Of course it is,” he says. “You guys go – I’ll call you tonight, alright?”

Later, after they’ve left, Barry thinks about how much fun Iris had with Freddie. There is still a small part of him – that he mostly grew out of when they were teenagers – that kind of wishes he could share nerdy jokes with her like that. He’s always wondered why she hung out with him when she could be best friends with someone like her, but it wasn’t as if he was complaining.

Still, though.

***

Nora’s Cold Front, as Barry and Iris have always called it, continues for two more days until Barry finally snaps. He can’t have another dinner with his mother where he is the only one talking.

“Mom, this has to stop.” Nothing. “Mom, seriously, you always do this – I do something you don’t like, then you give me the silent treatment until I change my mind or give in. I may have done it with criminology and I may have done with with the police academy, but I am not back down with this!”

After about three seconds, his mother looks up from the pasta he made. “You know what happens when I’m at work? What I’m worrying about?”

“Uh…catching criminals?”

“Yeah. I’m worrying about catching criminals and putting them away, but I’m also worrying about keeping myself safe, because I have you and Iris relying on me. And that’s enough, because it’s damn hard keeping yourself safe when you’re a detective in this city. But now…now I have to worry about my partner not because she’s my partner, but because she’s your girlfriend. And I can’t work if I have to worry about the look on your face if I come home and something has happened to her.”

Barry sighs and smiles. “Mom, I’m a big boy. I can handle myself.”

“Barry, for nine months I watched you dealing with Iris in a coma. You were devastated, and she’s just your best friend. What happens when your girlfriend is hurt? How I am supposed to deal with that look on your face?”

He understands why his mother is comparing them, but they’re not the same. Iris is their family – being without her was like going around with some fundamental part of themselves missing. But he doesn’t say that. “Mom, you remember when we had to stand up in school and tell everyone who we wanted to be like when we grew up? And I pocked you?”

Nora laughs. “Of course I remember. You stole my police badge and I grounded you for a week.”

“Well, I kind of deserved it. But there’s a reason I picked you. As long as I can remember, you’ve been my hero. Like a superhero, better than Superwoman, better than Batgirl, better than the Arrow. Because you helped me be who I am today. And who I am is a person who’s always going to look at you like the hero you are.”

Nora gives him a small smile, shaking her head. “This is why I can never ground you for long, you know.”

He laughs. “You also taught me to be pretty damn charming.”

Barry hasn’t seen Iris since the quiz night with Freddie, and he hopes it’s because they’re off doing things together, but he’s glad because he gets to work on his blog. He already has over a thousand hits and even his professor likes his articles (even though of course no one knows it’s him), all about the mysterious Blink.

_Blink saves twenty from bus crash_

_New triumph for Blink against Captain Cold_

_Golden blur ‘Blink’ stops train collision_

It helps that he has time to investigate this stuff, given that he only has his job and one journalism elective. People send him reports and he puts them together in an article, and every event gets him more hits. He’s even got an alert system to let Blink know when there are things going around in the city. From what he can tell, Blink’s powers include teleportation and telepathy, as well as the ability to move things telepathically (after hours of needling by text, Iris tells him that it’s called psychokinesis). He hasn’t seen Blink in action – like everyone else, all he knows is that green sparks are in the air between Blink’s movements, and it moves in a golden blur – but he’s still waiting for the chance.

“Barry!”

Barry looks away from Patty playing darts at the bar they’re at to see Chesca and Colin walking in, and he smiles and waves them over. Iris is supposed to be here but she’s late, obviously, but at least he gets to hang out with them before she gets here.

“Chesca,” he grins. “What’s up? Glad you could make it.”

“Please, I’m just glad to get away from the grumpy one over there.”

“I heard that,” Colin frowns. To his credit, he looks less like a high school principal but Barry notices, like always, that he’s still wearing the golden wedding band that Chesca told him he picked out with Ronnie around his neck. “Nice to see you again, Barry.”

“Okay,” Chesca says, rolling her eyes, “let’s get you drunk. Oh, is that Patty? Look, Colin, it’s Patty.”

“This should be fun,” Colin says, and then his eyes widen. “Um. Let’s get me drunk.”

“Good idea.” Chesca grabs his arm and leads him off and Barry is frowning after them when someone taps him on the shoulder.

“Hey, sunshine,” he grins. “You’re here!”

“Sorry I’m late,” she says, after she’s ordered herself a rum and coke. “Work thing.”

“Really? I thought you’d be hanging out with Freddie.”

Iris pushes her glasses up her nose and knits her fingers together. “Actually, he went back to Star City last night. We decided to just say friends – and he really does like someone else.”

Barry frowns. Maybe he was wrong. “Oh. That…I mean, it’s his loss, he’s an idiot, but you’re good, right?”

Iris smiles at him, that sunshine smile, and nods as her drink arrives. “Yeah. Really good.”

“Because Star City’s not that far, I can go give him a piece of my mind if you want-”

Iris laughs. “I’m good, Barry. Really. So, Chesca got Colin out of STAR Labs. Kudos to her.”

“I mean, he’s still wearing a work sweater, but baby steps.”

“I’m really glad you invited them, Barry. It means a lot that you like them.”

“They saved your life, Iris. As far as I’m concerned, they’re practically family.” He raises his glass. “To friends, old and new.”

“Yo, West!” Chesca calls form across the room. “You think I came here just to eat chicken wings! Come over here so I can kick your ass at pool!”

“Pleasant, isn’t she?” Iris laughs. She punches him lightly in the shoulder. “Wish me luck.”

Barry orders another drink for himself and then one for Colin, who’s sitting watching Iris and Chesca play pool. “Dr Snow,” he says cheerfully, sitting down. “Good to see you not working.”

He laughs shortly. “Well, Chesca took my car keys and threatened to keep playing Rick Astley over the Cortex speakers unless I left. Besides, it’s good for me to get out for once. Helps with the…you know.”

He gestures to the ring vaguely. Barry swallows. “Um. So I didn’t know Ronnie. Obviously. But you saved my best friend’s life, and that’s not the same thing as a fiancé, I know, but I think she’d be proud that even with everything bad that happened with the explosion, you managed to save at least one person. And I’m glad it was my friend.”

Colin smiles. “Thanks, Barry. So, is that your girlfriend? The badass cop?”

“Yeah,” Barry answers, swinging around his chair to face Patty. “She’s pretty cool. You want to meet her?”

“That would be great-”

But then Barry’s phone goes off, beeping insistently with the tone he set for Blink. _Building explosion on tenth – job for Blink_? When he looks up, Patty’s looking at her phone too. “Honey, I’m sorry, I have to go-”

“No, it’s cool,” he says quickly, stuffing his wallet in his jeans. “Iris, we can catch up tomorrow, okay?” Next to him, Colin is gesturing to the girls.

“Hey, you guys remember that thing we have to do? At the-”

“Right, the thing,” Chesca says quickly, looking at Iris. “Iris, why don’t you go get the…the thing?”

Barry will have to wait to ask Iris what she’s talking about – he’s hailing a taxi to get to Tenth Street as quickly as possible. The police are already there when he arrives – and he makes sure to avoid Patty because even though she says she likes his blog she’s never keen on him putting himself in danger – and he looks up to see that there’s a window cleaner hanging from scaffolding.

“Help!” he screams. “Help me!”

“Guard says there was someone in there,” one of the cops says. “Set off a bomb and then disappeared.”

One of the ropes snaps and everyone gasps collectively, before someone orders the fire department to get a ladder up there. The man screams again, louder. “Someone, _please_!”

The fire department are going as fast as they can, but there’s something in him that thinks this won’t be enough, and this man will die. _Come on, Blink…_

Another rope snaps the the man is hanging on by his fingertips.

And then she’s there.

And then she isn’t, and she appears again on the opposite building. She flashes between balconies between the two buildings, getting to the hanging window cleaner in a golden blur followed by green sparks. The final rope snaps and the platform falls, but not before she disappears and reappears with the cleaner on the ground, green sparks dancing in the air. They drop right in front of Barry, who’s mouth is hanging open in wonder. “Whoa…”

They’re in shadow but he can see that she’s making sure that he’s alright, and Barry can look at her. Her legs are bent so he can’t tell how tall she is, but she’s in a skin-tight golden suit with green trim along the neckline. He steps closer – he wants to see this hero properly, get a look at her face, and she looks up at him for a second and he thinks she smiles at him, and –

Barry stops and blinks repeatedly. Her eyes are glowing gold and the glare means that he can’t look at her face. Then she disappears, green sparks floating, and when Barry runs forward they fall on him, making his skin tingle. Barry touches them as they fall, a smile growing on his face.

His blog is about to get a lot better.

***

“She’s a girl.” Barry tells Iris the next day at work.

“Who’s a girl?” she asks absently, sipping her coffee.

“Blink, duh,” he replies. He puts down the tray, thinking of the blinding glow of Blink’s eyes the night before. “Plus, the reason people call her Blink? Not what you think.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “Barry, I can’t believe you’re still writing about this.”

He frowns. “Well, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Um, maybe because you could be writing about actual news,” she suggests. “Not mass hallucinations.”

“She’s not a mass hallucination,” he insists. “I saw her myself. She wears a gold costume and her eyes glow.”

“Barry-”

“I can’t believe you’re being like this,” he says sharply, cutting her off. “You’ve been talking about the impossible since we were kids, and now you think I’m crazy because, what, _you_ haven’t seen her?”

“It’s not – you haven’t even signed your name on, it, Barry,” she points out.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, how proud can you be if you’re not even telling people you’re writing it?”

He raises his eyebrows at her. “Oh, that’s the problem?” He pulls out his phone and opens up his blog, typing quickly. “See? ‘Blink and You’ll Miss It’, by Barry Allen.”

Iris exhales, looking at his phone, and Barry glares at her. “What’s with you? You’d rather I be miserable writing about robberies and shit like that rather than what I actually care about? Something that actually brings hope to this city?”

“Actually, I’d rather you keep yourself safe,” she replies, and her voice is a little sharper too. They glare at each other for a second, and then Barry looks at his watch. “Look, my break’s over, so I’ll see you later, alright?”

It’s his turn to lock up that night, so he misses his date with Patty as he’s cleaning up. But he’s thinking about Iris and whatever the fuck that coma did to her that she doesn’t believe in that kind of thing anymore. It’s one of the things he’s always loved about her, that she’s always believed in things when other people don’t, but now that’s changed. And even with this blog, he’s not sure he can fix it.

He’s not sure he can save her.

 _Barry Allen_.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” Barry snaps, jumping. He looks around, but there’s no one in the room. But he _swears_ he just heard a voice in his-

And that’s when he sees Blink standing by the door, in her gold and green costume and a black mask over her eyes, black hair spilling out of it. Her arms are folded and she’s standing with her legs apart, and even in the dim lighting he can tell she’s smiling.

 _You must be my number one fan_.

“You…You’re real,” he breathes, stepping closer to her. She steps away.

 _Real as can be_.

“Your voice, it’s – How is it my voice? It’s in my head and it’s not your voice, it’s mine.”

 _You’ve never heard me talk before. I’m talking to you through your mind, so your brain is just choosing the voice that it recognises the most_.

Barry just stares at her, marvelling at the fact that she’s real and standing in front of him. She tips her head. _You okay, Barry?_

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “Why are you here?”

_For you. We need to talk._

“Okay, I-”

Barry barely has time to talk before he’s on the roof, the night air kissing his skin and green sparks floating around him, and he can still feel the imprint of her hands, soft and warm, on his back. “Whoa…”

 _I need you to stop writing about me_.

Barry turns, looking for her, until he sees a shadowy figure standing on one of the beams behind him. “There are too many people who need someone like you right now. To know that you’re out there.” He walks towards her, slow as he dares. “Where are you from?”

She blinks away from him in a blur of gold. _Can’t say._

“Who are you?”

 _I can’t tell you that, either_.

“How can you do what you do?”

She disappears and reappears on a balcony and he rolls his eyes. “You’re a terrible interview.”

She appears a little way away from him, her eyes glowing again so he can’t look directly at her. _There’s more to this than you know. Just trust me, please_. _I need you to stop_.

“I’ll stop if you will,” he shrugs. “Running into buildings, stopping train crashes…The people of this city love you.”

_You think I do this for the glory?_

“Well, why do you do it?”

She disappears but he can tell she’s reappeared behind him. If he turns, he could touch her. But he doesn’t want to ruin it, whatever they have between them, so he swallows and takes a deep breath.

“I’m trying to help someone,” he says slowly. Behind him, her soft breathing is the only sound she makes. “She…Her whole life she’s believed in the impossible, even when people made fun of her and called her crazy. Anyway, lately it seems like she’s lost her faith.”

Barry can’t see her, but he can feel her moving closer to him, can feel the heat emanating from the head of her suit. He clenches his fists and closes his eyes, steeling himself against the instinct to turn and _look_ at her.

And they’re breathing in sync now.

“But you – you’re proof that she isn’t crazy. So it doesn’t matter about me or what people think of my blog. I need you to help me.” He turns then, and she steps back into the shadows, her head bowed. “I need you to help me save my friend.”

She looks up at him then, her eyes glowing so much that he can’t look at her. _Whoever she is…Your friend is very lucky_.

Then she’s gone, and he’s still tingling from the sparks the minutes later.

***

“If you’re here for leftover mac and cheese,” Barry calls as he hears the door open later, “I ate it all.”

“Hm?” Iris comes to sit down next to him. “Oh, no. I came to talk.” She pauses, adjusting her glasses and fidgeting. She’s worried about something. “So, I had to help someone today, someone I didn’t really know but I thought I could save, but…he died.”

“Iris, I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“Yeah. I mean, like I said, I didn’t really know him, but it still hurts because I know what it’s like to lose someone who’s like – who’s like family.” She sighs. “Barry, please, I’m asking you to stop writing about this – it’s dangerous-”

“And I’m asking _you_ ,” he interrupts, “to tell me what’s going on with you. Why am I the only one of the two of us who cares about this?”

Iris rubs her eyes behind her glasses. “I guess with everything with my mom, I’m just over it.”

Barry just stares at her. “I don’t believe that. And besides, this may have started out like that, but this is about something more for me now. You get to help people everyday and now I get to do that too – why can’t you be more supportive of that?”

Iris clenches her jaw and takes off her glasses, turning them over in her hands. “I…Look, I have a lot of work this week, and I just – maybe we shouldn’t see each other in a while.”

Barry folds his arms and glares at his laptop. “Yeah. Fine.”

She puts her glasses back on and walks out, and even though he’d relished the silence before so he could work on his blog, he hates it now, because he and Iris are mad at each other and it’s _different_.

The silence is different when you no longer have your number one fan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, some stuff will be canon and other stuff will diverge - this was a very canon chapter. BUT even though I'm sticking to canon there'll still be some surprises! Hope you all liked it!


	5. Introducing Miss Miracle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Blink gets a new name and Barry's stumbles upon a mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so late! As I said, I've been really busy. So some of you might not have heard me say this, but I'm also on tumblr as minute42, so if you want to talk about this fic or whatever feel free! One more thing - for the genderbent characters I imagine the following:  
> Helena Wells - Bridget Regan  
> Colin Snow - Matthew Daddario  
> Chesca Ramon - Gina Rodriguez  
> I'll tell you if/when there are any more, but of course you're free to imagine who you want. I hope you like this chapter!

When Barry and Iris were thirteen, Iris went to science camp.

Iris had been excited about it for months and was talking about everything she was going to get to do there everyday until she went. That is, until they had a fight just before she left. Barry doesn’t remember what the fight was about and he’s certain Iris doesn’t either, but he does remember it was so bad that they didn’t get to say goodbye to each other properly before his mother drove her to school so she could get the bus to camp. The camp had a policy that they weren’t allowed to have phones and were only to call their families in emergencies or unless they were homesick. Iris didn’t call once.

At the beginning, Barry was fine, because he was still mad at her. But then he remembered how easy it was for her to break her glasses and how she’d been nervous that she wouldn’t make any new friends, and – and he was supposed to be getting his braces removed, and Iris had promised to be there after it happened and tell him how he looked, because he’d worn them since he was eleven and he was worried that his teeth would look _worse_ or something, and…What if it was that she didn’t need him anymore? She had always been so much smarter than him – maybe this fight had made her figure out that she didn’t need him anymore.

Barry got his braces off with his mother there, and then they had to go drive to the school to pick up Iris. Barry stood next to his mother nervously, watching all the kids come out of the bus and worrying that Iris was still mad at him for some stupid fight that he couldn’t even remember, and he didn’t know what he would do if she was.

He shouldn’t have worried though.

Because as soon as Iris walked off the bus, she ran straight towards him and hugged him. “Barry!” she said happily. “I like your teeth!”

Nora laughed and then Iris seemed to realise what she had said and she stepped away from him. “Um, sorry. But your teeth look nice.”

“Thanks. I…I missed you.”

She smiled at him, adjusting her glasses shyly. “I missed you too. You wanna go home and make mac and cheese?”

“Okay,” he replied eagerly, and he took her hand and led her to the car and they immediately started talking like nothing had ever happened, until Nora reminded them both that Iris didn’t get her bags from the bus. They weren’t paying attention, because it had been six weeks since they had spoken to each other and they had a _lot_ to catch up on.

Before the coma, that was the longest that they hadn’t spoken to each other.

It has been one week, and Barry is starting to feel like it’s the coma again.

But it’s worse, somehow, because he knows that she’s perfectly fine and they’re just mad at each other. They haven’t been mad at each other for years, and they usually could never go without talking to each other for more than a couple of days. But it’s been a week and neither of them are budging. Barry doesn’t want to stop writing about Blink, or any of the weird things happening in the city. He isn’t an idiot and he isn’t a child – if his mother can accept that he isn’t going to give up, then Iris should be able to as well. He has no idea why she’s being so stubborn about this.

“You’re late,” Barry says to the figure across the roof. Blink folds her arms, leaning back against the shadowed wall.

 _I had to read it first, Barry. You’re welcome, by the way_.

“For what?”

 _‘I don’t know who you are, or where you came from, but from all the people who need a hero, and from all of us who support you, I just wanna say thank you’_.

“You remember all that?”

 _Photographic memory_.

Barry stares at her figure, golden eyes glowing in the dark. “That’s amazing.”

_You need to stop writing your blog._

“People need to know that you’ll exist,” he counters. He ignores a call from Patty and shoves his phone back in his pocket. “What else can you do?”

 _This isn’t an interview_.

“You have to give me something! Like, favourite colour – green or gold? I’d assume gold, since the Arrow already has that covered.”

 _Believe it or not, she and I have already had that conversation_. _And you’re not hearing me, Barry_.

“My hearing is fine, it’s just selective. But is there anything else I can do for you?”

 _Quit calling me ‘Blink’_.

“Suggestions?”

Blink appears a few metres away from him. _You said you were doing this to bring hope to someone you care about. What if doing this put you in harm’s way?_

Barry sighed. Trust the superhero with the super memory to remember that – he knew it would come back to bite him in the ass. “Well, she and I aren’t exactly on the same page right now,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Besides, you’re giving hope to a lot of people, so I’m doing this for them.”

They both look up at the sound of sirens in the distance, and she puts one hand to her ear. _We’re not done talking about this_.

“Wait! Before you bli- _disappear_ , how about you get me down from here?”

Barry doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop being amazed at the teleporting thing. Even if it does make him a little queasy.

“Barry,” Patty says the next day at the precinct, shooing him off her desk. He gives her his best ‘cute boyfriend’ face.

“Come on, it’s just one quote.”

“A quote that could get me fired.”

“It’s not like I don’t have other leads, you know. I just need police confirmation that Blink saved a little girl from a Humvee spinning out of control down Fifth last night.”

It’s the entire reason he got up early to come to the precinct before work – he got lots of hits on his blog that Blink (and yeah, he’s starting to realise that it’s a terrible name that makes her sound like a cartoon character) was at a construction site the night before and saved a kid from the path of a joyrider.

“Hey,” a voice said, and Barry turns to see Iris, a blue folder in her hand. She avoids his eyes and hands it to Patty. “Barry. Um, Patty, here’s the forensics report from last night, I just need you to sign it. Inconclusive, so far, but Singh says I should see if I can find any matches in repeat offenders.”

“Wait, you were there?” Barry frowns.

“I was,” Patty answers. “Which you would know if you checked your messages last night.”

Barry swallows guiltily. “Sorry, I had to work late.”

“Right, well, she got away, but Iris is going to help me find her. Aren’t you, Iris?”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Iris flip her hair out of her eyes and smile tightly. “That’s the plan. I’m heading out today, see if we can get some prints from the scene. Although I’d be careful, according to what I analysed she must have some sort of incredibly heavy weapon made of titanium, or possibly steel, on her. If you see her again you might want to put out a warning.”

“A girl of steel,” Patty laughs. “That’s all we need, it – whoa, Iris, what happened to your head?”

Iris frowns, her hand going to her forehead, where there’s a Powerpuff Girls Band-Aid under her hair. “What? Oh, this? It’s nothing, I just, um, lost a fight. With a door,” she adds quickly. “Clumsy moment. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

Barry resists the urge to make a joke about Iris’ constant daydreaming, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking around the precinct. Patty narrows her eyes at him. “Well, that happens to all of us, right, Barry?”

“Uh-huh,” he mutters.

“Right,” Iris agrees, still not looking at him as she adjusts her glasses. Patty’s frown deepens.

“Anything going on with you two?”

“No,” they say at the same time, still avoiding looking at each other.

 “Everything’s fine,” Iris adds. She takes the file from her as Patty finishes signing it, glancing briefly at Barry before she leaves. “See you later.”

“Are you sure you guys are okay?” Patty asks, raising her eyebrows.

“It’s fine, everything’s fine,” he answers, shrugging. He leans in to kiss her. “I’ll call you tonight, alright?”

Somehow, discussing the fight between himself and Iris with other people feels weird. Nora never picks sides between them – ‘the last thing I ever wanted to do was pick fights with a teenager’ – so it’s no good talking to her. He sighs as he makes his way downtown before his shift at Jitters is due to start. Because unbeknownst to Iris and Patty and even his mother, Blink isn’t the only weird thing he writes about.

Even though his mother forbade him from joining the police academy to become a detective like her, that doesn’t mean that Barry doesn’t have the skills. Half of his teenage years were spent with Iris ‘investigating’ things that happened in their neighbourhood. There was the time he and Iris solved the Case of the Missing Tabby Cat, the Case of the Stolen Bumper Plates, and the Great Mystery of Central City’s Newspaper Thief (and Nora still talks about the fact that she almost grounded them both for life because they kept turning up at crime scenes with his notebook and her junior CSI kit). Now, though, his ‘cases’ are a little more serious.

Most of his reports are still about Blink, but now people are sending him things about other weird happenings that are going on in the city, and one of them is a woman who’s on fire but doesn’t seem to burn up. Apparently, she seems to reside around Central City Bridge, so Barry is heading over with his notebook to find out what’s what. And he’s perfectly aware that he’s not a superhero and if he gets a fireball thrown at him he’s not going to survive, so if he actually _sees_ this woman? Yeah, he’s running in the other fucking direction.

It’s not that hard to find, even though the smell makes him want to gag. In the corner by the dumpsters, he sees trash all over the floor as well as an old sleeping bag. On first look, it’s just like any kind of place where a homeless person would sleep, but then he sees the scorch marks all around the dumpster and on the bag. Barry takes a few pictures with his camera phone and makes some notes. It makes sense that whoever this woman is isn’t here right now – the only bridge louder and busier than this one is Central City Suspension on the other side of town. If she _is_ a metahuman, she probably doesn’t want to be bothered. Besides, he’s not one of those people who thinks that all metahumans are evil (unlike his girlfriend and some of the people at work, he’s really going to have to convince them of otherwise). To be fair, he thinks as he heads back to work, his prime example if a psychic superheroine in a golden costume who saves people from collapsing buildings and train collisions.

And looks pretty good in that costume.

***

“Yo, Barry! Where’s your girlfriend?”

Barry barely looks up from putting together the latest orders. “She’s at work, idiot.”

“No,” Tyler says. “I meant Iris. I haven’t seen her in a while. Did she finally get sick of you?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he shoots back. “And maybe she’s sick of your subpar coffee. Seriously, ever since you started dating that Linda girl you’re mixing up all the orders.”

“Well, if you could see what she could do with her legs then-”

“Tyler. Too much fucking information.”

“Whatever, prude. Anyway, your other girlfriend’s here.”

Barry looks up to see Patty walking in, frowning at her phone. “Hey,” he calls. He hands off the last of his orders and waves her over. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for your mom,” she replies, pocketing her phone. “Iris and I found the girl who stole the Humvee and I thought she’d want to know. But I just got a text from her and she told me that I’m taking point on this with Iris.”

Barry raises his eyebrows, grinning. “You sure you’re ready for that, detective?”

“Ready or not, I’m still trying to make your mom not hate me. This girl could be Superwoman herself; if it’ll impress your mom, I’m bringing her in.”

“Well, I admire your resolve. Iris and I have been trying to impress her for years, and I think the only thing that’s worked is the fact that we both managed to graduate.”

Patty laughs quietly. “Speaking of…I talked to Iris earlier. Are you you sure you guys are okay?”

Barry sighs. “Patty, I know you’re worried, it’s just – We had a fight, and I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Barry, I know, and I’m not trying to butt in,” she assures him. “But I’ve seen the two of your together and I know how much you care about her, so maybe try and meet her halfway, whatever it is?” She glances at her phone again and stands, kissing him briefly. “I have to get back to work, okay? Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Barry’s still thinking about it an about an hour later when Toni Woodward walks in.

The thing with Toni Woodward is that he can’t stand her; he never has and he never will. Also, he’s a little afraid of her. It doesn’t matter after you graduate from middle school and the last thing you hear about her is that she’s been carted off to juvie and you have to ignore the urge you have to hit a girl because your mother would skin you alive even if she makes your best friend’s life hell. And the fact that she’d had a crush on him while they were in middle school didn’t help.

But it matters now.

“Hi, Barry,” she drawls as she saunters up to him. She’s a little taller than Iris, with long dark hair and dark blue eyes. She has a nice body, objectively, but Barry has never been able to get over the fact that she has the personality of a Venus flytrap and Iris hates the sight of her. “Long time no see.”

“Toni,” he says tightly. She leans on the countertop and Barry snatches his hands away. “You want some coffee?”

“Actually, I came to talk to you.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I’m kind of busy, so-”

“Heard you were writing about Blink,” she cuts him off, folding her arms on the countertop. Barry forces the smile to stay on his face.

“That’s right.”

“You sure you’re writing about the right person?”

“You mean the hero who’s been saving Central City for the past month? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m writing about the right person,” Barry laughs. “Is there someone else more impressive?”

She shrugs lazily. “I think I’m much more impressive.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Definitely,” she leans over the counter and rakes her gaze over him. “Maybe you could come out to my place in west Keystone and I could show you.”

Barry swallows. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Toni, but thanks. I think I’ll stick to Blink.”

“Right. Any idea where to find your little superheroine girlfriend?”

“She’s not – I’ve met her a couple of times, that’s all.”

“I think she’d be a lot of fun to play with. Maybe I can show her just how impressive I am.”

Barry narrows his eyes. Toni’s tone is light, but there is a kind of feral hunger in her eyes that lets him know that maybe she’s not joking. And even though it’s ridiculous because he’s just a skinny white guy with a few boxing lessons under his belt, he suddenly realises he doesn’t want Toni anywhere near Blink. He’s about to say something to ward her off once and for all when Tyler catches his eye. “Barry,” he whispers, and flicks his eyes to the large TV screen on the wall.

Toni’s picture is on the screen along with a reward offering information for her capture and saying that she’s armed and dangerous. “Actually, why don’t I call my mom?” he suggests quickly, fishing out his phone. “Word on the street is that Blink works with the police pretty often, so-”

But Toni has already seen her face on the screen and she turns back to him, her blue eyes flashing. Without a word, she slaps the bottom of his hand so that his phone jumps out of it; she catches it with the other hand and, before Barry’s widening eyes, it morphs into metal and crushes the phone. Jaw set, she drops it in the tip jar with a little clatter. Barry frowns, though, because there is what looks like a mark from something hot encircling her wrist, like she’s been branded by something. Then she sighs, smirking at him, and pulls out a wad of cash and drops it next to his broken phone. “For the damage,” she shrugs. She tips his chin up with one of her fingers, her breath uncomfortably hot on his face. “See you around, Barry.” And she saunters out, not even caring that everyone is watching her.

Tyler walks straight over to him when Toni has left. “Hey, you okay? What did she want?”

“Nothing, she just wanted to impress me,” he shrugs, more calmly than he feels. “I’m gonna call my girlfriend, okay? Tell her Toni was here today.”

His co-worker nods. “Take a break, Barry. Get some coffee and chill for a few minutes, I’ll handle things here.”

Barry does what he says and makes sure to do everything that will convince Tyler that he’s fine, that he’s not hurt, and that he’s not freaked out by Toni. Tyler even insists on being the one to lock up even though he’s done it for the past week, and only relents when Barry tells him that Patty has already insisted on a detail for him (he can tell that she’s not happy with him because even she’s been telling him that his blog could put him in danger because he knows Blink but he doesn’t care, right now he’s just worried about keeping Blink away from Toni).

Barry taps his foot impatiently on the floor in the dim light of Jitters after everyone has gone home. He’s left a message for Blink on his blog and he needs her to turn up – yeah, she’s the superhero, but he doesn’t like the idea of Blink against crazy Toni and her steel handshake. For some reason, he feels the need to protect her.

He looks up when a flash of gold and green appears in the shadows across the room – he’s dimmed the lights to their lowest setting since an idiot can see she doesn’t want anyone to see her face – and she stands with her legs apart and her fists clenched. “Are you okay?”

“My mom’s a cop, I can handle – Wait, you’re talking. You’re talking and its not in my head.”

Blink waves a dismissive hand and takes a step towards him, which surprises him because she’s the one usually so obsessed with distance. When she speaks, it comes out low and warbly, like someone is shaking her voice box. “New toy, it’s a voice distorter. I figured you’d feel a little weird with me talking in your voice in your head. That’s not the point, Barry. Are you okay? Did she hurt you?”

Barry pauses at that – that worry in her voice than he can detect even through the distortion. It makes him feel something, that she’s so worried. That out of all the things she could be doing, she’s here because she’s worried about _him_. “I – I’m fine. I told you, I can handle myself.”

“Not with her.”

“I knew her when we were kids – she didn’t want to hurt me, she wanted to impress me. But she’s fixated on you, and not in a good way.”

“Where – do you know where she went?”

“She was bragging about a place in West Keystone, but I don’t know where it is.”

She flexes her fingers. “I do.”

“Wait!” Barry says as she turns to leave. “Her hand transformed into something…I don’t know, maybe it was iron? Or steel?” He pauses, looking at her. “She’s like you, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” she says tightly, and Barry can hear the frustration and tiredness in her voice. “And writing about me is what brought her to you.”

“I know, but maybe I could talk to-”

“ _No_ ,” she interrupts forcefully, and lightning crackles around her fingers. “She’s too dangerous.”

There’s a knock on the door behind him and he turns to see a patrol car with two officers from the precinct. “Damn, that’s my ride – Patty insisted on a detail. I have to-”

But the flash of gold, leaving green sparks dancing in the air, tells him that she’s already left him.

“…go.”

Even once he’s safely sequestered in his house, Barry can’t stop worrying about Blink. It’s ridiculous, he knows, because she’s the superhero and he’s the civilian with a blog, but it doesn’t matter, because she’s still smaller than he is and Toni can do that – that _thing_ with her hand and she’s supposed to be dangerous…

He rubs his face in frustration and tries to concentrate on his assignment from class. Well, actually, he’s got his blog open and is looking at the hits he’s gotten about the fire woman. He’s right, more people tend to see her at night, which is why he could only get pictures of where she was sleeping. He thinks about the brand on Toni’s wrist. It had to have been painful, something to leave such a deep mark, but she didn’t seem to care. Barry knows it’s permanent because even after her steel hand went back to normal, it was still there. He briefly wonders whether the fire woman did it, and then wishes that maybe she’d been a little more thorough – and then stops himself because of course that’s a horrible thought and he shouldn’t be thinking like that because Toni is a person and-

A crash from outside breaks him out of his thoughts. Justin and Troy, the two patrolmen assigned to protect him, are supposed to be sitting outside with the casserole that Barry brought them earlier (he’d lied and said that there was no mac and cheese because he never shares that with anyone), so maybe they’re finished? He gets up, yawning, to collect their dishes…and then his blood runs cold and he freezes because – because their car has been flipped upside down and he can’t _see_ them anywhere and –

“Hey, Barry,” a low voice draws behind him. When Barry turns, he sees that Toni is holding the mangled remains of the lock of their kitchen door that leads to the yard. She drops it on the floor. “You and I are going for a little ride.”

***

Toni doesn’t hurt him – yet, she promises – but she does give him a nasty bruise when she’s dragging him across town to Central City’s old Water Tower in a Humvee that she must have stolen (again). That’s when he realises that maybe he’s in more danger than he cares to admit.

“What do you want with me, Toni?” he asks for the millionth time. She’s dumped him on the roof of the tower and is looking out over the night, the wind chilling their skin. No one has been up here since it was shut down months ago – there are just some old poles and bricks under some tarpaulin, and a sign saying that the building’s going to be condemned soon. “And what we you doing up here?”

“I like the view,” she shrugs. “Makes me feel like the _queen_ of this fucking city.” She yells that last part and spins around to look at him, grinning.” And I wanted to be up here when I told you what I did.”

 “What’s that?”

Barry tries to keep his eyes on her face as he inches forward. He’s spotted a fire alarm and wants to find a way to pull it so at least someone knows where he is. “I killed Blink.”

Barry’s heart drops out of his body and his hands start to shake. “ _No_ …” he chokes out.

“Yep. I had one job to do and let me tell you, I had a damn good time squashing her like the little bug that she is.”

“Your job?” he demands. “Your job was to kill her?”

But she ignores him, instead smirking at the lost look on his face. “And I need you to write about me for your blog.”

“W-Why me?” he asks nervously. “You’re…you know, _you_. You could have anyone write about you.”

Toni tips her head at him, studying him, and walks up to him before running her fingers across his cheek. “Because I like you, Barry. I always have. But you always had that Iris girl stuck to you like the plague.”

He resists the urge to hit and and forces a smile on his face. Slowly, he lifts up a hand to stroke her hair. “Well, why didn’t you say so, Toni?”

Then, just as the smirk widens, he shoves her to the floor and races towards the fire alarm, managing to pull it before she grabs him and throws him on the ground. She rips it out of the wall, cutting off the ringing sound, and whips around to snarl at him, crushing it in her hand. “You try anything like that again, and I’m gonna leave more than a bruise, understand?”

She looms over him, her lips pulled back in a snarl, before a flash of gold behind her distracts them both. Barry grins when he recognises Blink, her hair pulled back and her mask covering even more of her face. “Touch him one more time,” she says in a voice so calm that it chills him, “and I will give you a whole new definition of pain.”

“You just won’t stay dead, you little bitch,” she snaps at her, turning away from Barry. “I don’t know why you bothered coming back, I’m just gonna kick your ass again.”

“You’re gonna have to catch me first, Woodward.”

 Blink stands there, arms folded, as Toni charges towards her – and then her eyes do the glowing thing and they both squint, and suddenly she’s grabbed him and has rested him against the far wall. “Wait here,” she says quietly, one hand on his heart and the other on his shoulder.

Barry blinks – his vision is still blurry from her eyes so he can’t see – and gives her a breathless smile. “’Kay.”

Toni has gotten up and is cursing at both of them. Barry watches, awestruck, as Toni grabs a pole and swings it at Blink, but she twists out of her way. “Is this what you ended up doing with your life, Woodward?” she wants to know as she flits in and out of existence. “Still ended up being a bully?”

“I’m still more powerful than you!”

“And that’s all you’ll ever be,” she calls back. Toni is swinging the pole at her but she keeps twisting away from him. “Nothing but a-“

“No!”

Barry doesn’t know – maybe she’s tired from all the _blinking_ – but Toni grabs two poles and manages to hit her in quick succession and she collapses, gasping, on the floor. He makes to crawl towards her but Toni grabs him and drags him to the side of the building. “Sorry, Barry, but I’ve got a job to do and I can’t have you getting in the way.” Barry feels his oxygen being cut off as she hefts him up by his neck and dangles him over the edge. Across the roof, Blink stirs, shaking her head. “Say goodbye to your boyfriend, honey.”

And she drops him.

“ _No_!”

As ways to die go, being thrown off a water tower isn’t very high on Barry’s list. He’s in too much shock closes his eyes against the roaring wind, thinking of Patty and his mother and Iris, because then at least if he’s thinking of them then it won’t hurt so much…

After a while, though, he notices that someone has their arms looped around his chest.

He’s still feeling the wind rush around his face, but he’s now longer falling. Also, he’s not a mess of broken bones on the floor.

“Barry,” a warbled voice says. “Barry, are you okay?”

He opens his eyes. “Fuck. _Fuck_. You’re flying.”

“I – What?”

“You’re _flying_!” he laughs, and it’s true, her arms are around his neck from behind and her legs are around his waist and she’s saved his life because _she’s flying_. Central City is spread out beneath them like a twinkling map, with the river snaking through the buildings and glinting like diamonds. The wind is rushing through both of their hair and making his eyes water but that doesn’t matter – _they’re flying_. Blink lets out a little laugh. “I – I guess I am.”

Okay. Okay, maybe he feels a little nauseous when Blink twists into a steep nosedive and places him gently on the floor, steadying him when he sways. He braces his hands on his knees. “You ever done that before?”

“Never,” she replies. “I – Barry, _hide_.”

But apparently she doesn’t think he can do it himself, because she teleports him behind a nearby car.

“Come on, Blink!” he hears Toni call she’s on the ground now and is walking towards Blink, that sneer twisting her face. “Come out so we can see who the real queen of this city is!”

Blink puts a hand to her ear, before glancing back at Barry crouched beside the car. And then she disappears. He’s frantic for a moment because she wouldn’t just leave him here to die, would she? But Toni is looking around as well and he’s scared that she’s going to attack him or, you know, throw him off a roof again and he’s trying to figure out a way to escape when he sees it.

She’s flying – no, she’s _rocketing_ towards the ground with her fists outstretched, and even though Toni has turned her entire face to steel, she’s swept down in an arc and punched her straight in the face. The force of the punch knocks them both sideways, Blink collapsing into the ground and Toni rolling on her side.

“Shit,” she mutters, clutching her jaw. “You _bitch_!”

Blink murmurs but doesn’t get up, and as soon as Barry sees Toni getting to her feet he starts to move. She staggers towards Blink and is almost on her when Barry remembers every boxing lesson his mother has ever forced him to go to and gets her with a right cross that sends pain shooting up his arm.

And this time, Toni stays down.

“I can’t believe I can fly,” Blink says. “Also, _ow_.”

“I can’t believe I hit a girl,” Barry groans, clutching his hand. “My mom’s gonna kill me.”

***

His mother doesn’t kill him for hitting a girl, but that doesn’t mean she’s impressed by the fact that she’s gotten a call that her grown son was dropped off at the hospital by a superhero in a golden costume. “Are you okay?” she asks, stroking his hair. Patty has left his hospital room, promising that she’ll see him tomorrow, and it’s just them on his bed. He shrugs.

“I’m fine, mom. It’s just bruised, right? And look.” He raises his hands. “I can still wiggle my fingers.”

“That’s what the doctor said,” she replies. “But I meant you, Barry. That must have been…well, I’ve seen this Toni Woodward in action. You said that Blink saved you?”

Barry smiles. “Actually, I kind of think we saved each other.”

His mother raises her eyebrows. “Well, how about that? My son, the hero.”

“That’s right,” he grins. Nora nods and then slaps the back of his head. “What was that for?”

“Worrying me,” she replies shortly, pulling him into a hug. “But since you’re the one with the hand in a bandage, you get whatever you want for dinner for the next week. And as soon as I get back from talking to the doctor we can talk about it.” She kisses him lightly on the forehead. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

His mother leaves and he pulls his laptop out of the bag she brought with him, his fingers flying over the keys as he opens up a new blog post. He’s so engrossed that he doesn’t look up when the door opens again. “Hey, how about that chicken picante thing you made last week? That was…Oh. Hey.”

Iris shuts the door quietly behind her, pushes her glasses up her nose and looks at him shyly, her eyes big and worried. She has a bag in her hand behind her back, but he can’t see what’s in it. “Hey. I hope it’s okay that I’m here – Nora called and told me what happened. How’s your hand?”

He smiles ruefully at her. “Well, I didn’t break my thumb this time.”

“Only took you…what, seventeen years to learn?”

They smiled at each other and both open their mouths to speak.

“I’m sorry I said-” Barry begins.

“I shouldn’t have-” Iris says, and then they roll their eyes and laugh.

“I missed you,” he says simply.

“Yeah, I missed you too,” she replies. She ventures forward and then stops, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes and Barry swallows because that usually means she’s been crying. She puts them back on. “Your mom called me and she told me that Toni took you and I was so worried, and-” She pauses, swallowing and looking at the ground, before looking back up at him. “I just – I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”

“Well, I’ve got my own personal guardian angel, so I’m good,” he replies. He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “So… you wanna hang out and catch up?”

“Sure,” she says, coming to sit next to him. He smiles at the way her face lights up because he’s fairly certain he’s got the same expression on his – it’s always like this when they make up after fighting. She dumps the bag she’s carrying between them, before kicking off her shoes and sitting cross-legged on the hospital bed. “Big Belly Burger. I know how much you hate hospitals.”

“God, I love you,” he says, diving in for the fries, so he doesn’t catch the expression on her face. “What’s going on with you, sunshine?”

“Nothing much – Wait, actually, there is. Chesca and I joined a kickboxing class – the one at your gym?”

“That’s pretty cool. Finally learned that yoga isn’t real exercise?”

“You’re just jealous because you’re bad at it. Besides,” she shrugs, “I think it’s always a pretty good skill to have, knowing how to throw a good punch. So, you wanna tell me what happened between you, Blink and the steel-plated sociopath?”

“Iris, we don’t have to talk about it,” he says intently. “I promise, we can have a Blink-free night if you want.”

“No, it’s cool. I know how important it is to you.”

“Great!” he grins around his burger. “Because, I mean, it’s not just Blink. I’ve gotten scattered reports about a woman who’s on fire, but she doesn’t burn up. See?” he shows her his computer. “I even got a picture.”

“Wait, wait,” she laughs. “Now you’re trying to find the woman on fire, too? Are you packing a fire extinguisher on these adventures of yours?”

“Hey, a lot happened for me this week!” he says. “I wrote about a superhero, was kidnapped by a supervillain, and stopped the supervillain from killing the superhero. I even got a heroic injury. All because of Blink.”

Iris laughs again and flips her hair out of her eyes as he swallows and keeps talking, and the entire time she’s looking at him with that smile she has, the small and secret best friend one that makes him feel at home. “I’ve been trying to get answers from her, like where she comes from and where she goes but – do you have any idea what it’s like interviewing someone who doesn’t want to be in the interview?”

“I can imagine.”

“She dodges everything with that teleporting thing that she does, and – and I can’t even look at her face because of that glowy-eye thing. I mean, not that I’d ever want to, she obviously doesn’t want her face out there, but – Oh my God. Oh my God, Iris, she can fly, she flew, it was amazing! Toni tried to throw me off a roof and she did, and I thought I was going to die, but she flew down and she caught me. You should have been there, Iris, it was incredible! If she hadn’t and learned to fly right then I would have died, it was a-”

“Miracle?” she suggests, and he stares at her. _Miracle_.

“That’s perfect!” He pulls his computer towards him and erases ‘Blink and You’ll Miss It’ from his blog heading and thinks for a minute. Then he types something else and twists it round to face her. She squints through her glasses. “’Say Hello to Miss Miracle’? Why the ‘miss’?”

“Cause it’s cute,” he replies. “Do you think she’ll like it?”

“I think she’ll appreciate not being called ‘Blink’.”

Barry throws his French fries at her, and she grins at him.

***

Iris, however, isn’t his last visitor of the night.

He’s in his room watching Netflix, his legs stretched out over his bedcovers, when all the lights go out suddenly and the locks on his door slam home. He grabs for the baseball bat under his bed when he sees a flash of gold and green, and then a pair of golden eyes. “Barry,” Blink – Miss Miracle – says to him.

He drops the bat and swings his legs over the side of the bed. “You – You’re here. What are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d see how you were doing. I read your blog post.”

Barry licks his lips nervously, speaking quietly so as not to wake his mother. “I kind of – I kind of changed your name – did you read it?”

“I did. I like the name Miss Miracle,” she says, leaning against his desk across the room. She stops making her eyes glow so they’re in total darkness, apart from the crack of light under his door from the corridor, turning her into a shadowy figure. “I came to say thank you. For that and for saving me.”

Barry snorts. “Well, skinny white guys can be superheroes too. Even if it gets them a bruised hand.”

“Well, I have something that might make you feel better. Since you’re obviously not going to listen to me and you insist on getting yourself into trouble,” she says, walking towards him, “I figured I’d come up with a way to keep you safe and help me.”

She drops something into his hand and flits away, and that tells him that he has permission to turn on his bedside lamp so he can see it. “A watch?”

She laughs. “Not just a watch. Press the smallest button on the side.”

Barry does as he’s told, and gasps when the watch face springs open to reveal a large golden disc with ‘MM’ embossed on it in green lettering. “What is this?”

“A distress signal,” she explains. “It has a tracker in it and it’s connected to this suit – when you press it I’ll immediately know to contact you or that you’re in danger.”

Barry turns it over in his hands, running his fingers over the lettering. “I put that post up two hours ago, and you’ve already got merchandise?”

“I have some pretty fast workers on my team,” she shrugs. She regards him for a moment. “Press it – lightly,” she adds quickly. “There’s a modification that means if you’re in a lot of danger you’re supposed to press it hard and I’ll get an electric shock, and I’m not really in the mood right now.”

So he does, and he gasps when he sees that Miss Miracle has the same emblem on her chest and it’s glowing. “See? Okay, now for the rules.”

“Rules?”

“Yes, Barry Allen, the rules, because you have got to be the most stubborn person I have ever met. No walking into danger unless you’re _sure_ you can handle it – and no, punching everything doesn’t always work. Try to use this at night because that’s usually when I’m on patrol, but if you’re really in trouble in the day I’ll try to get to you. In return, I will only ever talk to you – you’ll be the link to the outside world between them, and me and the other metahumans. And don’t tell-”

“I’m not going to tell anyone about you,” he says, cutting her off. “I promise.” Then he grins.

“What?”

“Does this make me your sidekick?”

“It makes you the guy who’s going to do exactly as I say unless you want me to take the watch back.”

“Are you always this bossy?”

“Only to my sidekicks.”

Barry laughs quietly. “It’s okay, I like you telling me what to do. You’re the superhero, after all.”

“You’d better get used to it.”

They pause for a while, sitting in a comfortable silence. Barry knows she has to go but he doesn’t want her to, and he’s not sure she wants to either. She raises her hand and clicks, and the lamp goes out. When she starts to move towards him tentatively, he knows to close his eyes. The only sound is their quiet, shallow breathing, and for some reason his skin is tingling with anticipation. His heart is thundering in his chest when he feels her take his chin in her hand and tilt it upwards, and his eyelashes are trembling with the effort not to open his eyes.

“I’m really glad you were there tonight, Barry,” she says softly, and he can feel the vibrations of her voice in his bones. He can feel the soft leather of her suit as she runs her thumb against his jaw and his breath catches in his throat.

“I’m glad you saved me, Miss Miracle.”

The green sparks don’t stay on his skin for long after she leaves, but he can still feel them hours later.

***

“Does it still hurt?”

“Kinda,” Iris says, grimacing at her hand mirror as she looks at the small bump on her head. Barry glances at her as they speed towards STAR Labs in an Uber. “But I’ve stopped feeling dizzy, so that’s good.”

It’s not how they usually spend their movie nights, driving to scientific facilities a ten o-clock at night, but they don’t really have choice. He’s still not sure how it happened, really. They were watching Ugly Betty in her apartment and Barry spilled soda on his shirt, and when Iris went to find him one of the shirts that she’d stolen from him when they were teenagers, she walked into her open cupboard door while he was wiping soda off his bare chest. When he asked her what happened she said she was just distracted, but she wouldn’t look him in the eye and practically forced him to put on a shirt instead of checking the bump on her head. So now they’re driving to STAR Labs.

“Is Colin okay to be doing this?” he asks.

“Yeah, he and Dr Wells were pretty insistent that whenever I get a head injury I have to go see them,” she says. “Which makes the second time in a week that this has happened.”

“Well, you must have been daydreaming about something pretty good, sunshine,” he says as they pull into the parking lot. She blinks at him as he pays the driver. “Um, no, nothing, just work. I was thinking about work.”

It’s late, but they know that the others will be there – Iris told Barry to call them as soon as she started seeing _three_ shirtless Barrys instead of the one that was standing in her kitchen. The security guard buzzes them in, and it’s not long before they can hear Chesca’s voice. “Hey, guys. Iris, are you okay?”

“It just hurts,” she says. “Really, you guys didn’t have to-”

“Of course we have to.” Colin, who even in the evening is dressed in a formal sweater and jeans, interrupts them. He taps on an iPad that he’s holding. “Barry, how are you? If you’re injured as well I can see you both.”

“I’m good,” he replies easily. “It’s just Iris. Uh, it’s not that bad, right?”

“Probably not, people tend to hit their head everyday. But with an injury like Iris’ after nine months in a coma, it can’t hurt to be sure.” Colin leads them both towards the Cortex.

“I can’t believe you guys got here so quickly,” Barry says.

“Oh, we were working,” Chesca replies.

“ _I_ was working – Chesca was reading the Walking Dead comic books.”

“This late?”

“We still have some patents for outside companies,” Chesca explains, taking the liquorice whip out of her mouth. “And Dr Wells is still a consultant on some pretty big research projects, so we have to help.”

“How else is Chesca going to fund her sweet tooth?” Colin grins. They get to the Cortex and Iris hops up onto an examination table while Colin gets out some instruments. Barry bites his lip – he’s a little lost because he’s used to coming in and then sitting down next to Iris for a few hours but now she’s awake and he’s not sure what he should do. But then Chesca waves him over to the computers and offers him some candy. “Make yourself comfortable, Barry, it’s not like you’re a stranger here.”

“Thanks,” he says. Colin is in full doctor-mode, which is good because Barry’s pretty sure that Colin Snow is the only person he trusts around Iris.

“Any dizziness?”

“Not anymore,” she replies.

“Nausea, fatigue, headache?”

“Not really. It’s just – _tender_ ,” she hisses as he pressed lightly on it.

“That’s to be expected.” He shines a light in both of her eyes and nods. “No sign of a basilar skull fracture…Okay, just answer some questions and then we can go get you an MRI.”

Barry frowns. “Questions?”

“Iris’ hippocampus – that’s the part that controls memory,” he adds, “was adversely affected by the coma, so I compiled a list of questions to test her memory. I did it after the coma in case things like this happened. Are you ready, Iris?”

She nods, smiling. “Bring it on.”

“Full name?”

“Iris Ann West.”

“Date of birth?”

“June 24th, 1989.”

“Names of your parents?”

“Joseph Donovan West and Francine Elizabeth West, nee Russell.”

“What happened to you on December 11th, 2013?”

“I was struck by lightning in my lab at the Central City Police Department and was subsequently in a coma for nine months. I recovered under the care of Dr Helena Wells, Dr Colin Snow, and Francesca Ramon.”

“Oh sure,” Chesca mutters. “Put me after all the doctors, that’ll make me sound impressive.” Barry and Iris laugh.

“Good,” Colin nods, tapping the screen. “Just a couple more. The man sitting in that chair in front of the computer. What’s his name?”

“Bartholomew Henry Allen.”

“What’s his favourite ice-cream flavour?”

“Chocolate.”

“Nine years ago, both you and Barry were admitted to Central City Memorial West. Why?”

Iris grins. “Because Barry got the bright idea to drive his mother’s new BMW around and we crashed into a tree.”

“That’s not true!” Barry exclaims. “It wasn’t my idea!”

“It was totally your idea!”

“’Your mom’s new car is really cool, Barry, how fast do you think it goes?’”

“’Do you think if we take it for a quick spin she’ll know?’”

Chesca glances between the two of them. “Then what happened?”

Iris and Barry look at each other. “I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I think we just got in the car without saying anything else.”

“And then we crashed it,” Barry finishes.

“Is that how you broke your arm?” Colin asks, still tapping. Iris nods, and Barry glances down at his hands because if he’s honest he still feels a little guilty, or a lot guilty, because he remembers the weird way her arm was bent when the paramedics cut them both out of the car and her crying in the ambulance. His mother yelled at him while Iris was in surgery and then grounded him for the entire time that Iris was recovering, but nothing could compare to the guilt that he felt because he was supposed to protect Iris and he was the one who put her in danger.

“Okay, Iris, everything looks fine,” Colin says, helping her down from the table. “Just come with me and we’ll do some brain scans so we can rule everything out.”

“Is the scanner in there?” Barry asks, pointing to a closed alcove. Chesca, Colin and Iris share a look. “No.”

“I can’t have it in there, both the machines are too big,” Colin explains. He points to a door across the room. “You know what to do, Iris?”

“Go in, lie down, don’t move.”

“That’s right. I’ll be right out here with the others to talk you through it if you have any questions, okay?”

“Cool,” Iris nods and smiles at Barry before disappearing into the room, and Colin walks over to them both, shooing Chesca out of the chair in the middle. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“I am working!” she tells him. “I’m allowing my creative muse space to grow.”

“You’re getting liquorice on the keyboard. _Iris, you okay_?”

Her voice comes through the speakers. “I’m good.”

“ _Just lie still_ ,” Colin taps a few buttons and an image of Iris on a bed shows up.

“That thing’s not dangerous, is it?” Barry asks, and Colin smiles.

“She’s fine, Barry, it-”

“ _WARNING! WARNING! TEMPERATURE HAS REACHED CRITICAL LEVEL_! _WARNING! WARNING! TEMPERATURE HAS REACHED CRITICAL LEVEL_!”

The alarm continues to blare and Colin swears, trying to turn it off. “What happened?”

Chesca frowns as she studies the schematics of the buildings. “I don’t – Oh, crap. Okay, there may be something on fire in the basement.”

“ _On fire_?” Barry and Colin demand.

“It’s okay, I’ll fix it!” she promises, bolting for the door. “You can turn off the alarm. Hi, Dr Wells!”

“Chesca.” Dr Wells wheels into the room as Chesca runs out of it, glancing over at them as Colin finally turns the alarms off. “Colin. Mr Allen. Did I know that you were coming?”

“Iris hit her head,” Colin explains. “We’re just doing an MRI; she should be done soon.”

Dr Wells nods and wheels over to a workstation without saying anything else. Barry doesn’t dislike her so much anymore – actually he thinks she’s pretty nice, even if she’s kind of aloof. But then he doesn’t blame her, given that the entire city (and that used to include him) hates her for what her Particle Accelerator did to the city. But Iris talks about her all the time and even his mother has warmed up to her a little. It turns out that she had spent the whole day with Dr Wells and she found out that her husband, Terrence, was killed soon after she moved to Central City and started her work, and that she’s devoted the entire thing to his memory. Barry thinks there’s something sad about that, about her and the way she twists the wedding band around her ring finger, so he can’t be that mad at her anymore.

Her eyes are _really_ blue, though.

“I can’t believe you all work so late,” he says. “Don’t you guys ever sleep?”

“I’m sure your friendship with Miss West has told you that we in the scientific field rarely rest when it comes to what we can discover.”

“And by that,” Colin says dryly, “Dr Wells means that we’re made of caffeine and carbs until we can prove something.”

She laughs. “Well, he’s not wrong. Besides, Dr Snow here has been one of my most loyal supporters since STAR Labs was founded.”

“Really?”

“Indeed. I’ll never forget the day this young man walked into my offices and demanded to see anything and everything I was doing. That kind of tenacity is hard to find these days.”

Colin just smiles. “Well, neither will I. STAR Labs and Dr Wells have always had exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

“I’ve been following your blog about Miss Miracle and her exploits,” Dr Wells continues, turning to face him. She nods, her eyes bright under her dark hair. “Interesting reading. You certainly have a way with words.”

“Thanks, Dr Wells,” he says in surprise.

“Yeah, that thing with Girder was pretty impressive,” Colin adds, not taking his eyes off Iris’ scan.

“Girder?”

“Chesca likes to name them for our entertainment,” Dr Wells explains, a small smile on her face. “I believe we’ve had a Weather Wizard, Multiplex, and now Girder. Miss Miracle has certainly been busy.”

Barry shrugs lightly, smiling. “Saving Central City is a full-time job, apparently.”

“I do worry, though,” she continues, wheeling over to them. “About you, that is.”

“Me?”

“Of course. Though you’re undoubtedly intelligent, you are still a civilian, and I would hope that you would take precautions – or evade danger altogether. The worst accidents always happen when people get involved when they should.”

Barry finds it very hard to breathe, with her eyes boring into him like that, but he can’t look away, either. He’s suddenly certain that being in a room alone with Toni Woodward would be a lot less scary than just one more second looking into the eyes of Helena Wells.

“I wouldn’t worry so much,” Colin shrugs, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Like you said, Barry’s smart, and he’s also pretty resourceful if what Iris always tells us is true. I think someone who can knock out a girl made of steel can handle himself, don’t you Dr Wells?”

“Yes, Dr Snow,” she concedes, but her eyes never leave Barry as she twists her wedding band again. “Perhaps you’re right.”

***

Barry’s week is pretty uneventful after that.

Well, as uneventful as it can be when you’re the civilian sidekick to a superhero named Miss Miracle (and yes, he _knows_ that Blink was a stupid name, people don’t have to keep coming up to tell him that). But ‘uneventful’ meaning that no one kidnaps him and tries to throw him off a water tower.

Not for lack of trying, of course, because when everyone knows that Miss Miracle is your personal bodyguard people get ideas. But after a couple of times when someone shows up after hours at Jitters while he’s locking up and Miss Miracle turns up to, um, _dispatch_ them – with that deadly calm in her voice – people start to catch on. The message is clear – Barry Allen is to be left alone. Which, you know. Barry Allen greatly appreciates. He doesn’t have superpowers, after all.

He _does_ get to be a real live superhero sidekick (he’s ignoring the fact that she basically tells him what happened unless he was there himself and he writes it down – he’s a sidekick) and do cool things with her. There’s the metahuman that can turn into sand that almost captures him – Miss Miracle uses her mind powers to force all of the sand particles into a container. Then there’s the one who can turn into poison (which scares him because it turns out that she’s after Nora), and she carried him up high until the air was really thin, depriving him of oxygen until he evaporates.

It’s oddly nice, having a superhero for a friend, even though she always tells him that he needs to be more careful and chastises him for taking risks. He kind of likes it, though. And there’s a little part of him that thinks she likes it, too.

“So, what happened?” she asks him as they regard the metahuman sprawled on the floor. Jitters is a mess, with chairs and tables strewn about the place. In his defence, Barry wasn’t trying to look for trouble. He was locking up so he could go stay at Patty’s when suddenly the lights dimmed. He frowned because Miss Miracle usually lets him know when she’s coming, but then there was a crash and he was blinded by a blast of light that knocked him backwards. He barely had enough energy left in him to press his watch. Miss Miracle arrived and flitted out of the way of her blasts before knocking her out.

“She kind of just…burst in,” he says, still blinking. He can see a little better, but Jesus. Did she have to blind him?

Miss Miracle bends over the figure. The metahuman is in a black and white costume, complete with a cape and helmet. Miss Miracle bends. “Her gloves – they send out light blasts. That’s how she blinded you. But she was at the cash register – so she’s just a petty thief?”

“Apparently,” Barry shrugs. Then he remembers something – Tyler said that the spare keys had gone missing this week and suspects that that’s how she got in. He bends, careful not to disturb her too much, looking for the keys. And he finds them and he’d leave it alone after that, but then he notices another brand – this time on the back of her neck.

“Barry?” Miss Miracle asks, voice distorted. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he says. “Just, um, she must have cased the place before. See? Keys.”

She nods. “Well, she won’t be doing that again. You okay getting home?”

Barry nods, and she disappears with the metahuman. And when Barry gets to Patty’s, he opens his notebook and writes a single question:

 _Who is branding metahumans_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank god Barry gave her a new name, Blink sucked. Thanks for reading, liking and commenting!


	6. Merry Christmas, Miss Miracle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miss Miracle has a bad time, and Barry learns something that everyone already knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is messy and incredibly long, but i hope you all like it! i love this chapter ;)

“…that was so cool, oh my God, when you did that thing-”

 _Barry_.

“-with your hands, and then all the guns stopped, that was incredible!”

“Barry.”

“Do you think you could do that with something bigger? Like a car, or-”

“Barry!”

Barry blinks and looks up. “Yeah?”

Miss Miracle has her arms folded and he’s never seen her face – her black domino mask covers up half her face and she never lets him get close enough to see without doing the blinding glowy thing – but he can tell that there’s a look of disapproval underneath her mask, even though her voice is filled with exasperated humour. “Are you actually writing any of this down?”

Barry blinks at her and looks at his notes, which are a few lines and a doodled drawing of Miss Miracle in her costume. “Yes.”

“You know I’m a mind-reader, Barry. It’ll take me a second to know that you’re lying.”

He gaped at her. “Are you reading my mind right now?”

She disappears and reappears on a ledge, resting her elbows on her knees as she sits down. “No, of course not. That’s like Superwoman using her x-ray vision to look through people’s clothes.”

“A superhero with morals – interesting.”

She tips her head at him. “You thought I was immoral before, Barry Allen?”

He has no idea why that – the way her head tilts and the way the words curve around him – make him blush. “Ah,” he laughs nervously. “No, sorry. But you know, the Arrow-”

“The Arrow is a…special case. She has her own set of morals.”

“You don’t agree with her?”

“You are getting better at distracting me, Barry, but you’re not quite there yet.”

Barry grins and she recounts the story of the shootout downtown again, how she managed to jam the guns in the hands of all the gang members, before telepathically binding them with some nearby rope for the police to find. Barry had been there (completely by accident, he told her when she’d shown up after he pressed the distress signal, and he was only a little bit lying – he got his take-out from that place sometimes and he was hiding behind the counter with Mr Yang as he called the police) and she’d whisked him away as soon as she was done.

“You need to be more careful, Barry,” she tells him.

“It wasn’t my fault! How was I supposed to know they’d start attacking each other when I wanted dim-sum?”

She shakes her head in exasperation and he grins sheepishly. “I’ll be more careful, I promise.”

“That is all I ask.”

Then it comes, that last part of the night when they meet like this. She has to go – he doesn’t know where, she still won’t tell him, but he’ll wear her down one day – and he never wants her to, but then she does this. It doesn’t always happen because he’s not usually hurt, but in his haste to hide today he scraped his face. She stands and goes to move towards him, and that means he has to close his eyes because that’s what this part means. They never actually verbalised it, but that’s always what happens – she appears in front of him, he with his eyes closed and his head bent, her still as a statue and studying him. Then slowly, she reaches up to grip his chin lightly, tipping it this way and that as she looks for injuries. Even after a mere few weeks she knows how stubborn he is when it comes to hospitals (Iris is still the only one who can convince him to go and only if she’s there too to distract him; he’s pretty sure if Miss Miracle didn’t have superpowers she couldn’t make him do a damned thing) and she always drops him off when his injuries are bad.

It’s not that he cares about, though. Barry can’t see her – can’t even feel her breathing, she’s so still – but there’s a tenderness in the way he touches him, in the way she strokes his jaw with her gloved fingers. He keeps his hands at his sides and his eyes closed, which he’s better at, but it’s still hard. Then she lets go and for some reason he stumbles.

“No bleeding,” she says, several feet away from him again. His eyes fly open to see that she’d in the shadows and her eyes are glowing. “I think you’re fine. Be-”

“Careful. I know. But if I need help-”

“I will always come when you call me, Barry.”

“And that’s all _I_ ask.”

“Goodnight, Barry.”

***

Barry knows his girlfriend doesn’t _truly_ think he’s crazy.

But it would certainly help matters if she didn’t act like it half the time.

“Look, another picture of Miss Miracle came in,” he tells her over breakfast at Jitters the next day. He slides his laptop towards her, careful to avoid the coffee, and she frowns. “That golden blur? Are you sure that’s not photoshopped?”

“Of course it’s not photoshopped,” he replies, slightly offended, although he’s not so stupid to tell her that the reason he knows it’s not photoshopped is because he secretly meets Miss Miracle on the Jitters rooftop on Tuesdays, and more if he’s helping her with something. “This must be the sixth or seventh picture of her that I’ve gotten this week, so that means she’s real.”

“Well, if she _were_ real,” Patty says, “I don’t know if we can trust her.”

Barry frowns. “Why wouldn’t you be able to trust her?” Patty sighs.

“Barry, from what I’ve read from you and heard from witnesses, she can fly, she’s very strong and pretty fast, she can read minds, and she can move objects with her mind. I’m a cop. I’m suspicious.”

“Come on, she’s not going to hurt anyone. She’s like…like Superwoman or Marvel Man.”

“Superwoman is an alien who grew up among humans, and Marvel Man is a literal war veteran,” Patty points out. “Nobody knows where Miss Miracle came from or what she wants.” She glances at her watch. “I have to go, but I’ll see you for dinner, okay?”

“Uh-huh,” he says, kissing her goodbye and watching as she walks out. Then someone grabs his shoulders from behind.

“Hey, you,” Iris says cheerfully, sliding into Patty’s empty seat.

“Hey, sunshine,” he says in surprise. “What’s that smile for?”

“I can’t smile when I see my best friend?”

Barry laughs and her smile widens. “Singh gave me the morning off, so I thought I’d hang with you until lunch.”

“You came here for a panini and a cronut, Iris.”

Iris gives him her most convincing smile, her eyes wide and pleading, which honestly is unfair because they’re best friends and it always works on him. “That too.”

He rolls his eyes as he ties his apron. “Coming right up.”

It’s a surprisingly slow morning because it’s so early – when Barry asks why the hell Iris is up this early when she has the morning off, she gives a vague answer about going for a walk, which he knows means that she wanted free food because her metabolism has been so fucked up by the lightning – so they spend most of it talking. Iris has been helping him prepare for his final presentation, carefully proofreading and fact-checking when she comes over and he can’t look at the damn thing without wanting to take a chainsaw to it. The presentation is in a week, and then he has the one final and he can graduate after Christmas.

“You’re still doing that thing you do,” she says about half an hour before she’s due back at the station. “I can’t believe you’re doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“Barry, you can’t reference _The Catcher in the Rye_ in every project you do,” she tells him, cleaning the sugar off her fingers. He frowns at her.

“Yes, I can.”

“Barry, this is a report about the ethics of journalism during the Watergate scandal.”

“And I’m sure at least one of the JD Salinger quotes I put in there reference it in a witty way that does not overpower the strength of my overall point.”

“There are fifteen quotes.”

He pouts at her. “I like them.”

She rolls her eyes and smiles. “You can keep three.”

“Ten.”

“Five.”

“Seven!”

“ _Five_ , and you can make one of these paragraphs anecdotal about one of his stories.”

“Fine,” he says. “You’re coming, right?”

“Sure. Chesca and Colin are really excited to talk to adults that don’t do science all day.” She glances at her watch. “Okay, I have go, but I’ll be back later.” She reaches up to hug him and he laughs into her hair.

“You’re in a good mood,” he grins. She beams up at him, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“Well, there are some things that just brighten your day.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“Duh, Barry,” she laughs, “ _cronuts_.”

 Barry laughs and waves her off, going back to work as the lunchtime rush flies in. He’s so used to it that it gives him time to think as he flits between the tables, taking and delivering orders as the day goes by.

His blog has pretty much turned into a database for all the metahumans that are around the city and there have been at least a dozen in since Miss Miracle appeared, but as far as he can tell, only two have had that weird brand on them. Granted, he hasn’t gotten close enough to inspect every inch of them (because she won’t let him), but it can’t be coincidence that two metahumans were branded in such an odd way. Plus, there’s the fact that Toni told him that it was her _job_ to kill Miss Miracle. She failed, obviously, but he has a feeling that she might not be the last one.

The only problem is, he doesn’t know how to tell her that without her completely cutting him off because it’s too dangerous. How is he supposed to say ‘Hey, Miss Miracle, could you tell me where you’re keeping your metahumans because I think some of them may be trying to kill you?’. Besides, she’s a superhero. She’s probably used to people trying to kill her.

“Dude,” Tyler tells him as he wipes down a table. Barry frowns.

“What?”

“Dude, that’s Olivia Queen.”

“Yeah, okay, Tyler. I know you miss Linda, but you can’t just make up women if – Holy shit, that’s _Olivia Queen_.”

Barry and Tyler try very hard not to stare as Olivia walks up to the counter. She’s even more gorgeous in person than she is on TV, dark blue eyes under thick, wavy brown hair, with high cheekbones and clear skin. “Hi,” she smiles pleasantly. “Could I get a latte and a black coffee?”

“S-Sure,” Barry says after three seconds of staring. She smiles him. “Barry, right?”

“Y-You-” he swallows and tries again. “You know my name?”

“I do. You’re friends with Iris West, right? Freddie is my personal assistant and he wanted to see her while we were here. He’s right over there, actually.”

“Freddie’s here?” Barry grins. “Well, great, I’ll bring your orders right over.”

Olivia nods and walks back to the table, and that’s when he sees Freddie’s cheerful smile and wave. Tyler looks at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you and Iris have connections?”

“I didn’t know she knew her,” he says, making the coffees. Which is – it’s weird, they tell each other everything, especially since it was _Olivia Queen_. He and Iris went to visit Queen Industries on a class trip years ago and they got lost in the elevators and ended up in a staff meeting with a lot of very important-looking people and got in so much trouble that they had to sit in the school bus for the rest of it. It was kind of worth it, though, because then Robert Queen himself came out and told them both jokes until they felt better.

But anyway, maybe Iris is just stressed. She forgets things all the time, after all, and Colin does keep mentioning that the lightning could affect her in ways that they don’t know yet.

So he clamps down on feeling left out.

The coffees are ready as Iris walks in to talk to them, Olivia serious and Freddie affable. “So, latte for Freddie and coffee, black, for Olivia,” he laughs nervously, setting the tray down. “I, um, I brewed you a fresh pot, so…”

Olivia smiles again. “Thank you, Barry.”

“No problem. Ahem, Iris, you want a cronut?”

“Sure.”

As soon as they’re out of earshot he pokes her. “What?” He pokes her again. “Barry, _what_ – do you want me to _bruise_?”

“You didn’t tell me you knew Olivia Queen!”

She sighs, briefly pinching the bridge of her nose and waving a hand. “I know Olivia Queen.”

“God, she’s super hot. She’s even hotter in person and she’s, like, a whole foot taller than you.”

Iris pouts. “It’s not – It’s not a _whole_ foot…”

“She’s on my three list.”

“Your what?”

“List of people I’m allowed to cheat on Patty with,” he explains. “And now she’s here and I can’t stop staring at her. Even though she almost didn’t make the list.”

Iris raises an eyebrow. “Almost?”

Barry raises a shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah. I had to pick someone else, because Patty says I can’t have Miss Miracle on my list because I’ve never seen her face before-”

“Miss Miracle,” she repeats. “Miss Miracle is on your three list?”

“Well, yeah,” he says, kind of embarrassed. “She’s a superhero. That’s kind of hot, right?”

“The hottest,” she says in an odd voice, and he looks at her.

“Hey, you can’t make fun of me. _You_ have a crush on Scott Evans, if I recall correctly, and he’s just a newscaster for Channel 52.”

“Believe me, Barry,” she says, adjusting her glasses, “the last thing I’m thinking of right now is making fun of you.”

He frowns at her and she glances off at her friends. “Hey, wanna meet someone else?”

“Sure.”

At tall, beautiful woman with dark brown skin has joined them and nods when Iris and Barry walk over. “Hey, you’re Barry, right? You’re Iris’…” he glances at Freddie. “Um, something.”

Barry laughs. “Well, if _something_ is code for ‘best friend’, then sure.”

“Joanna Diggle.”

“Nice to meet you. So, did you guys all meet in Star City?”

“Yes, Iris helped us with something that needed explaining,” Olivia answers, and Barry nudges her shoulder. “Sounds like you.”

“Uh-huh,” Iris says. “They’re looking into something here with the company and they wanted to say hey.”

“We should get coffee while we’re here,” Freddie suggests. “Or dinner! Are you guys free for dinner?”

“We might not have time for dinner, Freddie,” Olivia says tightly.

“Come on, Liv, it’ll be fun!”

“I’m sure I could get Patty to join-”

They broke off as an announcement came on the news. “Hey, is that Scott Evans?” Joanna asks as the fanfare finishes.

“Yes,” Iris and Olivia reply.

“He’s kind of hot.”

“Yes,” Iris and Olivia agree, and Freddie and Barry share a look before rolling their eyes. Barry gestures to Tyler, who throws him the remote so he can turn it up.

“ _…not sure whether Star City’s masked vigilante will be the best choice to stop this latest threat to Central City, given her track record with criminals in the Glades_ ,” he says. “ _Though the Arrow managed to provide the CCPD with some answers, people are already calling for Miss Miracle’s intervention to see whether she can handle the threat. However, there are some who don’t agree with Central City’s Golden Grace, and there are reports that some at the CCPD are concerned that she could be dangerous…_ ”

“They want to lock up Miss Miracle?” Freddie frowns. Iris shrugs.

“That happens all the time. Same thing happened with Superwoman, Batgirl, the Arrow…It’s just rumours, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah, she’s harmless,” Barry tells them. “The worst thing she’s done this week? Be late to a bank robbery.”

“Yeah, I heard about that,” Joanna says. “Apparently all the people there started attacking each other.”

“Ongoing investigation, Dig,” Iris says. “You all need to quit hinting.”

“Since when, Miss Blabbermouth?” everyone else says, and Iris blinks, affronted.

“Okay, feeling a little attacked right now.”

“Liv,” Joanna says, looking at his phone. “Gotta go. Uh, meeting.”

“Sure, Dig,” Olivia says, drinking the rest of his coffee. He looks at them. “It was nice finally meeting you, Barry.” She glances at Freddie. “I will…let you know if we can make that dinner.”

“We can make the dinner,” Freddie tells them.

“Freddie…”

“You can’t come here and not enjoy yourself – Central City’s the fun one!”

Joanna rolls his eyes and looks at them as they start bickering. “They’re like an old married couple.”

“I thought Freddie was dating Ray Palmer,” Iris frowns, taking her glasses off her face because they’ve fogged up.

“Ray Palmer?” Barry asks, handing her a handkerchief from his pocket. “Raven Palmer. From Palmer Tech?”

Iris cleans them and hands the handkerchief back. “Jeez, now they’re talking about which bed she has to sleep on – they really are like an old married couple.”

Joanna, who’s been watching them the entire time, frowns. “Yeah. Married couple.”

***

Barry is kissing Miss Miracle.

He has no idea how it happened, but she’s got him pinned up against a wall and her body is flush against his. Her hands are tangled in his hair and his arms are wrapped around her waist and their mouths are moving hungrily against each other. It’s an open-mouthed kiss – all hot breaths and twisting tongues and her tugging on his bottom lip with her teeth, and it takes him a second to figure out that this is wrong even as he pulls her tighter against him. First, he has a girlfriend. Second, Miss Miracle never lets herself anywhere near him unless she’s certain she’s blinding him with her eyes or that he can’t open his.

And third, of all the places to be making out, why the hell are they doing it in Iris’ lab?

But he can’t think about that right now because she’s – she’s kind of _moaning_ into his mouth, and it’s distracting. Soon, he realises that she’s saying something even as her tongue traces his lips and her warm breath on his skin makes his hair stand on end. And then he recognises what she’s saying.

“Barry,” she gasps, still kissing him. “Barry, Barry, _Barry_ …”

“Yeah?”

“Barry. _Wake up_.”

He frowns. “Huh?”

“ _Wake up, Barry_! _Barry, wake up_! _Wake up, Barry_! _Barry, wake up_!”

It’s his alarm, a joke thing that Iris had made for him a few years ago in a parrot’s squawking voice. His thing is that he’s always late to things and hers is that she forgets things, and today is apparently no exception. He hits the parrot’s beak, shutting it up, and blinks at the sunlight streaming through the windows. He glances at the time, rubbing his face, and can feel it heating up with embarrassment even though there’s no one there.

Well. That’s…new.

***

It doesn’t _mean_ anything.

That’s what he tells himself as he walks to CCPN – his mother has forgotten her allergy medication and even Nora knows that she’s insufferable without it – and he means it. So he had a dream that he was making out with Miss Miracle. That’s normal. Totally normal. People in relationships do that – Patty took even longer with her three list because she couldn’t decide between Henry Cavill and Idris Elba, and he’s not naïve enough to think that his girlfriend doesn’t have sex dreams like any normal woman. It isn’t like…It isn’t like he’s going to _actually_ make out with her. He has Patty. He loves Patty. It doesn’t _mean_ anything.

“What doesn’t mean anything?” Iris asks once he’s made it to the precinct.

“N-Nothing,” he shrugs. “Just thinking about school. Whoa, what’s going on in there? What’s with all the yelling?”

Iris folds her arms and shrugs as they listen to Patty and Captain Singh yelling at each other through the doors. “I think Patty’s trying to get Miss Miracle thrown in jail.”

“What?” he demands, and Iris shrugs again.

“Patty thinks she’s a public menace. Says she could be the one robbing the banks herself because of her superpowers.”

“That’s insane! You’re kidding, right?” he demands as Patty walks out. “The only reason you’re willing to believe that Miss Miracle is real is so you can get her arrested?”

Patty runs a hand through her hair, frustrated. “Thanks, Iris.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, you don’t have to worry about that, because the Captain shot me down. Look, I have a crime scene to get to, I’ll see you later.”

“Wow,” Iris says as she leaves. “Patty really doesn’t like Miss Miracle, huh?”

“She’s just jealous.”

“Of Miss Miracle? Why would she be jealous?”

Barry feels his face go hot again and he shook his head. “Uh, don’t worry about it. Could you give this to my mom? I have to get to class.”

He manages not to think about it all day, or when he has to go to Jitters, but when he’s locking up and he presses the button on his watch, he has to admit that he’s thinking about it. She flashes into the room on the balcony seats. “That was fast.” She shrugs.

“I will always come when you call me, Barry.”

He smiles. “You know, it’d be great to call you by your real name.”

“You mean like…Edna?”

“Is your name Edna?”

She ducks her head and appears on the ground floor, amusement colouring her voice. “What did you need, Barry?”

“It’s nothing for me, I just need to tell you something. My girlfriend-”

“Your girlfriend? Did you guys break up?”

Barry frowns. “Uh, no. But she’s a cop, and she wants you arrested, so I figured you should be careful.”

“Oh. Well, that’s sweet, Barry, but I’m not afraid of cops.”

“I know. I just thought I should warn you.”

“Consider me warned.”

“Great. Well, anyway, you should…you should go.”

Miss Miracle pauses and glances at the ground, before looking back at him again, her eyes glowing. “You’re not going,” he whispers.

She looks at him for one more second and then puts a hand to her ear. “What? Where?...Okay. Barry, I have to go.”

He grins weakly. “Got other boys warning you about cops that want you arrested?”

“No.” She disappears but then reappears right behind him, and then her voice is in his head and he can feel her heat through his clothes. _I thought you knew you’re my only boy, Barry_. And she disappears.

And, yeah – he’s totally blushing.

***

Barry doesn’t know, though, that the next time he’ll see Miss Miracle, he’ll be running away from her.

He should know something is up when he gets to the precinct because everyone – _everyone_ – is on edge. Maybe it’s something in the air, because Captain Singh is snapping at his mother, who looks pretty pissed off herself, a couple of the patrolmen are arguing, and Justin’s doing is level best not to yell at someone on the phone. He even catches sight of Iris striding away up to her labs, the high-heeled boots that she loves so much echoing harshly on the floor, and he can tell by just the way she’s moving that she’s furious about something.

What the hell happened here today?

“Patty,” he says, once he sees her. She’s broken up the fight between the patrolmen and they walk off back to their desks still looking pissed. In fact, even Patty looks like someone snapped her last nerve. “What’s going on?”

“Apparently whatever is infecting people and making them mad got in here,” she replies, sighing tiredly. “Listen, I’m exhausted, you think we could skip the dinner reservations and go back to my place?”

Barry shrugs and takes her bag for her as they walk into the atrium. “Of course. I could always move them to next week.” She smiles gratefully and kisses him.

“Thanks. Hey, there’s Nora.”

“Later, mom,” he calls. Nora quickly smiles and nods before following the captain into her office, and glances once more at the stairs leading up to Iris’ lab. He would go up there, but…he’s starting to notice, sometimes, that whenever he says he can’t do something with Patty because he’s hanging out with Iris, she gets a little annoyed. She doesn’t show it, of course, but he’s recognising the problem that both of them have always had when it comes to boyfriends and girlfriends, where they always prioritise each other over everyone else. It’s a habit, he supposes, of growing up with your very best friend – they become your family as well as your friend, so of course you’re going to help them when they’re in need. But this is his first serious girlfriend in…well, ever, so even though he really wants to go upstairs and find out what’s gotten Iris so mad, he tells himself that he’ll call her later. He also ignores the guilty pit in his stomach that springs up after making that decision.

“Seriously,” he says, once, they’re in his car, “what’s gotten everyone so mad?”

“Miss Miracle,” she answers. “Half the precinct think we should do the task force because we can catch her and other metahumans, but the other half says that if we do that we’re going to be the sole defence against other metahumans.”

“Is that what Singh and my mom were arguing about?”

Patty glances at her nails. “No, actually, they were talking about Iris.”

“Iris?” Barry frowns, glancing away from the road. “What’s wrong with Iris?”

“She kind of…lost it today, with Captain Singh. With a lot of people, actually. She snapped at the captain, then at your mom, then at half the detectives…I wanted to go talk to her myself, see if I could find out what’s up, but then Tim and Drake started arguing. I’ve never seen her so mad before.”

Barry shifts his jaw, thinking. Iris never gets angry, which is why he’s worried. He makes a note to call her as soon as they’re done with dinner. “And you have no idea what’s wrong?”

“Maybe it was the Miss Miracle thing? I mean, Singh wanted her to go back to each of the crime scenes to see if she could find Miss Miracle’s DNA, but she didn’t think it would yield much or that it’s even a good idea. That’s when the yelling started.”

“Well, I can’t say I disagree with her,” Barry shrugs, and Patty looks at him.

“Barry, it doesn’t matter whether she agrees with her or not, Singh is her superior. And Iris is a CSI – she knows science, not criminals.”

“Miss Miracle isn’t a criminal.”

“She’s doing police work without the help or approval of the police,” Patty points out, irritated. “That makes her a vigilante, which is illegal.”

Barry sighs in exasperation as they turn down the avenue. “Patty, both you and Miss Miracle care about protecting the city – why are you so concerned with getting her locked up?”

She frowns at him. “How do you know so much about her? How do you know what she cares about?”

He takes a deep breath, his eyes still on the road. “I may have met her a few times. I help her with her cases sometimes.”

Patty just stares at him. “You’re joking. Barry, tell me you’re joking.”

“What’s the big deal? Sometimes I’m working on a story and it involves metahumans, so when we meet for my blog I tell her about it.”

“The big deal is that a masked vigilante with superpowers is using my boyfriend for a mouthpiece and nobody has any idea what she wants!” Patty snaps back. “God, Barry – how could you think that I would be okay with this? She could – why did you stop?”

Barry frowns down at the steering wheel, which isn’t moving the car despite how much he’s twisting it. “That’s not me.”

Then the car starts to shudder and shake – in fact, all of the cars on the street are doing that, and the street lamps are flickering on and off augmented by the sound of car alarms blaring. “What’s going on?”

That’s when he sees her, a shadowy figure in the street with her hands clenched by her sides. Electricity crackles briefly around her right fist, and when she raises her head some of the cars start to move.

 _I hear you’ve been looking for me_ , her voice snarls, but it’s not her voice, not the calm, assuring flirty voice that he’s so used to – this is cruel and hard and viciously angry; he can feel that in his bones. Patty turns to him, pale as chalk.

“D-Did you…” she breathes. “Did you hear that?”

Barry nods. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her, she’s usually fine…”

 _Why don’t you ask your girlfriend what’s wrong with me, Barry_? She continues, striding towards them. _Ask her about what she wanted to do to me, how many guns she thought it would take to subdue me. Me. The person who has been_ saving all of you _for two months_.

“Barry, run!” Patty shoves him towards the door and leaps out herself, firing several shots at Miss Miracle before he can say anything. His eyes widen in horror.

“No!”

Miss Miracle doesn’t do anything but raise her right hand, and every single one of the bullets stops in front of it. Then she flicks it and the bullets fly off behind her, useless. Before they can do anything, the gun in Patty’s hand judders until she drops it; a fist from Miss Miracle crushes it into a useless lump of metal that clatters to the floor when she drops her hand. Patty runs and then Miss Miracle walks towards her, rage seeping off her in tangible waves.

“Why are you doing this!” Barry shouts, desperate. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me, Barry,” she replies, still stalking towards Patty with cat-like grace. “Apart from your perfect girlfriend over here. Because she thinks she can just waltz in here and take whatever she wants! Can _do_ whatever she wants! As if she has the power, _as if she has the_ _right_!”

On that last word, ‘right’, a pole flies out and blocks Patty’s exit as she tries to run down an alleyway.

“Stop!” Barry begs as he approaches her from behind. “Stop, _please_!”

But she isn’t listening to him, and now there are two cars blocking Patty’s exit, driven there by whatever rage has taken over Miss Miracle’s mind. Barry is terrified because she’s so unlike the hero he thought he knew.

“This isn’t you!” he tells her. “The person I know wouldn’t do this, you wouldn’t-”

She barks out a harsh laugh. “Because you know me so well, Barry Allen? Because you write about me? You don’t know me and you don’t even see me, not really. None of you know anything – none of you ever see _anything_! _Especially you_!”

Her voice breaks on those last two words and Barry can feel the pain behind the anger, throbbing and barbed as she screams the words into the street. Patty trips and falls as two more cars block her exit and Barry makes a final, desperate plea.

“I do see you! _I do know you_! I don’t have to see your face to know you, I know what you do for this city and that person, that hero, she wouldn’t want to hurt people no matter how much they hurt her! I’m – I’m begging you, please!”

It works. For a second, it works. She stops, shakes her head and half turns towards him and the cars stop blaring their alarms. But then she just rolls her shoulders and turns back to Patty, and Barry thinks that he’s going to have to watch the hero he adores kill the woman he loves, when he hears what sounds like knives being sharpened and then a two small thuds.

“ _Aarrrrgghh_!” Miss Miracle screams and drops to her knees, and Barry sees that two arrows are sticking out of her back. She turns, her eyes aglow with rage as she tries to locate the culprit, and her hand stops a third arrow before she plucks it out of the air. A figure in green steps out of the shadows, bow raised towards her, and Miss Miracle snarls, the arrow quivering in her hands.

“Run,” the Arrow says, her voice leaving no room for compromise. “ _Now_.”

And Barry picks up Patty and he runs, and she’s fine, they’re both fine, but even when they get to the police station and the paramedics are called and they say that they’re fine, just shaken, he feels that something inside him is irrevocably broken.

***

Patty insists on him going to work the next day, even though Captain Singh has given her the day off and he keeps promising that he’ll look after her. It’s good, though, because even though she insists that she’s fine and she faces threats like that every day, there is an unspoken ‘I told you so’ that he’d rather not face.

Miss Miracle almost killed her – almost killed them both – last night. Fine, maybe she was upset that Patty had been trying to get her arrested, but did she have to attack them like that? The way she had acted around them, the things she’d done, her vicious, brutal anger…Patty and his mother and Iris are right. No matter what he thinks and how much she flirts with him, he doesn’t know her, not really. She’s dangerous – maybe even more dangerous than the metahumans she puts away.

There is still some part of him, though, that instead of being a mixture of furious and fearful, is just achingly disappointed.

“Barry?” Justin greets him at the entrance to the main office. “They’re in Singh’s office.”

He’s been called for a meeting, probably to ask him what happened again, and he has to admit he feels a little nervous. He’s been the one saying that Miss Miracle is perfectly safe and that she wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone, and now Patty is hurt and everyone is terrified.

“Barry,” Captain Singh says as he walks in. His mother and Patty are both there, as well as the some of the patrolmen, the DA and some other people he doesn’t recognise. “Thanks for coming.”

“Uh, sure,” he says, frowning. “Did you want another statement?”

“No. Cecil,” the captain says, nodding at the DA, “seems to think we might need your help in catching Miss Miracle.”

It shouldn’t hurt him, the way they say that, like she’s an animal on the loose, but it does and he doesn’t want to think about why. He’s noticed that his mother is frowning and the expression on her face does not promise peace. He steps forward.

“Mr Allen,” he says, shaking his hand. “Cecil Williams. My colleagues, ADA Eddie Thawne and ADA Shawn Baez.”

Barry shakes their hands. Shawn has brown skin and close-cut hair, and his brown eyes crinkle when he smiles. Eddie, on the other hand, has light blonde hair and bright blue eyes and no smile at all, merely nodding at Barry before refocusing his attention on the DA.

“Why would you need my help?” he asks.

“You have a relationship with her,” the DA answers. “Because you write about her so much, she trusts you. We thought that if we used you as bait-”

“What?” his mother and Patty interrupts. “You want to use Barry as bait?” Patty demands. “You could get him killed!”

Shawn, though still keeping his friendly tone, turns to her. “What would you suggest we do, Detective Spivot? You said yourself she was dangerous, given the fact that she tried to kill you last night.”

“I would suggest that we study her past movements and find her vulnerabilities-”

“I hate to break it to you, detective, but this is now beyond normal police work,” Eddie interrupted. “Miss Miracle engaged in vigilante activities and then tried to kill a police officer and a civilian – we need to take action.”

“And the action that you want to take,” his mother hisses, “is to put my son in danger, _again_ , because you can’t be bothered to try something else?” She turns to the captain. “Tell me you’re not considering this, Deidre.”

But the captain shrugged helplessly. “It’s out of my hands, Nora. You heard what happened and you saw the tape, she could kill any one of us at any time.”

“So you want to go up against her without knowing how to attack, but you want to send my son in their unprotected-”

“He wouldn’t be unprotected-”

“I don’t need to be protected,” Barry interrupts coolly, “because I’m not doing it.”

“Why not?” Eddie asks, looking at him for the first time. His blue eyes are cool and unreadable, but Barry thinks he can detect a hint of disdain in his voice. “What, is it going to take everyone you know being killed before you want to help?”

Barry glares at him. “No, of course not. But-”

“But what? Do you think she was your friend? That she cared about you? Is that why you’re protecting her?”

“I’m not _protecting_ her-”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Eddie,” Shawn says firmly. “That’s enough. Mr Allen, while I understand your attachment to Miss Miracle because of her past exploits, I have to tell you that she has unfortunately become a public menace and we have to take steps to capture her.”

“And what happens after that?” he asks quietly, and Barry isn’t stupid – he knows that the way they’re all looking at each other right now means something more than they’re just going to ask her where she came from.

“Upon her successful capture, Miss Miracle will be referred to those higher in the criminal justice system who deal with people like her,” the DA answers. “There she will be interrogated and dealt with accordingly.”

Barry swallows. “R-Right.”

“Now, do you have any way of contacting her? I know that you write about her and she gives you quotes – what usually happens?”

“We meet on Tuesdays,” he says slowly. “But I kind of doubt she’ll show up now, if she knows you’re all looking for her.”

“I wonder if it might be useful to use your blog to warn the public about her,” the DA muses. “People know and trust your opinions on her, so-”

“No,” Barry snaps, because he draws the line there. “That’s not what my blog is for.”

“Mr Allen-”

“I’m not going to do your job for you. If you think she’s dangerous, then _you_ tell everyone about it. You don’t get to use me as a mouthpiece because you can’t be bothered to do your job properly.”

“And the next time it dawns on you, Williams,” his mother says in a soft voice that promises anything but softness, “to suggest using my son in a pawn to catch a metahuman who have already admitted is dangerous, _don’t_.”

“I’m sorry, Detective Allen,” he apologises, and he sounds sincere. “But I can’t have metahumans running around the city if even the one person we thought we could trust is apparently more dangerous than the rest of them. Are you sure you have no way of contacting her, Barry?”

Barry clenches his left fist, the one with the watch on it. He forgot not to wear it this morning – it’s become a habit – but he knows he’s going to have to take it off.

“No,” he answers, shifting the wrist with the watch on it.  Eddie Thawne stares at him, arms folded and eyes narrowed. “None at all.”

***

There’s no point, though. Because later, when it’s the end of the work day and the rush is coming in as people are leaving work, there’s an announcement on the news and everyone stops to listen.

“ _in an unfortunate turn of events, Miss Miracle has been declared a public menace_.” Even Scott Evans, always so cheerful and charming as he delivers the news, seems sombre as he gives the report outside of the station. “ _Central City’s Golden Grace was reported to have attacked a police officer and a civilian last night, and Central City Police Department are now taking measures for her immediate capture and detainment_.”

“ _The metahuman task force is a necessary thing in our changing world_ ,” Eddie says from a podium outside the station, and Barry even though he’s the civilian in question he still wants to punch Eddie in the face. “ _It won’t just be Miss Miracle – it will be the other metahumans like the ones we’ve seen in the past few months, and those who have weapons capable of posing a threat. We want the message to be clear – Central City will not tolerate metahumans who endanger this city_.”

Shawn comes on next, talking about how they’re going to keep the city safe from metahumans, but Barry tunes out because people are starting to remember that it was him who used to write about Miss Miracle. He keeps wiping the table as some of them turn to look at him, whispering and pointing, but then Tyler tells them to quit it.

“Thanks,” Barry says quietly. Tyler shrugs.

“No problem. Hey, your girlfriend’s here.”

Patty sits down at the counter where he’s wiping. “So, I guess you saw the news.”

“That Eddie guy is a real charmer.”

“Yeah, and he and Shawn are going to be all over us while we get this metahuman task force thing off the ground. Your mom is pissed as hell, which will make all of this fun,” Patty laughs. “But I think she’s just worried about you. Like, maybe Miss Miracle will go after you again.”

Barry doesn’t think so. For some reason, he was sure that Miss Miracle wouldn’t have killed _him_ last night, though he can’t say why. But that doesn’t mean that she didn’t almost murder his girlfriend. “What are they thinking of doing?”

“Defence classes from metahuman experts, special weaponry, tactical plans…” Patty shook her head. “When the DA wants something, he _really_ wants it.”

Barry smiles ruefully. “Well, at least this way you get what you wanted. This was your idea, after all.”

Patty looks at him carefully. “Right. But I know how much you liked Miss Miracle, and-”

“Patty, I meant what I said last night. You care about protecting the city, and you do whatever it takes to make that happen.” He shrugs and smiles at her. “I guess I’ve got a hero complex.”

She grins and kisses him, taking her coffee order and promising to call him later and when Barry looks around he notices that Iris, Freddie and Olivia have arrived and are sitting at a table by the other entrance. He smiles and she smiles briefly back, but it doesn’t last long as she turns back to whatever Olivia is saying to her, biting her cheek. Then she gets up and walks over to him, her face kind of subdued.

“Hey, sunshine, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says quietly. “Just a little tired. I, um, I heard about what happened with you and Patty – are you guys alright?”

“Fine, I guess. Although I think I made mom an enemy of the DA, since I’m not helping them with their metahuman task force thing.”

“Right, I heard about that,” she replies. She’s adjusts her glasses. “Listen, Barry, I’m sorry about Miss Miracle and what she did to both of you. I know how much you loved writing about her. She’s an idiot for letting you down like that. I guess she’s eating cashews with you,” she jokes lightly.

“ _All_ the cashews.” Barry sighs. “It is what it is, I guess. I just don’t know why she was so mad.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned this week, Barry,” she says slowly, “is that it doesn’t always have to be one thing that makes you mad. If you keep everything bottled up inside you, eventually it’s going to burst out of you in the worst way.”

“Is that what happened to you yesterday?”

She frowns in alarm, and then her face clears. “Oh, you – you heard about me yelling at everyone.”

“I did. What’s the matter, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she repeats as she flips her hair out of her face. “I think it was just stress, you know. I’m basically the only CSI at work and sometimes you feel like everyone takes you for granted.”

Barry nods, but he’s watching her and there is a little part of him that thinks she’s lying. He remembers at time when they were fifteen, and she came home and she was angry but she wouldn’t tell him why.

“I’m fine, Barry,” she said, yanking orange juice out the refrigerator and slamming the door closed. “Quit asking.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Iris.”

“Go away.”

He looked at her over his homework, spread out over the kitchen table. “ _You are my sunshine_.”

“Stop it,” she said, folding her arms.

“ _My only sunshine_.”

“I’m not in the mood, Barry.”

He got up and walked towards her. “ _You make me happy, when skies are grey_.”

“Barry, I _mean_ it…”

But she let him pull her into his arms and rest her head against his chest. “ _You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you_.”

“You’re such an idiot,” she said softly, already crying.

“ _Please don’t take my sunshine away_.”

“You’re the worst.”

“I’m the best.”

He rubbed her back as she cried quietly. “What happened?”

“They denied her parole hearing again.”

He sighed. Iris always tried not to let herself get too hopeful, but it never worked. He had offered to come with her, like he always did, and like she turned him down, but he knew that she was grateful for the invitation. He suspected that this was why, that she didn’t want him to see her disappointment when the inevitable happened. “We’ll get them next time.”

“It’s not fair,” she said into his chest, her voice wobbling. “She didn’t do it. She _didn’t_.”

“I know she didn’t. But guess what?”

“What?”

“You’re gonna go visit your mom and let her know that this hasn’t ruined you. That you’re still fighting. And you know what’s going to show her that more than anything?”

She groaned. “Barry.”

“Come on,” he said, pulling back and grabbing her hands. “I’ll tickle you if I have to.”

“You’re the _worst_ ,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Stop saying that like you really believe it.” He poked her in the ribs. “Come on. Smile for me, sunshine.”

And she did and he tickled her anyway, and then he went out and got her brownies, but they are adults now and he’s not sure it will work. Maybe it is the coma, maybe it’s something else, but he’s noticing that she’s hiding things from him or that she avoids certain topics. And she’s always daydreamed, but she does it a lot more often now and he’s starting not to believe her when she says she’s fine, and that something is really bothering her. But Iris would never lie to him.

Would she?

“So, I’m kind of avoiding work,” Iris continues, back in the present. “Since I think the only person I didn’t yell at was Ted the security guy.”

“Iris, just go back and apologise,” he tells her. “It’s not like nobody’s ever had a bad day. You remember that summer at worked at ice-cream and I yelled at my boss? I spent the rest of the week pretending I was sick, when all I had to do was apologise.”

Iris frowns. “Barry, you were avoiding him because you ate three pints of chocolate ice cream and all the sprinkles.”

He waves a dismissive hand. “Not the point. They need to know that you’re sorry, that’s all. You had a bad day, you didn’t mean it. They care about you, so they’ll forgive you.”

Iris looks at him in that way that she always does, and nods. “O-Okay. Yeah, you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.” He glances at her friends. “So, I’m guessing they want some coffee for the road?”

“That’s why they sent me up here, yeah.” She pauses. “I kind of feel bad for Joanna, though. Having to get the train back up to Star City with those two will be hell.”

“Because Freddie’s dating Ray but likes Olivia?” he says, putting the lids on the cups.

“Well, it’s Olivia Queen,” she says. She gives him a rueful smile. “Super hot, right?”

Barry frowns at her as she cleans her glasses, before shrugging. “I mean, yeah, I guess. Whatever. If you like that kind of thing.”

“Gorgeous, rich and mysterious?”

“You’re more fun than she is.”

“Thanks, Barry,” she says. He pokes her in the shoulder. “Come on.”

“Barry, I swear to God…”

“Iris.”

“You’re an _idiot_!”

“Smile for me, sunshine.”

And she does, so whatever is bothering her can’t be that bad.

Right?

***

 _Please_.

His watch glows and then he gets that single word as a message on his blog, and he knows who it is. He should have taken it off but he forgot, and now he’s standing here, uncertain, because Miss Miracle is on the roof wanting to talk to him, but she attacked him and Patty yesterday and the whole city is scared of her now. He’s gotten a million messages about where she is and what she did, but he’s referring them all to the police. He considered it briefly, writing a message that Miss Miracle was now a public menace, but it felt wrong. Wrong to post that alongside all the messages of support and articles about how she saved people.

But…it’s not just Patty.

It’s his mother, who always worries for him and tells him that he’s not being safe and who almost got choked to death by a metahuman herself a few weeks ago. And then there’s Iris, who he swears is becoming more and more fragile by the day, and the thought of her being in that car with him yesterday is the most terrifying thing he can think of. It makes him shake, because if he closes his eyes he can still – still _feel_ each time that Iris’ hard stopped or she had a seizure, even though it was months ago and it didn’t even happen to him.

He wouldn’t let any more people be ripped away from him.

Miss Miracle back in shadow but leaning forward, like she wants to go to him. “I got your message,” he says evenly.

“Barry, I’m sorry,” she says immediately. “What you saw last night, that wasn’t me.”

He folds his arms. “It sure looked like you.”

“I know, I know that. It was a metahuman messing with my head. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did.”

She looks down at the ground and then back up at him. “I know.”

“Everyone said that you were dangerous,” he says quietly. “My mom, Patty, Iris, but I didn’t listen. Even what you said was true – I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do,” she says desperately. “You do know me. You do see me.”

“No, I don’t. Not really. Not enough.”

 _Sometimes I think you’re one of the only people that does know me_.

And that hurts him but he doesn’t have a choice – he’s known what it’s like to have someone you love teeter on the edge of death, and he’s sure as hell not going to ask for it back. “You and I both know that’s not true.” He pauses, the words stuck in his throat. “Don’t contact me anymore, okay?”

Miss Miracle nods slowly. “Okay.”

Barry turns to go and she speaks again. “Barry. I’m sorry.”

Her devastation is palpable. Or maybe it’s just his. “Yeah. Me too.”

Barry puts the watch at the bottom of his draw when he gets home.

Patty is there, ready to have dinner with him and his mother and Iris, but when he gets back downstairs he sees that there’s a place missing. “Where’s Iris?”

“She wasn’t feeling well,” his mother says, setting out the wine. “I think she might be worn out, poor thing. Patty, could you help me bring the food in?”

While they’re doing that, Barry goes out into the hall and calls Iris. She picks up on the fourth ring. “H-Hello?”

“Iris? Are you – are you crying? What happened? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, God, Barry you’re such a worrier,” she replies, laughing a little through her tears. “Sorry I couldn’t make dinner. I just, um, I went to go visit my mom, and it made me a little sad, I guess, and I didn’t want to bring everyone down.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Barry pauses. “I can come over after dinner, if you-”

“No, that’s cool. It’s late, and I know you have classes tomorrow. We’ll hang out later, okay?”

“Sure.”

But even though she’s reassured him that she’s fine and they’ve said goodnight, he’s distracted all through dinner.

***

“You’re doing it wrong.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“ _You’re_ doing it wrong.”

“If the two of you don’t stop-”

“Sorry,” Barry and Iris say together, and Nora disappears back into the living room to keep decorating the tree. Mariah Carey tells everyone what she wants for Christmas, and Barry and Iris glare at each other. “You’re being a backseat…eggnog-maker, Iris.”

“Backseat eggnog-maker?”

“What? That’s a thing. You’re in charge of the Christmas brownies, leave me alone.”

Iris laughs. “It’s just a lot of bourbon, Barry.”

“It’s what the recipe says,” he tells her, and Iris raises her eyebrows when she sees it.

“Wow. I forgot how much Great-Uncle Rudy loves bourbon. I’m sad I won’t get to see him this year.”

“Mm,” Barry says noncommittally. It’s not the first Christmas since they were children that they’ll spend apart, but that doesn’t mean that either of them are happy about it. But Iris’ aunt – Joe’s sister – finally relented a couple of years ago and agreed to meet Iris. Iris wasn’t particularly enamoured of the idea (and Barry still doesn’t really like them for not talking to Iris for years, but whatever), but his mother and her mother convinced her, and now she spends the occasional holiday with them.

They keep this tradition though – Iris making Christmas brownies in a white Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sweater, Barry making the eggnog after he’s wrapped all the presents, and Nora trimming the tree while they listen to Christmas songs and flick through the channels for a Christmas movie they can all agree on ( _It’s a Wonderful Life_ , because Barry won’t watch _Elf_ and Nora doesn’t like _Home Alone_ , and _Love Actually_ always makes all three of them cry, so they save that for Christmas day itself).

“Wally’s here in Central, actually,” she continues as she decorates the brownies with edible Santa figures. She’s talking about her cousin. “At the university. He was supposed to call and meet me, but I guess he’s been busy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, him and his girlfriend – Lana? Um, Linny, or Linda – Barry, that’s hot!”

“ _Owwwww_!” he says, spitting the hot brownie into his hand, and Iris shakes her head at him.

“They weren’t done cooling yet,” she says. “Are you okay?”

“Well, I guess it’s time for eggnog now,” he says, and she laughs as they take some out to Nora. Iris adjusts the antlers that Barry put on her head earlier and settles into the couch. “Nicely done, Nora.”

“Jobs a lot easier when I don’t have the two of you bickering around me.”

“It’s not my fault Barry has no attention to detail.”

“And it’s not my fault that Iris is short and she can’t reach the top,” Barry counters swiftly. Iris sticks her tongue out at him and he throws a pillow at her. Nora rolls her eyes. “Lord, give me strength.” Her cell phone starts to ring then, and she goes off to answer it. Barry and Iris share a look. “It’s probably Singh,” Barry says. “They’re calling everyday with this task force thing.”

Despite the fact that it happened over three weeks ago, no one has been able to find Miss Miracle since her attack. The DA went back to his office, but Eddie and Shawn are back all the time to advise them on legal stuff and how to find her. Well, actually, Eddie irritates his mother and tries to find the quickest and most brutal way to capture her, to hear Nora tell it. Even Patty, who’s idea the whole thing was, wants him to step back a little. Then there’s the fact that even though Barry refused to use his blog or the watch to contact her, he still has to be interviewed. He doesn’t tell them much – Miss Miracle was well-versed in telling him nothing at all about herself – but Eddie still thinks there’s something he’s hiding. Once Nora came home to find Eddie and Barry practically spitting at each other, they were so mad.

“Yeah, half of the people at work have signed up for the training,” Iris says. “Which means that all the cases are being neglected, which means more work for me.”

“You think they’ll catch her?”

“I think,” she says slowly, studying her mug of eggnog, “if she’s smart, she’s stopped the whole hero thing for a while. Since they’re apparently pretty serious about this.”

Nora comes back into the living room, and they both immediately know what she’s going to say. “They need me at the precinct – robbery at Santa’s Workshop.”

“Merry Christmas,” Barry mutters, and Iris laughs. Nora grabs her jacket and shrugs it on. “Barry, I’ll see you later. Iris, don’t run off to Keystone without saying goodbye to me first, alright?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she replies. As soon as Nora shuts the door, Barry leaps up and takes the eggnog out of her hand and puts it next to his on the table. She frowns as he grabs her hands and makes her sit on the floor.

“Barry, what – Barry, Christmas isn’t until next week,” she says after he’s handed her the present he wrapped. He grins, giddy.

“Couldn’t wait any longer. Go on, open it.”

Iris laughs and rolls her sleeves up, and he rocks back and forth impatiently as she tries to figure out the best way to open it. Then she looks up. “Barry.”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go first?”

“Oh no,” he says innocently. “Ladies first.”

Iris sighs and hands him his own present. “I insist.”

“Only if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure I don’t want you to wet yourself on Nora’s favourite rug.”

He shoves her lightly but takes the present. It’s flat but heavy, and he frowns as he opens it. It’s a square black box with a silver outline around the edge. “Uh, did you get me a bomb?”

She rolls her eyes. “Open it, idiot.”

“Oh,” he says softly. It opens like a jewellery box and…holy shit. “Is this…”

“It’s not the same,” she says quickly. “I just thought, um, with you getting your story into the university paper you’re, like, a bigshot highbrow writer guy now, so I thought I’d get you something like what all those bigshot writer highbrow guys from the nineteenth century got. And what’s more bigshot and highbrow than a fountain pen and watch set, right?”

Barry is still speechless, almost afraid to touch them. The watch is leather – real leather, with a classic design and roman numerals. Iris carries on, rambling now. “Just, um, I know you said that your old watch broke, and you were so upset when you lost the one that your dad left you when we went to the zoo, so I kind of, um, got them to make a kind of replica? It’s the same company, anyway. I put your initials on the back, though, so it’s…so it’s yours.”

He picks up the pen, which is sleek and beautiful, black with silvery writing. _I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, but I mean it_. “Salinger,” he breathes. “You – you remembered.”

“Right!” she says excitedly, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I mean, you recited that whole book to me all through the time you were taking AP English, so it’s not like I _could_ forget. But, um, I thought it would be cool, when you were writing, if you had a quote by your favourite writer. Like – like an inspirational…type…thing.” She peers at him nervously. “Barry? Do you like it? I didn’t get the wrong quote, did I? I can take it back-”

“No,” he says hoarsely, lost for words. “No, I love it. This is amazing, Iris.”

Iris smiles her sunshine smile at him. “Great! Good, great, that’s awesome, because I kind of lost the receipt. Do you want to try it on?”

“Sure,” he says, holding his wrist out, and she scoots up to him so their knees are touching and takes the watch out of its little pouch. She bends over his wrist and clasps the watch carefully over it, shifting it slightly to test the fit, her fingers skimming his wrist, and then sits back.

“Perfect,” he grins at her.

“Perfect,” she agrees. He pulls her into a hug and he feels rather than hear her sigh contentedly.

“Okay, my turn,” she says. Barry swallows, rubbing the back of his neck.

“So, my present kind of sucks now,” he admits, but she just smiles easily as she starts to open it.

“I’m sure it’s great.”

Barry watches her nervously as she opens it. He must be the biggest idiot on the planet – the watch and the pen are the most thoughtful thing that anyone has ever gotten him, and all he got her was a stupid-

“Barry!” she squeals in excitement. She rips away the rest of the wrapping paper as she realises what it is. “You didn’t!”

“It’s supposed to be the latest one,” he admits, looking at the microscope.

“It is! It’s the same one Neil deGrasse Tyson uses in his lab! I’ve wanted this forever – how did you get it?”

“I know a girl,” he says mysteriously. “Okay, Chesca helped me look. I know how much you like him, and I was going to wait until your birthday, but-”

“Barry, this is perfect,” she says sincerely. She bends over it, playing with the knobs and slides. “I love it. I can’t wait to take it to work…”

Yeah, Iris has stopped paying him any attention. Even when the doorbell rings, she doesn’t look up. “Patty,” he grins once he’s opened the door. She steps inside and spots Iris. “Iris,” she says. “What’s up?”

“Hey, Patty,” Iris says, biting her cheek. “How are you?”

“Good. I’m good. Wow, Barry, that’s a great watch. Is that new?”

“It is,” he says proudly. “Iris got it for me.”

Patty blinks. “That was…thoughtful of you, Iris.”

“That’s me,” she says tightly, standing up. “Thoughtful. Um, so I have to get to STAR Labs to see the others, but I guess I’ll see you later?”

“Sure,” Barry says easily. “Don’t forget their presents.”

Iris grabs them from under the tree and disappears to get the eggnog and brownies they made for Chesca, Colin and Dr Wells. “We can drop you off,” Patty says. “We’re driving to Jitters anyway, right?”

“No, it’s cool,” Iris replies, wrapping her scarf around herself. “It’s out of your way, and I need the walk. There are some brownies and nog in the kitchen if you want some, though.”

“Iris,” Barry says as she makes to leave. He reaches over and plucks the antlers off her head.

“Oh,” she laughs, not looking at either of them. “Oops. I’ll, um, see you later.”

***

“I totally didn’t ask for your shirt size because you’re getting a shirt for Christmas,” Barry tells her before he has to take his shift. “So just ignore that.”

Patty laughs, looking into her coffee cup. “So Iris ran out of there pretty quick. I don’t think she was very happy to see me.”

“She probably realised she should have left hours ago. You know how forgetful she is.”

“Is there something going on with her?”

Barry doesn’t quite know how to answer that. Since she didn’t show up at dinner that time most things have been fine, but he sometimes catches her looking at him strangely or sadly, but then she says there’s nothing wrong when he asks. “Maybe. I just don’t know what it is.”

Patty sighs, struggling to find the words. “Do you ever think she might…like you?”

Barry blinks at her. “That’s what you think it is? That she likes me? No way.”

“Barry, that is not a gift you get your best friend,” she says, gesturing to the watch. “It’s a gift you get your boyfriend. Or your husband.”

“Patty, it’s not a big deal,” he assures her. “We’re just best friends, that’s all.”

She studies him for a moment, and then shrugs. Honestly, they’ve been going out for six months – why would she be threatened by Iris, of all people? “So, anyway,” she continues, “I wanted to run something by you.”

“Shoot.”

“The lease on my apartment is up in a couple of months, so I’m looking to get a new one. And I was wondering…if you wanted to move in with me.”

Barry blinks at her again. “Really?”

“I know it’s soon,” she says. “That’s why I wanted to wait a couple of months, to give you time to decide.” She grabs his hand. “But we don’t have to do anything until you’re ready, okay?”

He nods and smiles. “Okay.”

Patty leaves after a while and Barry lets himself think about it. Patty is the most serious girlfriend he’s had, and he has to admit that he likes being in a mature, grown-up relationship. It is easy, uncomplicated with Patty. Moving in together seems smart and was bound to happen eventually. But then he thinks about what Patty said, about Iris having feelings for him, and he just feels confused.

Barry has no doubt that Iris probably had a crush on him at some point – a natural consequence of being so close. For him, there was that period around thirteen, when Iris went through puberty, and for a few weeks he couldn’t stop – anyway, he got used to it and all the blushing stopped. It was just the first time he realised that Iris was A Girl, a Pretty Girl. But there has always been an unspoken rule that that’s not what they are to each other, and maybe because it’s unspoken, Barry isn’t sure if it’s actually there. It’s why sometimes, when people wonder whether Iris is his girlfriend, he contemplates it for just a second. He supposes it would be different, especially the kissing, but the thought of Iris kissing and touching and wanting him makes him feel hot and uncomfortable, so he always wills it away before he can dwell on it.

When Colin comes in, he resolves to ask about Iris. They spend all that time together, so maybe her new friend would be able to see something he can’t. “Whoa,” Barry says when he walks over. “What’s with you?”

Colin runs a hand through his hair, messing up the neatly-combed parting. “How’d you know?”

“I lived with Iris for seven years – I know a depressed scientist when I see one.”

“Right,” he laughs. “Just an experiment Dr Wells has been working on is frustrating her a little bit. It’s not going in the direction we want.”

“Well, my mom’s advice was always to give it a good kick in the pants,” he muses. “I mean, it was about motivation, she said that I had to study for my finals or she’d kick me in the pants. Fear’s a pretty good motivator.”

“That it is,” Colin agrees.

“You just have to find that thing that would push it in a different direction,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Hey, did you get your presents?”

Colin smiles at him. “We did, Barry, thank you. It was very thoughtful of you. And Iris was right about that eggnog – it’s delicious.”

“Great. Um, speaking of Iris, is there…Is there something going on with her? Something I should know?”

Barry’s degree is in criminology, and he is the only person he knows that is better at criminology psychology than Iris. So when Colin’s face changes, he knows that something’s going on. “Iris seems fine to me. But if you’re worried about her, I really think you should talk to her.”

So that’s what he does, a few days later. The precinct is busy as everyone is either Christmas shopping or finishing up cases or trying to avoid Eddie and Shawn. Barry walks past the notice board – full of apartment lettings, people selling stuff, and the missing person’s board – up to Iris’ lab. His mother isn’t there – busy with Patty – but Iris is staring at her board when he arrives, her arms folded. “Iris.” She doesn’t move. “Iris. _Iris_.” Still nothing. He has to walk directly to her. “Iris!”

She turns and blinks at him. “Huh?”

“I called your name like…” he glances at the board. “Your mom’s case.”

“Yeah,” she answers. “Everything from that night, plus every research article that explains how someone could theoretically control someone’s mind. Lately I haven’t…” she sighs, “looked at it as much as I should have.”

He frowns. “I didn’t know you still looked at it at all.”

She smiles at him. “I guess there’s still some stuff about me you don’t know, Barry Allen.” She sits down in her chair and starts clicking at her computer. “Anyway, what are you doing here? Patty’s not here – she went out to do something with your mom.”

“Yeah, about that,” he says slowly. “Patty asked me to move in with her.”

She nods, smiling. “Big step. Are you nervous? What did you say?”

“A little, and I haven’t said anything,” he admits. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

Iris turns to him. “Why would you want to talk to me?” she asks slowly.

“Well, Patty thinks that you, um, might…like me. _Like_ me, like me. As in more than a friend.”

“Really?” she asks evenly. “That’s what she thinks?”

“It’s dumb, I know…”

Iris shrugs. “Well, Patty’s wrong.” She takes off her glasses and begins to clean them. “I mean, if I seem…weird about everything it’s probably because everything’s seemed really fast. For me, I mean. I missed the first three months of your relationship because of the coma, so it’s…yeah. But if you’re happy and you want to move in, then I’m happy too.”

That’s relief, isn’t it? That’s what he’s feeling. “Good. Great,” he says. “That’s what I told her.”

Iris puts her glasses back on. “Awesome.”

Barry leaves, but it’s weird because when he glances back it looks like Iris is cleaning her glasses and rubbing at her eyes again.

***

“ _Christmas is leading me home…_ ”

Barry grins as he finishes his mother’s job of decorating the tree. Iris is wrong, he possesses a very strong attention to detail, thank you very much. He takes a picture to send to Patty, who’s been a lot happier since he told her he could move in two days ago. And he’s decided that it was relief that he felt when Iris said she was fine with everything. Because he’s not sure what would have happened if she said she had. So it’s better this way.

It is.

Iris herself walks in then, and he grins. “Hey, you’re here. Okay, so mom’s gonna be back in a few hours, so if we hurry we can watch _Home Alone_ and she won’t even know.”

But then he frowns. Iris faces him in a dark blue dress and her favourite leather jacket. She also looks freaked out and kind of terrified. “Hey, sunshine, you okay?”

“ _Let it snow…let it snow…_

She lets out a short breath, and then wraps her arms around him, her breath unsteady and her hands shaking. “I love you, Barry.”

“Aw, I love you too,” he smiles into her hair, rubbing her back. She steps back, that look still on her face, and she swallows, and what she says next rips everything apart.

“I remember when we met and you said that you liked my glasses,” she says, laughing nervously as she gestures to them. “And – and I was in love with you right from that moment, even though I couldn’t tell you what love was, and I probably couldn’t even spell the word. And then I felt really lucky ‘cause the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen in my whole life wanted to be my best friend, and I got to follow you around all the time.”

Barry just stares at her, feeling the ground rocking from underneath his feet. Iris must read it in his face, because she goes to sit down on the couch and he joins her.

“You have no idea the amount of times I wanted to tell you,” she continues. “Every day. It was – it was every day I wanted to tell you, and I always said to myself, ‘Just tell him, _tell him_ , what’s the worst that could happen?’” She’s crying now, silent tears that slip down as she speaks. “But I knew what would happen, I could lose you, and I’d already lost my whole family and I didn’t want to lost half of my new one. You and Nora were all that I had and I didn’t want to risk that so I just, I held it in, because I couldn’t lose the most important person in my life.” She takes off her glasses and wipes her eyes, laughing again. “Which is…ironic. Considering.”

It shouldn’t be this devastating, her telling him that she loves him, because they’re Barry and Iris, of course they love each other, but it is. Because it’s twenty years of him not knowing and them playing by different rules and Iris looking like someone is slowly cutting her heart out of her chest, and he wants to comfort her because that’s exactly how he feels in this moment too, but he can’t because he’s pretty sure he’s the one with the knife.

“Listen, Barry, I know I could have told you a hundred times, and it’s not fair to you or to Patty, and I’m not-” she chokes on the words and looks down, swallowing and closing her eyes briefly, before continuing, “I’m not expecting anything. I’m not expecting anything at all, and the last thing I’d want is to mess anything up for you. But…But we’re best friends, we tell each other everything, that’s the deal, and I just thought – I just thought you should know. I couldn’t lie about it anymore.” She shrugs helplessly through her tears. “I’m sorry.”

Barry can’t move. Iris swallows and lets out a breath. “Okay,” she says quietly to herself. She puts her glasses back on and stands, and all he can do is look at her. But she can’t look at him for more than a second, because she turns and leaves, shutting the door quietly behind her.

And Barry still can’t breathe.

***

“Barry,” his mother says, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. “I think that’s Colin and Chesca, could you get it?”

“Sure,” he says, and his mother frowns.

“Are you alright? You’ve been weird all day.”

“I’m fine,” he says hoarsely. Colin ad Chesca walk in and start talking to Patty, who tells her that she and Barry are moving in together, and his arm is around her and they’re joking about cleaning habits, but Barry isn’t in the room.

Because Iris is in love with him.

And it isn’t a crush, either, and it’s not a shallow love. She has loved him since they were children, through all his girlfriends and her boyfriends, through all her pain and joy and everything that they’ve done together, she’s loved him. It is a consuming love, and a powerful love, and Barry cannot believe that Iris has been walking around with all of that locked up inside her and she’s never told him. And it’s a devastating love, too, because she’s always loved him but he’s never loved her, not like that.

Barry has spent the past two days since combing through their childhood and their teenage years, and even their adulthood. Like when they were eight and Barry proposed to Iris with a candy ring and went around calling Iris his wife for days afterward, and she couldn’t stop smiling. Or when they were sixteen and they were picked to play ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven’ at a party, and he’d never seen her look so terrified – only Jennifer Dean throwing up in her father’s bathroom stopped it from happening. Or even when James, her last boyfriend, broke up with her, and even though he was perfect (no, literally – he was from London and his father had ‘The Honourable’ in front of his name), it took her about two weeks to be over him.

 _Iris is in love with him_.

Right now, wherever she is, she is walking around, and she is in love with him. She wakes up, goes to work, and lives her life in love with Barry. And he has never known.

“ _Barry_!”

“Sorry – what?” he blinks. Everyone is looking at him. “Colin wants to know if he can play your old guitar,” Nora says. “He suggested that I sing something.”

“That would be great, mom,” he says sincerely. Colin nods and picks up the guitar, strumming a few notes before he begins to play.

“ _Have yourself a merry little Christmas,_ ” his mother sings. “ _Let your heart be light…_ ”

“She’s so cool,” Chesca says, grinning, and when the doorbell rings she goes to answer it. “Iris! Finally!”

“Sorry, I was picking something up,” she answers. “Hey, everyone.”

Barry’s heart constricts. She’s here, and in love with him, and now he gets to think about how much she’s hurting her. Iris waves at everyone and deposits the bag she’s holding in the hall before going to get some eggnog. His mother keeps singing.

“So, have you guys looked at anywhere yet?” Chesca asks. “I hear the west side is pretty cool.”

“Don’t forget that I work for the city, and _this one_ is a barista,” Patty laughs. Barry gives her an indignant look.

“Well, those student loans aren’t going to pay themselves.”

“ _Here we are as an in olden days, happy golden days of yore_.”

Chesca laughs and goes off to sit with Nora, and that’s when Iris comes back out to sit in front of them. She’s in love with him and Barry’s hurting her, he’s always been hurting her, but sitting here with his arms around the woman he loves the way she wants him to love her, he’s hurting her even more, but she still looks like Iris. Nothing has changed.

Because she’s always been in love with him, and is used to the idea that he doesn’t love her back.

“Hey, guys,” she says quietly, smiling. “So, um, Barry told me you guys were moving in together, and that’s great. I’m really happy for you.”

“Thanks, Iris,” Patty say cheerfully. “That means a lot.”

“But Barry also told me you might be kind of nervous, so I got you something…” she pulls out a plant from the bag she had and puts it on the table in front of them. “This is a lucky bamboo. I thought you could have it for, um, wherever you lived. It’s supposed to bring you stuff depending on how many stalks it has,” she explains, pushing her glasses up her nose. “This has eight, so it’s luck. Wait, maybe it’s health. Or wealth. Anyway, it’s lucky.”

“Iris, this is so sweet of you,” Patty says, getting up to hug her. After a moment’s hesitation, Barry hugs her too, and she’s _still_ in love with him, and he doesn’t know how she doesn’t hate him.

“Of course,” she says easily. “Merry Christmas.”

Iris walks off and Patty starts talking about how to take care of the plant. His mother has paused to put the star on the tree and turn it on, and Barry is still reeling. Iris is in love with him, and he’s moving in with Patty. He wonders if he’s making a mistake, and then he looks at her. She was grinning at Chesca before, but now the smile drops off her face and she looks down. So does he.

The star is lit and bright, and his mother finishes the song. “ _And have yourself a merry little Christmas now_.”

***

His mother gives him until the afternoon of Christmas.

It is odd how everything looks different when your best friend is in love with you. The hug that they shared before they left is more layered, his mother’s reminder to give Great-Uncle Rudy the present from her feels weird, and even the Christmas text she sent him from her cousin’s in Keystone could have a different meaning behind it. It is a good Christmas, his favourite kind. Small and easy and warm, with them gathered around the table playing games and watching Christmas specials and eating lots of candy. The only thing missing is Iris, and everyone notices, but for him it’s different.

 _Everything_ is different.”

“How’s Iris?” Great-Uncle Rudy asks as they sit by the fire. “She okay after that coma?”

“She’s fine,” Barry answers. “She’s with her family.”

He nods and drinks some more eggnog, and is mother rolls her eyes. “Uncle Rudy-”

“Leave me alone, Nora. I’m still doing those damned exercises you signed me up for, and it’s Christmas. And speaking of,” he adds, “I think it’s time for my Christmas nap.”

He drains his cup and promises to see them later, and his mother looks at him. “Okay, Bartholomew. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong with you, or do I have to coax it out?”

“Huh?”

“Barry, you’ve been quiet for a week, and as your mother, I am officially freaked out, as you kids always say.”

Barry bites his lip. This is too big, he can’t keep it to himself. Besides, his mother is safe. “Iris…She, um, she told me something.”

“Which was?”

“She said – I mean. God.” He rubs his face. “She said that she loved me. That she’s always loved me.”

Nora, to his surprise, nods slowly and puts her mug down. “I see. So she finally told you.”

Barry stares at her. “You – mom, you knew?”

His mother gives him a sad smile, stroking his hair. “Oh Barry, honey. I think everyone knew.”

He runs his hands through his hair. “Was it that obvious?”

“Not to you, apparently. It’s okay, it’s not your fault. These things happen.”

“Well, how long have you known for?”

“The minute you dragged her over to me on that first day of first grade, I knew. I saw it on her face – poor girl was a goner.”

 _I was in love with you right from that moment, even though I couldn’t tell you what love was, and I probably couldn’t even spell the word._ “I didn’t _know_ ,” he whispers. “She never told me.”

Nora nods. “I know.”

“How does – mom, she must hate me. I don’t love her like that, she must hate me.”

“Barry, there is no way on God’s green earth that Iris could ever hate you.”

He wraps his arms around himself. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, what did she say? What did she want?”

“Nothing. She said she just wanted me to know.”

“Well, there you go. Look, Barry, I have watched her be in love with you since the day I met her. If she’s telling you now, I doubt it’s for _you_ , it’s probably for _her_. It has to be hard, keeping that bottled up. Now she can move on.”

Move on. He’s never considered that, because the way Iris said she loved him – can you move on from that love? What happens? Do you know? Or has Iris just not found someone that she loves as much as she loves Barry?

“Barry, I know this must be confusing for you,” his mother says. “But she’s still the same Iris. She’s still your friend. And now you know everything.”

Barry is still thinking of it when he goes to bed, of how to do this, have Iris be his Best Friend Who Is In Love With Him. But there are no answers.

And then something pushes it out of his mind entirely.

His phone goes off first – millions of messages from his blog. _Is she dead? Do you know what she is? Barry, what’s Calamity?_

He stares bleary-eyed at his phone, and then he hears his mother banging around her room before she bursts into his. “Mom? Mom, what’s going on?”

“Barry, do you know how to use the gun on my nightstand?”

 _What?!_ “Mom-”

“Answer me, Barry!”

“Yes, yeah, but what’s going on?”

She shakes her head as she struggles to get her gear on and Barry gets up to help her. “Something is attacking the city. I don’t know – it got to the precinct first, and Jitters, and the university. Listen to me, Barry.” She grips his shoulders. “Stay inside the house, do not open the door, and don’t let your uncle leave. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She pauses and sniffs, before hugging him close. “I love you, my boy.”

“I love you, too.”

And then she’s gone, and he’s downstairs with Great-Uncle Rudy looking through the news channels for what the hell is going on. People are still messaging him, desperate to know what’s going on, but he has no idea until he gets to Channel 52. Someone has managed to get Scott Evans out of bed and put him in front of the precinct where he is surrounded by tape, and what he says is chilling.

“ _Central City is reeling after what appears to be several deadly attacks on several places around the area_ ,” he says. “ _A woman in a flash of black lightning, similar to but not the same as Miss Miracle, has already – wait – reports are saying that the death toll may have gone up to ten_. _According to the latest report, all ten were snatched out of their beds and taken, before being left for dead at the Central City Police Department, Central City Picture News, and other locales. And – ladies and gentlemen, I’m getting reports that messages have been left with each locale, and they all form a warning_.”

Scott pauses as someone deciphers the message, and when he speaks again his voice is shaking. “ _Residents of Central City, I applaud you, because I never anger this easily. Your attempts to capture my kind are amusing, but now they must stop. There is so safety, no refuge, not respite. There is only Calamity. And you cannot escape it_.”

Barry shivers as Scott finishes reciting the message, his blood like ice, and that’s when it happens. There is a flash of black behind Scott, and suddenly the two people behind him are on the ground. It only takes a second, but Barry thinks he sees a womanly figure before it’s gone.

Barry’s heart is in his throat and his uncle coughs. “Barry, what’s a calamity?”

“The-” he chokes and swallows. “The opposite of a miracle.”

Scott has walked up to the doors, the cameraman is following, and both are shaking. And when Barry sees what they see, that’s when he starts too.

_All of your miracles are over, my dear citizens. Perhaps you should not have beaten her. It made it so much easier for me to break her when you were done. Merry Christmas._

And underneath the message that has been seared into the wall of the precinct, Miss Miracle’s emblem is pinned to the wall with a knife. A knife that is dripping with blood.

“ _W-witness reports_ ,” Scott stammers, “ _that Miss Miracle was indeed seen at the rooftop of Jitters earlier tonight. It is thought that she was responding to a distress signal, as she was calling out for someone upon her arrival. Going to video now…_ ”

As Barry watches, they cut to the video feed of the Jitters rooftop, and he sees Miss Miracle appear, step forward, and open her mouth to call for someone. Then the black lightning flashes, the woman grabs her around the neck, and they both disappear.

“Distress signal?” he frowns. “Who would…?”

 _I will always come when you call me, Barry_.

 _No_.

He races up to his room despite his uncle’s shouts, and tears apart his drawers, then his wardrobe, and then his room, but it’s gone. The watch is gone. The only thing that could call Miss Miracle to someone’s aid. To _his_ aid. “What did I do to you?” he whispers brokenly. “Miss Miracle, what did I do to you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT HAPPENED TO MISS MIRACLE?! hehe. thanks for reading, liking and commenting!


	7. A City in Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Central City is out of miracles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys like this! it's pretty angsty, but I'm proud of it.

 

Barry knows that his mother told him not to leave, and Great-Uncle Rudy is protesting even as they drive to the police station, but he has to go. He has to tell them that he – he’s the one who-

“My God,” Great-Uncle Rudy breathes as they make their way across town. Central City has turned into a ghost town in the past few hours, with nobody on the street but a few patrol cars. All of the lights are out, all of the curtains drawn, and alarms and sirens are blaring. This is what Calamity has done to Central City in a few short hours, and there is no Miss Miracle to save them. Because of them.

Because of _him_.

They get to the police station to find it in utter chaos, with news reporters still swarming but refusing to get close to the entrance out of fear, even though someone has already taken the knife and Miss Miracle’s emblem out of it. The message, though, is still seared into the wood. He and Rudy get out of the car and Barry pulls him towards the entrance, pushing past all the people jostling around the precinct, and then he hears someone call his name. “Barry? What the – What are you doing here?”

Ted the security guy pulls them both inside – nobody is pushing anymore but the chaos is louder because everyone’s running around. He sees some of the officers in riot gear heading out, some clustered in groups around a map of the city, and the head of the fire department is here and is having a loud conversation with three of the detectives. Barry whips his head around, heart in his chest, looking for his mother or Patty or _anyone_ to help him, and that’s when he sees the Captain, in the middle of what looks like a heated conversation.

“…no contingency plan for this, Mayor Bellows,” she’s telling her, hands raking through her hair. She huffs. “Well, ma’am, I didn’t agree to the task force, especially with the parameters that the DA’s office set – and in any case it doesn’t matter because Miss Miracle is-”

But even she can’t say it. Because if Miss Miracle is dead, then where does that leave them?

“Miss Miracle appears to be in grave danger herself,” she finishes, pressing a hand to her temple. “Yes, I’m working with the fire department, but I really don’t want to take any drastic action until we’ve calmed people down and gotten the situation under control. No, I don’t know who it’s targeting, but I have people looking into it. Fine. Goodbye, Mayor Bellows.” She hangs up, curses, and then looks up. “Barry? What are you doing here?”

“I need-” he cuts himself off and takes a deep breath. “I need to talk to someone. Where’s my mom? What’s going on?”

Captain Singh shrugs in helplessness and frustration as more cops leave the precinct in clusters, clad in riot gear and bigger guns. “This thing – _Calamity_ – it just came out of nowhere and started attacking people. People in their homes, people out at restaurants, random police on the street-”

“Police?” Barry interrupts, his mind going to his mother and Patty. “Why is it attacking police?”

“We have no idea, not yet, it-”

“BARTHOLOMEW HENRY ALLEN!”

Barry knows his mother’s voice anywhere, and he knows even before he turns to her that she’s furious and – yeah, there it is. She’s marching towards him with a gun slung over her shoulder and her green eyes awash with worry and anger. Shawn Baez, the guy from the DA’s office, is following her, his shirt rumpled. “ _I told you to stay at home_! Where’s your Uncle? Rudy, I swear to-”

“It’s not his fault, mom,” he says, cutting her off, but she won’t listen.

“The _hell_ it isn’t – I should shoot you both right now-”

“Nora-” the captain tries.

“-running out of the house when something this big is out here-”

“Nora!” Uncle Rudy snaps. “Barry isn’t an idiot and he was watching the news right along with me – if he’s coming here to talk to you when we could both be safe at home, don’t you think it’s serious?”

Nora lets out a breath. “You have one minute. And then I am chaining you to this desk, both of you, understand?”

“Okay,” he nods. He looks around and sighs. “Before, when I said I didn’t have a way to contact Miss Miracle, I lied.”

“You _lied_?” the Captain demands. “Why would you lie?”

“Because I didn’t want to be the one responsible for hurting her,” he says. “But I do have a way of contacting her – or, I did. I had this watch, and whenever I was in trouble or I needed her, I’d press it and then-”

“Oh, God,” Shawn interrupts. “Oh my God. He did it.”

“Did what?” Nora demands. “What the hell is going on?”

Shawn is shaking and the blood has rushed from his face, turning his lips ashen. “Eddie knew – Barry, Eddie knew that you were lying. He told me afterwards that he thought that you were hiding something, because when we asked you, you kept fiddling with that watch.”

Nora raises her eyebrows. “Because Thawne’s a detective instead of an ADA now?”

“You don’t understand – this is what he lives for. He’s _obsessed_ with finding Miss Miracle, and he knew you’d be the key. He asked Patty about your watch and she said that it was new, and then he asked you, Nora-”

“And I said he bought it for himself,” she breathes, and Barry frowns. “What are you saying, Shawn? What happened?”

“He – He went to the DA’s office to tell him,” he answers, his eyes flitting nervously around the group. “And the DA said that since Miss Miracle was a metahuman and that she’d put civilians and law enforcement in danger, and Barry had technically lied to an officer of the law that he approved a warrant that said Eddie could go in and find it.”

“You _broke into my home_?” Nora demands, all traces of calm and respect gone. Barry won’t be surprised if she hefts up the gun she’s holding and shoots the ADA right there. “Damn it, Baez, my son sleeps there! What in the hell is wrong with you?”

“When?” Barry wants to know, his voice like ice. “When did you do it?”

“Technically, we didn’t break in,” Shawn says nervously, eyeing the gun in Nora’s hand, “we were interviewing Barry, and-”

“You didn’t show Nora the warrant,” Captain Singh snaps in a tired voice. “Really? Is this what the DA’s office is doing now? Lying to get into people’s homes?”

“I’m not defending it – I tried to object!” the ADA said defensively. “But I don’t have a lot of power, and he threatened my family!”

“Shawn, get your boss on the phone, right now,” the Captain calls. More police swarm in and she looks at Nora. “Damn it, they need backup. Justin, call in the officers you haven’t already. Nora, I promise we’ll get to the bottom of his, we will, but-”

“I’ll go,” she says tightly, glaring at Shawn. “It’s either that or shoot this idiot in the face. Barry, for the love of God, _please-_ ”

“I’ll stay,” he says quickly, though his fingers are clenching into fists and she’s shaking with the urge to punch Shawn in the face – or go out and hunt down Eddie Thawne and punch _him_ in the face. “Maybe I can help Justin makes some of those calls?”

“Thanks, Barry. The riot squad are already out there in case she comes back to any of her previous spots, but we’re going to need all the help we can get, and we’ve got people identifying the dead bodies she left.”

Barry does as he’s told, making calls and tries to calm the growing panic in his stomach, which intensifies when he closes his eyes and sees Calamity snatch up Miss Miracle. But then he starts to realise something. “Captain, none of these people are picking up – it’s going straight to voicemail.”

The captain frowns. “Justin, are the phone lines out?”

“No, ma’am, not that I can see.”

Right then another offices runs up to them, shaking and sweating. “Ma’am,” she says, holding a piece of paper, “you’re going to want to see this.”

The Captain frowns, taking the list and scanning it. “Range, Fillion, Stackhouse…these are all officers. Officers that aren’t picking up their phones. What does this mean?”

“Not all of them are officers, ma’am. That’s Counsellor Chance – he was on the news last week saying that metahumans should be put down. And this is Victor Vale, he works for CCPN and ran an editorial on how metahumans almost destroyed Gotham last year. And there, at the bottom, that’s-”

“Eddie Thawne,” the captain finishes. “Perez. What is this?”

Perez takes a deep breath. “Ma’am, these are the people who have been reported dead or missing in the past four hours.”

“ _What_? But why would-”

Barry realises it first. “Justin, who are all the people on the metahuman task force?”

“What?”

“The metahuman task force!” Barry repeats. “Who’s involved with it?”

Justin blinks. “The captain, your mother, Patty, the DA’s office, and…all the officers on that list.”

“She’s targeting the people who are targeting her,” the Captain realises. “Justin, I want a list of everyone who’s involved in the task force, including the people who were on the news in the past month talking about it. Perez, find Lobo and make calls to all of those people, make sure they’re safe. I-”

But they’re interrupted by a crash and a gust of chill wind and that’s when Barry sees her for the first time, the woman in the black lightning, and she’s holding Shawn by the neck. All of the are frozen in place – literally, frozen in place, none of them can move, and she tips her head at them. She speaks, and her voice seems to vibrate in his bones and in his mind, but Barry knows that everyone else can hear it, too.

 _Nice work, figuring it out_ , she intones. _See if you can save the rest. This one, though…_ And she pulls Shawn’s writhing body, scratching at her hands as he fights to get free. _This one’s mine_.

And she’s gone.

***

The precinct is an explosion of chaos and frenzy and shouting as everyone tears around trying to find all of the people on the list. Barry is shaking with fear but tries to keep himself busy, pinning up pictures of all the people they needed to contact. His heart constricts when he sees Patty’s face go up next to his mother’s, but is comforted by the fact that she’s visiting her mother in National City and so is nowhere near any of this. They’ve called his mother back to the station and now she’s on her way; Barry keeps glancing back to the entrance expecting to see her red hair swaying as she runs towards him.

The night has worn on and it’s now around four in the morning, but as far as they can tell the attacks are not slowing down. People soon start to figure it out, that Calamity, whoever she is, is targeting the people involved with the task force, though nobody knows why it’s not _everyone_. After all, Perez, Lobo and the Captain were all involved themselves, but they’re all fine. The Captain clears her throat then and Barry is snapped out of his worry.

“Alright, everyone, listen up,” the Captain calls. “I’m gonna do a roll call and I want the status and location of each of the people I mention, understand? Barry’s going to write them down and we can figure out what the hell we’re going to do next.” She nods. “Ready, Barry?”

“Ready, Captain.”

“Okay. Allen, Nora.”

Barry’s heart tightens again but Perez gives him a reassuring nod. “She’s safe and on route back to the station. The riot police are covering her.”

“Anthony, James.”

“Present.”

“Bricker, Steve.”

“With family in Metroplis, he’s safe.”

“Brody, Alexandra.”

“Currently guarding the mayor, the riot squad will be circling back to pick her up.”

“Bundt, Ryan.”

There is a pregnant pause before Perez speaks, her voice unsteady. “Officer Bundt’s body was found outside Iron Heights Prison two hours ago.”

Barry had been marking names and locations, but now his hand stills. Ryan was one of the sweetest officers, a new recruit from the police academy that sometimes was even more clumsy than Iris. The Captain sighs, jaw clenching. “Has someone informed the family?”

“There’s an officer and a detective out there right now, ma’am.”

They continue, the tone even more subdued. Most of the people on the list have been contacted or located, or are so far away that they’re not in any danger. They get farther down the list and the captain sends out more groups to find the people and bring them here while he gets a plan together with the mayor.

“…alright, Vance, Melinda.”

“Present.”

“Watson, Eric?”

“En route.”

“And…West, Iris.”

Silence. Everyone looks at each other. “Where’s West?” the Captain demands. “Has anyone been able to contact her?”

“No, ma’am, and we’ve been trying for an hour.”

Barry’s frowns. “What does it matter? She’s not on the task force.”

“No, she is,” Detective Anthony counters. “Iris is the only CSI here – she’s technically on _every_ force we care to make up. Her name would be all over the reports, and if Calamity can find everyone else…”

“B-But she’s just a CSI,” Barry stammers, his heart starting to race. “Nobody would want anything with a CSI.”

Everyone shared a look. “Well, she’s the one who would prove that a certain person was at a crime scene.”

He starts to shake. “But, well, I mean – she’s in Keystone,” he says desperately, looking around. “She’s with her family on vacation. Maybe you’re trying the wrong number.”

“No, Barry, that’s what I’m saying,” Justin tells him. “She’s not in Keystone. I got in contact with someone-” he looks down at his clipboard, “–Valerie West-Pope, and she said that she left a few hours ago. Took an Uber back to Central.”

“Have you tried her cell?”

Justin bites his lip. “It was dead.”

Barry lets out a choked sound and the Captain rolls her shoulders. “Alright, get someone out on patrol over to her apartment, see if we can find her, and put out an alert amongst the officers – _not_ on TV, we don’t want anyone targeting her.”

“I’m coming with you,” Barry says quickly.

“Barry, no-”

“I want to come, she’s my friend-”

“Barry, there are very few things on this earth I am afraid of,” the Captain says. “Nora Allen after I’ve lost her kids is one of them. We’ll find her, okay?”

Barry’s finding it hard to breathe, and he knows that he’s about to have a panic attack and he hasn’t had one since college, but Iris is missing and she’s the only one who can calm him down. He sinks into a chair, shaking, as everything turns foggy around him. But then someone says that the street where Iris’ apartment building is _just survived_ an attack from Calamity but no one can find Iris, and he doesn’t love her like that and he’s sorry but if he has to see Iris’ bleeding body and Iris’ broken glasses again he’s going to lose it, he will, because Miss Miracle is one thing, she has superpowers, but the thought of small, fragile Iris against that – that _thing_ -

“Barry? Barry, honey, look at me.”

His mother’s face swims into view, and it must be that thing where someone who cares about you makes you strong or something because he gets up and starts pacing. The officers are still swirling in and out of the precinct, barking orders at each other. “Mom, they can’t find Iris,” he says, his voice shaking. He rakes his hands through his hair. “They can’t find her, we have to do something, we have to get the riot police or the state troopers or the army or _something_.”

Nora’s eyebrows knit together. “Barry, we _are_ doing something.”

“ _It’s not enough_!” he explodes. “She – she’s small and she might have broken her glasses or something and you know how forgetful she is! What if she hurt herself and nobody will be able to find her?” He wipes at his eyes, frustrated. “I could do it myself, I could go and find her, I-”

“Barry, you’re not a cop.”

“I know that! She’s just so _..._ ” he signs, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve seen that thing in action, mom, and Iris still kind of screwy from the lightning and she might not be able to run, or it…” Barry can’t speak, not anymore, because he is two miles and one year – almost to the day, isn’t that ironic? – away at Central City Memorial West, when they called him in the middle of the night to say that Iris had been struck by lightning. But it’s different now because now no one can find her and there’s a maniac with a grudge against police out to kill them all, and he’s just realised that for everything that has hurt Iris West over the past fourteen years, he’s been the one hurting her the most, everyday. He’s one of the things that made her this fragile.

“And Miss Miracle,” he says. “The watch – it’s my fault that she’s hurt, that Calamity has her-”

“Barry, it’s nobody’s fault but whoever that monster is.” His mother studies him, and he realises how tired she looks. There are bags under her eyes and she seems to have aged ten years in three hours. He reaches his arms out and she hugs him without hesitation, and then sighs. “Barry,” she says, letting him go. “I have to tell you something.”

Barry blinks, alarmed. The last time she looked like this, she’d been telling him that his father’s parents wanted to talk to him. He’d refused, of course. “What is it?”

“It’s about Iris.”

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

Nora hesitates, struggling with the words, before there’s a burst of noise behind her and they both turn to look.

“Because I _work_ here, you idiot, get that camera _out of my face_ -”

Iris pushes past the swarms of the reporters to stand in front of them, but she isn’t standing for long because Barry crosses the atrium in a few quick strides and is crushing her into a hug. “You-,” he breathes into her hair, “ _you scared me_.”

“I’m sorry,” she says into his chest, her voice muffled, “I know, I’m sorry.”

He puts her down and cradles her face. “Don’t you dare scare me like that again, understand?”

“O-Okay,” Iris blinks at him, a little breathless, before biting her lip and looking down at her shoes, and it hits him then. Last week she told him she loved him, and this is one of the things that hurts her. He lets go and she folds her arms, protecting herself. Barry swallows.

“Where were you?” he asks. “What happened?”

“It – Nora, I’m fine,” she says as his mother walks up. She’s looking at Iris oddly and Barry frowns. “Really, I’m fine. My phone died, that’s all. Jeremiah got drunk and started insulting my mom, so I decided I didn’t really want to spend Christmas with them. I got home this afternoon and I was going to come over to your place, but-” she pauses, glancing at Barry, “I was kind of tired, so I thought I’d see you tomorrow.”

Barry is not surprised. Jeremiah and Bernadette – Iris hasn’t called them her grandparents since her father died – have never been Francine’s biggest fans. “I saw on the news what happened,” she continued carefully, “and then I got an Uber here, but then the driver got freaked out so I had to walk the rest of the way.”

Nora is still looking at Iris strangely, but she just shakes her head and hugs her, her voice shaky with relief. “Thank god you’re alright.”

“Well, when you survive lightning…” she shrugs lightly. “Um, does the Captain need me?”

Barry looks around for her; in the midst of his panic attack, he hadn’t noticed where she went. Nora shrugs. “I don’t know yet, sweetheart. They took the emblem and the knife out of the door and have sent everything out to an external lab since you were on vacation, but she might want you to go to some of the crime scenes. Once we’ve figured out that Calamity isn’t attacking anymore.” Nora is still giving Iris a strange look, but she either doesn’t see it or ignores it.

“Any idea when we might be able to go back home?”

“I don’t know,” Barry shrugs. “Nobody’s said anything yet. But don’t worry, as soon as we can leave we can move you back into the house.”

Now it’s Iris’ turn to give him a strange look. “Why would I do that?”

Barry stares at her. “Iris, you can’t seriously be thinking of going back to your apartment.”

“Why not? I live there.”

“Yeah, and Calamity attacked your street!”

“Well, she obviously didn’t want me, did she?”

“You don’t know that! You’re still on the metahuman task force, you’re still on the list!”

“And moving back to the house will keep me safe?”

“You’re safer with us than you are alone!”

 “I can look after myself, Barry,” she snaps, eyes narrowed.

“You honestly think I’m going to let you go back there by yourself?”

“There’s no question of _letting_ me do anything, Barry, you’re not my-” And Iris cuts herself off and clenches her jaw, and Barry strongly suspects that all three of them know what she was about to say – _you’re not my boyfriend_. Because she loves him and he’s her best friend, and maybe that’s a boundary that they’ve blurred all these years. He’s also very aware that they were having a very loud argument in the middle of the precinct and that almost everyone is trying to pretend that they weren’t listening. Iris folds her arms.

“You’re not in charge of me, Barry,” she finishes quietly. “If I say I’m not moving back home, I’m not moving back home.”

“And you don’t need to,” the Captain says, coming out of her office. “According to my officers, there hasn’t been an attack in the last half hour, and no sightings. And the Mayor, fire department and state department have all come up with a plan.”

“A state of emergency?” someone asks, once everyone has gathered in the atrium.

“No, not that,” the captain says quickly as more hubbub starts. “There will be no judiciary changes, and no changes to state law. But this is a very real threat, and we need to be prepared.” She pauses. “Starting tomorrow, there will be a curfew on all businesses and establishments of seven pm, with the exception of emergency services. Everyone on this list will have an armed guard stationed outside their home and their place of work, and will be escorted to and from those areas as and when necessary. And the state troopers will be conducting an around the clock patrol of Central City, especially areas that were attacked this morning.”

The hubbub starts again as they start to figure out what that means, and the Captain walks up to him and his mother. “How are you both doing?”

“I’ve been better,” Nora admits dryly, “given that there’s a sociopathic killer after us.”

“Barry?”

“Captain, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have lied-”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she cuts him off. “The DA is lucky I’m not trying to get him investigated – the only reason that I’m not is because I now have at least half a dozen murder investigations on my hands because of this.” She glances around before her eyes come to rest on Iris. She’s putting her gear in her CSI bag and nodding as someone explains a crime scene to her, ready to head out. “And how’s Iris? This can’t be easy for her.”

“She’s being Iris,” Nora says. Barry looks between them.

“What do you mean?”

“Iris’ father, Barry. According to what Iris said when she was younger, this is the thing that was responsible.”

Barry stares at them both as it hits him like a freight train. _The woman in the lightning made her do it_. How many times has Iris told him that story? How many times has he seen her repeat it, over and over, until she was hoarse and tears were leaking from her eyes?

“This goes without saying, but-”

“We’ll keep an eye on her, Deidre,” his mother says, and the captain nods before telling them that she has more calls to make. His mother turns to him.

“Mom, Iris must be terrified, we should tell her to come back.”

“Barry, you know as well as I do that the more you tell Iris to do something, the less likely she’s going to want to do it,” she replies, shaking her head. “Right now she’s doing that thing she does when she’s scared.”

“Which is dig her heels in and refuse to listen to anyone else,” he says. “I think maybe she’s pretending that everything is fine so she can be allowed to stay on the case.”

“Exactly. This is the thing that ruined her life, but you’re right, she’s still very fragile, and this can’t be good for her. I need you to keep an eye on her, okay?”

Barry shrugs helplessly. Of course he’s going to keep an eye on her, she’s Iris. But – “I’m not sure we’re in the best place right now, mom.”

Nora doesn’t reply, instead watching Iris march out of the precinct in her leather jacket and her boots and her gear on her back, her face set in determination. And Barry still can’t figure out what the strange look on her face is. “Barry, you’ve been friends for twenty years. I know it’s going to be hard, but we can’t leave her alone in this. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The next twenty-four hours fly by in a haze of coffee and barked orders and people running in and out of the precinct. The mayor makes his announcement onscreen as the state troopers come to Central City in large tanks and trucks. Patty arrives at some point – between getting everyone coffee and food, he’s not entirely sure what time it is – and immediately straps on her gear and heads out again, and he wonders why every woman in his life insists on running into danger like they’re invincible. Calamity has not made any more appearances but people are still scared, and at random points during the day Iris shows up to make presentations about what she found at the crime scene. It’s not how they usually do things, but the captain wants everyone to know what they’re dealing with. Barry looks up when Iris starts talking about the knife and Miss Miracle’s emblem.

“The external lab was right,” she says quietly, showing everyone the knife and a slide of her findings, “there is a tracking device within the emblem, but the knife seems to have…severed it. Ahem, I couldn’t get prints off the knife, it seems to be a standard hunting knife that you can get in stores. The emblem was the same, which is surprising. It’s like it was bleached clean,” she adds. She studies it intently, almost as if she’s the only one in the room, and whispers to herself, “Why would it be _bleached clean_?”

When Iris turns over the emblem in her gloved hands, seeming to forget everyone else, the captain clears her throat. “Oh, sorry,” she says quickly. She puts down the emblem and presses a button on the slide. “The blood found on the knife and around the area belongs to Eddie Thawne, the ADA from the District Attorney’s office-”

“Eddie?” Nora demands. “Why would his blood be on the knife?”

“Does that mean he’s dead?” Patty asks, stricken. Iris takes off her glasses to clean them as she speaks.

“I won’t be able to tell that from this scene exclusively, or until we find more blood or a body. The blood spatter around the door and on the knife indicate that the knife was dipped in blood, rather than being used to stab someone. Besides which, Eddie’s body, like Shawn Baez’s and Miriam Farooq’s, still hasn’t been found, even though they were among the first to go missing.” She puts her glasses back on and presses another button, and Barry inhales as he sees a compilation of several of the bodies found at various scenes. “These are the bodies found last night and early this morning. As you can see, there’s no blood anywhere, but they’re definitely dead. We’re still waiting for the autopsy report, but there were no stab wounds or lacerations on any of their bodies.”

“So Calamity stabbed Eddie, dipped a knife in his blood, and used it pin Miss Miracle’s emblem to a wall?” Perez frowns. “Why do that?”

“Fear,” Barry answers, and everyone looks at him. He blushes slightly, but continues. He notices that Iris is looking at him intently. “Well, I mean, look at us. We’re here, we’re terrified, and we’ve just put a curfew in and trucks of state troopers are all over Central City right now. Miss Miracle is the closest thing that could defeat her, so it would make sense to make us all think that she’s dead.”

“Is she?” someone asks. “Dead?” Iris removes her gloves.

“All of the bodies found have been identified, and none of them have the physiological attributes or physical capabilities to be a metahuman. None of them are Miss Miracle.”

“Besides, Calamity came here to kidnap Shawn, to show us that she could do it,” Barry adds. Apparently, a criminal psychology undergraduate degree can actually come in useful. “She left messages and bodies all over the city. That’s the classic profile of a serial killer – someone who wants their kills known and feared. But she kidnapped Miss Miracle for a different reason.”

“For the fear,” Iris says quietly.

“Right,” Barry agrees. “For the fear. Unless we find a body, she’s probably not dead.”

Iris looks away from him then, studying her slides, and the captain nods. “Alright, everyone, those of you who have been on duty since yesterday please go home, we will be back bright and early tomorrow. Those of you who need armed guards escorting you home, I’m sorry but you’ll have to wait a few hours.”

Barry hangs around at the precinct until he and his mother are allowed to go home – everyone leaves in batches according to where they live, which is why Patty leaves before him – glad to be able to help a little. He’s been wracking his brains as to how he can possibly contact Miss Miracle, or how they can find her, but he’s not surprised that everyone’s concentrating on the civilians. He just can’t stop thinking about all the times she saved him, even when she was telling him to be more careful.

 _I will always come when you call me, Barry_.

But who’s going to come for _her_?

When they’re ready to leave he goes to say goodbye to Iris, who’s in her lab running analyses of things for everyone. “Iris?”

He quiets his voice, though, when he realises that she’s asleep on her desk, her small body rising and falling as she breathes (because unlike when they were kids and Barry had to sing her to sleep, Iris can now fall asleep anywhere, like a cat), her head turned to the side and her hair splayed over it. Barry pads quietly to her side and gently slides her glasses off her face and puts them in her case, because he knows that they’ll either dig into her face or fall off while she’s sleeping, and then she’ll crush them underneath her boots. She sighs softly as his fingers brush her skin, and Barry swallows when he sees a small cut just under her left cheekbone. He has no idea how she got that.

But then, there are probably a million things about her that he doesn’t know, if that confession was anything to go by.

Barry leaves her alone to sleep.

***

Central City remains in darkness for a long time.

Or at least, that’s what it feels like.

It’s odd, because Central City looks exactly the same, but it doesn’t. Not with the state troopers that patrol the area, or the riot police that are around the precinct, or the fact that some of the biggest locations in the city – the university, Jitters, Iron Heights – are still designated crime scenes. He’s lost count of the times he’s walked around and seen his mother or Patty or the captain at the scene giving people orders and asking questions, the state troopers in the back.

He goes to the university to get his test scores and figure out stuff for graduation and sees them there, he goes to work and sees them there, he goes to the precinct and sees them there. And the entire time, he’s flanked by a guard, and if he isn’t, it’s because he’s in a particularly high-risk area so that there are so many state troopers and riot police running around that nobody actually needs a personally armed guard.

Calamity’s plan has succeeded, though, because the fear is still there.

It’s in the way people whisper instead of talk now, the way they eye the crime scenes with their blue tape, the way their hands are shaking when Barry gives them their coffee. Everyone’s eyes are glued to the screen whenever there’s a new report – nobody new has died or gone missing, please stick the curfews, we are doing everything we can to locate this threat. But that’s not what people want to hear. No, what people want to hear is whether Miss Miracle is alive.

His theory that she isn’t dead, just captured, has gained traction, especially because Calamity has not left her body to be found. In fact, Calamity has not made a single appearance since her gift of Christmas terror and death. And even though no one is actually saying it, they all want Miss Miracle back. Even the people who were advocating for her to get captured are saying that they’d feel safer if they knew that she was flying around. Barry would feel vindicated, practically buzzing with indignation, but he was one of the people who was so terrified of her before, and after seeing what she had almost done to them, he wasn’t so sure that the task force was such a bad idea.

“Um,” a small voice breaks him out of his thoughts. “Americano, extra-”

“Shot,” he finishes. “I know, Iris. To go?”

Iris nods, hefting her gear strap over her shoulder as he gets her order. Barry casts about for something to say and fails, for the millionth time that week, and wants to throw something frustration. Because as much as his life has changed, what with the guards and the escorts and the curfews, he’d be almost completely fine if he and Iris were able to go back to the way they were.

Because he _knows_ now, and he can’t un-know it. He knows why Iris bites her cheek whenever Patty talks to Barry in front of her, why she always seems to be busy on Sundays when they all have dinner together, why she’s shy around him after he’s tickled her or picked her up or done one of the typical things that Barry does when he is around Iris. And why it is so hard for them now. It’s a tangible thing between them, her love for him, because it is so big and life-changing – no, life _defining_ , because she has only ever known that she’s loved people in relation to how she feels about Barry. No one else has ever come close; all her life, no one has ever come close.

And that…that is far too big for him to handle.

So they’re doing this, this awkward ignoring of the elephant in the room, and with how busy she’s been, it’s been okay. Okay-ish, anyway.

“Heading back to work?” he asks. Iris nods again, eyeing the cronuts underneath the cake dish, and opens her mouth. “Could I-”

“Of course, Iris.” He puts one in a bag for her and she gives him a small smile, and he smiles back. “How’s it going?”

“The captain doesn’t think there’ll be more attacks, but now we’ve moved onto how the people died,” she says. Barry nods – Patty had told him that autopsy reports confirmed that each one had died of a brain haemorrhage, which was odd because there were no signs of trauma or high blood pressure in any of them. “Apparently she – Calamity – induced some sort of brain bleed in all of them. Which isn’t terrifying at all, or anything.”

Barry nods, putting an extra cronut in. “You can move back. We still have your room-”

“That’s okay, Barry,” she interrupts, but there’s no irritation behind it (they’ve already apologised for the argument). “I’m fine where I am. Besides, I don’t think it would…it’s not the best idea.”

“Right,” he says, and tries to move on before it gets too awkward, which tends to happen in their conversations. “How are Colin and Chesca? I haven’t seen them in a while.”

“They’re kinda freaked out, obviously, but they’re good. I mean, the last big thing that happened in the city was the Particle Accelerator exploding, so they’re kind of glad no one is blaming them for that anymore.”

“Uh-huh.”

Iris shifts her bag and looks around again, and Barry sighs and hands her the order. It’s been one of their better interactions lately, so he’s at least grateful for that. “It’s getting late – when are you heading home?”

“I’ll probably sleep at the precinct,” she admits, shrugging. “You remember when I started there and I was really excited because I had my own personal shower and tiny bedroom thing? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s so they can keep the CSI locked up in the lab like Rapunzel in her tower.”

Barry frowns. “Iris, it’s not like this is _Tangled_ – you have stash of brownies in every area of that place.”

Iris waves a dismissive hand. “Not the point.”

He grins at her. “Kind of the point.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“I’m always on your side, Iris, but the brownies don’t really mesh well with your whole ‘CCPD is torturing the CSI’ shtick.”

“Asshole,” she mutters under her breath, and he laughs. And then it’s ruined, of course.

“Are you heading back to the precinct?” she asks. “I can wait for you, if you want.”

“No, not yet, I’m meeting-” he cuts himself off and clears his throat. “Uh, I’m meeting Patty and then we’re, uh-”

“Sure,” she interrupts, shrugging, and Barry thinks that’s worse because he _knows_ she is hurting, that he’s the one hurting her, but she doesn’t even show it on her face. She just smiles and wishes him goodbye. Which means that he hasn’t recognised what she looks like when she’s hurting – _really_ hurting – for years. Sometimes he’s mad at her, because she is the one who’s changed the rules and made them like this, but mostly he’s just mad at himself for not figuring it out.

Ever since the Calamity attack, Iris has run herself ragged (because if she was the only CSI before, they certainly can’t anyone else to work for them now), because she’s the only one who can analyse the crime scenes. She’s also there around the city when he’s walking around, instructing people were to stand and where _not_ to stand, or giving presentations to people at the precinct so people know what’s going on. Barry knows without even talking to her that her dogged determination is mostly to do with catching her father’s killer than anything else, and even though he has made it clear that he’s still there for her, she’s still pretending that she’s fine. He knows that she’ll stop and break eventually, and that’s when he usually comforts her, but he’s not sure whether they can get back to that. A selfish part of him wants to believe that she is fine, that she won’t break, because he is not sure, with the thing between them, that he is allowed to do that anymore.

It’s just that she always seems so _close_. Like when he’s at the precinct and she smiles at him, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes and then she runs off to do this analysis or that DNA test. Or when his mother gets home and tells him that Iris hasn’t left the precinct in three days. Or when she’s at Jitters during rush hour, mountains of work piled around her, and she just takes her glasses off and rubs both of her eyes tiredly with the palms of her hands, reminding him achingly of when they were both children and she was trying not to cry about something. And he would go comfort her right now, he would, but how much of her pain is about him?

How much of her pain has _always_ been about him?

So he does this, this weird ignoring thing, and hopes that whatever is between them doesn’t break like Central City has.

***

Barry knows he shouldn’t. And he knows it probably won’t work. But it’s Tuesday and it’s their tradition and he needs to know whether she’s alive or not. So he goes to the roof of Jitters and waits. And waits. And waits.

It doesn’t work, of course, but he’d feel worse if he didn’t try. It’s been almost a month since Calamity’s attack, they’re still looking for the missing people, and the curfews and guards are still around, but Miss Miracle is not. People are always asking him about where she is and whether she’s contacted him, but he never has an answer for them, because he doesn’t know himself.

“Barry?”

He blinks. “Huh?” Chesca looks at him.

“I said, is there a dress code for your graduation?”

“Oh. Uh, no, wear whatever you want.”

“You probably shouldn’t tell Chesca that,” Iris laughs. “Pretty certain she’ll just show up in a onesie.”

Chesca throws a bit of muffin at her friend. “You’re just jealous you’re not cool enough to pull off a onesie.”

“I think ‘cool’ and ‘onesie’ in the same sentence is an oxymoron,” Colin remarks, and Chesca rolls her eyes.

“Like I’m going to trust the opinion of the guy that’s allergic to fun.”

Barry laughs along with them. The curfew is about to hit and they’ve come to wait with him so they can be escorted home. Chesca and Colin, being low-risk citizens, will just walk home, but Iris and Barry have to take a police escort back to their homes. Everyone looks at his phone as it pings, and he mutes it silently. Iris raises an eyebrow. “Everything cool?”

“Yeah, it’s just people asking where Miss Miracle is.” He scoffs. “Like I’d know, anyway.”

Iris stirs her milkshake thoughtfully, not saying anything, and Chesca clears her throat. “Do you think she’s dead?”

“I don’t think so,” he says. “It’s like I said, if she was dead, Calamity would probably show us her body.”

“I think she escaped,” Chesca says. “It’s Miss Miracle. Didn’t you see that thing she did with the boats on the pier?”

“That was pretty cool,” Barry admits. “I just don’t know how to get her to come back.”

“Maybe it would help if she knew people wanted her back,” Colin suggests. “What do you think, Iris?”

Iris, who Barry has noticed hasn’t said anything, looks at them. “I think that our escort’s here and I need to go home and get some sleep, or I’m going to get fired tomorrow for showing up late. I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” she adds to Chesca and Colin, and then walks outside to wait for Barry. The two of them share a pained look and Barry sighs.

“It’s not you guys. It’s just, you know, Calamity, and her dad-”

“We know,” Chesca says. “It’s just been hard on all of us, I guess.”

“Do you really mean that?” Barry asks Colin. “You think Miss Miracle would come back if more people believed in her?”

Colin, for some reason, looks at the door where Iris has just exited. “I’m a scientist, Barry, but science wouldn’t be the same without people believing in it. I think heroes are the same, superpowers or not.”

Iris and Barry live on different sides of the city, so they have to drop Barry off first before they take Iris home. They are silent, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence, with Barry thinking of what Chesca and Colin said. When they get to his house, and the police go in to do their usual sweep of the perimeter, he turns to Iris. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, Barry,” she yawns. “Just tired.” (And he can’t stop the little niggle of doubt, because she always says that, and he’s starting to wonder whether she’s so good at lying about her feelings that he’ll never know she’s upset unless she tells him).

“I think we got the last of the crime scenes, though, so maybe I don’t have to shower at work anymore,” she continues.

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s up?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re being all serious-thinky Barry,” she says, smiling and pointing to his forehead. “What’s going on up there?”

He shrugs. “Just thinking about what Colin and Chesca said. What do you think?”

Iris sighs, looking away from him. “Actually, I think Miss Miracle is done.”

“You think she’s dead?”

“No, done. The whole city hated her because she attacked you and Patty, so then the DA approved a crazy plan to get her captured and then put in prison. Then Calamity shows up and kills half the task force and kidnaps her in front of the whole city. I’m with you, Barry, I don’t think she’s dead.” She shrugs. “I think she’s…done.”

Barry stares at her. When Iris puts it like that, he’s not surprised. If he’d gone through what Miss Miracle had gone through, he’d be done too. “But she’s still Miss Miracle,” he says. “She has to know that people want her back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m _sure_. I mean, I want her back. I’m pretty sure the whole precinct wants her back. It’s not a stretch to assume the city feels that way, too.” Iris looks up at him.

“Really?”

“Really.” Then something in Barry clicks just as the police come back out. One of them looks at her. “Ready, Iris?”

“Sure,” she replies, and then looks at Barry. “You okay?”

“I’m great,” he says, grinning slowly. “Actually, I have an idea to get Miss Miracle back.”

“Barry-”

“Hey, don’t knock it till you…know what my plan is,” he finishes lamely. “Whatever, it’s going to work. You’ll see.”

Barry races inside his house and opens up his computer, clicking to his blog and opening up a new post. Maybe they were right, and she just needed everyone to know that they all still believed in her.

That _he_ still believed in her.

 _Citizens of Central City, we have failed Miss Miracle_ , he types, _And we need to get her back_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you all liked that! don't worry, you'll eventually discover how Iris escaped. also, i'd appreciate if you guys told me if you like where this story is going - sometimes i'm not feeling it so i want to see if it's worth continuing. thanks for reading, liking and commenting! ;)


	8. The Death and Life of Miss Miracle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry experiences the best of times and the worst of times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i really appreciate all the love i got for this, and thank you to all the people who took the time to comment and say what they liked (and what they didn't - that helps too!) more stuff to say at the end!

“ _I love Miss Miracle because_ …”

“ _Miss Miracle is the best thing to happen to Central City_ …”

“ _There was this one time that Miss Miracle saved me_ …”

Barry rubs his eyes blearily and clicks through all the messages, before organising them into one post. Honestly, sometimes he wonders why he stared this project, because all that’s happened is that he’s lost about a third of his sleep. He remembers to click back to his notes when his professor is making a summary of the lecture, and then starts to pack up his stuff. But it never ends, because right because he’s getting up to leave, he gets about a million alerts on his phone.

_Miss Miracle once saved me from a burning building #WeLoveMM_

_I once saw her lift five cars with her mind #WeLoveMM_

_#WeLoveMM because she saved my kids’ school bus from crashing! What a hero!_

He really was going to have to turn off that alert, but since his phone was connected to his blog, every tweet that came up on that feed also showed up on his phone. He was going to have to find the copies of _Blogging for Dummies_ and _Twitter for Dummies_ that had started all of this, or he wasn’t going to get any sleep in the run up to his graduation.

Barry shifts his bag as he waits for his armed guard to show up and escort him to work. In the few weeks since Calamity’s attack, people have slowly been trickling back to work and school and life. There are still state troopers patrolling the area, but most of the crime scenes have been cleared up and people have even stopped being so fearful, stopped mentioning Calamity in every conversation.

“Um, Barry, right?” someone asks, and Barry looks up from his phone. There is a student from one of his journalism seminars – Michelle, he thinks her name is – clutching her shoulder bag with a timid expression. “You’re Barry Allen. The guy with the Miss Miracle blog.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Can I help you with something?”

“I’m not going to ask you where she is, or anything,” she says quickly. “I know you don’t know that. I just, um, she – Miss Miracle saved my family’s life a couple of months ago. Do you remember the boat party on the pier?”

Barry frowns briefly. “Yeah, I think so. The boat’s engine blew, there was a fire…”

“It was my parents’ anniversary,” she tells him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “My older brother and I rented this big boat for them, and we got our whole family from all over the country for the party. But then about halfway through the engine made this big shuddering noise and then caught fire.”

Barry nods – he remembers this, since it was on the news for a while and no one was allowed to go anywhere near the pier because of the smoke. Even the fire department are still checking all the boats for any potential problems. Michelle continues, her voice shaking a little.

“We were in the middle of the Central City Sound, there was no way the fire department were going to get there in time. They said they were on their way, but it would take a while for them to get a rescue boat or a helicopter out there before the whole thing went under. But then Miss Miracle showed up and-” Michelle shakes her head in wonder. “She got sixty people off a burning boat by herself, and none of us were killed. _None_. She left before anyone could say thank you-”

“She always does,” Barry laughs fondly, stopping himself from saying ‘did’. “It’s kind of her thing.”

“Right. But I – we all wanted to say thank you, so we made this video for her. I know you wanted people to upload them to the site,” she adds quickly, seeing the look on his face. She fishes out a flash drive, and a piece of paper with her name and number on it. “But, um, it started out just me and my brother and my parents, and then Uncle Bob and Aunt Pam got involved, then my cousins and, well, it got long. So you can edit and cut stuff out if you want. We just wanted to thank her, and you’re doing this whole big thing to get her back, so…”

Barry takes the flash drive and puts it with his laptop. “Thanks, Michelle. I’ll watch this as soon as I can.”

She smiles gratefully and goes to leave, but then turns back, her expression worried. “You, um, you don’t think she’s gone, do you? I mean, she’ll be back eventually, right?”

Barry sighs helplessly. “I hope so.”

***

His armed guard shows up not long after that, and the drive to Jitters is so short that he has a while before his shift starts, so he boots up his laptop and starts to watch Michelle’s video.

It’s the first time someone has physically handed him a flash drive for this project (which is slowly taking over his life, he’s lucky he has only one more class before this is over), but he’s had a lot of people come up to him and ask whether they can upload pictures of themselves, asking if they can write poems, asking what they can do to help.

Asking what they can do to get Miss Miracle back.

He left Iris and the others and spent all night coming up with ideas to get her to come out of wherever she’s hiding, which everyone is now convinced is the truth because the police haven’t managed to find her body yet. He thought about what Colin and Chesca said, about people believing in her, and what Iris had said about her being done because of everything that had happened to her. It was understandable that she was hiding, then, but that didn’t mean that people still wanted her gone – especially with a psychopathic killer running around stabbing people and then helpfully delivering video messages about it.

So he asked that people send in messages and stuff thanking her for saving them, or that they hoped she was alright. The first couple of days had been manageable, with people sending him messages that he could just upload himself. But then something happened – the message board exploded, so much so that he had to buy _Blogging for Dummies_ so that they went straight on the site, and he had to start a hashtag - _#WeLoveMM_ – after the site crashed three times in the first week. Now it was all people could talk about, since it seemed like everyone had been saved by Miss Miracle at some point.

Too bad it isn’t working.

Barry sighed as the video started playing. Michelle hadn’t been kidding – not only was her family _huge_ , but they apparently had a lot to say about Miss Miracle. Her grandparents talked about how much they wished someone like her had been around when they were young, her older brother thought it was cool that her powers defied all logic, and her parents thanked her for making their anniversary memorable in addition to saving their lives. By the time Barry gets to Michelle’s two little cousins singing a – completely out of tune and not really rhyming – song about how much they love her, complete with makeshift Miss Miracle costumes, he’s tearing up. Just a little. He doesn’t even cut anything out – just uploads the whole thing in all its its sweet, gushing glory.

But it isn’t working. Miss Miracle either doesn’t see it or she doesn’t care, which Barry doesn’t believe both because it made the news this week and she doesn’t seem like the kind to just ignore what people are doing for her. Barry doesn’t want to believe that the reason she hasn’t showed up or replied is because she’s really died, because that feels too much like they’ve lost.

And that means Calamity has won.

***

Barry goes to the precinct when his shift is over to wait for his mother, not surprised that the place is still busy and tense. Officers and detectives swan in and out, all talking about the state troopers and the riot police and the fact that crime is rising. With Miss Miracle gone, the task force is the only thing left to defend people against metahumans, but since everyone is too terrified to even whisper the goddamn word after Calamity’s attack, there are hundreds of fires to put out all over Central City.

He barely sees his mother or Patty, both of whom are drowning in work, and he can’t remember a time when he saw Iris that wasn’t her running into Jitter’s for coffee and food before running out again. Nobody has found any of the people who are still missing, because everyone is concentrating on the man who can teleport but can’t do anything else, or the person sending out sonic booms, or the person who can throw lightning. Or, his personal favourite, Captain Cold and Heatwave, who he’d just put down to a couple of lunatics if they both weren’t so dangerous.

“Barry,” the captain says when she spots him. “How are you? Everything alright?”

Barry shrugs and smiles easily. “One day at a time, right?”

“Right, right. Listen, Barry…” She takes him off to the side, away from all the noise, and looks at him. “This…thing you’re doing for Miss Miracle. This project.”

“Yeah, it’s just messages and stuff.”

“Could I give a verbal statement? Is that alright?”

Barry blinks at the captain once. “S-Sure. Yeah, that’s fine. Let me just get my recorder…”

The captain waits patiently while he fishes it out and presses record. “Anything? I can say anything?”

“Anything you want,” he assures her. “It doesn’t have to be fancy; I’ll just type it up and put it on the website.”

“Okay. Well, ah, I just wanted to say, Miss Miracle, that we greatly appreciate all that you’ve done for us in the past. I know it may not seem like it, but we are eternally grateful. And I can speak for all of Central City Police Department when I say that we would love to have you back. If you can.”

Barry nods, swallowing, and turns off the tape recorder. She looks at him, thinking.

“She saved me once, you know,” she says quietly. “I was crossing the street and talking to Bobbi on the phone, and I guess I wasn’t looking where I was going because I almost got hit by a car. Miss Miracle came out of nowhere and teleported me to the other side of the street. I think she kind of smiled at me.”

“Sounds like her,” he says, smiling ruefully. Just then one of the detectives walked up.

“Barry,” Eric says, and he nods in return. “How’s it going? Is there something you need?”

“No, I’m just waiting for my mom.”

“Oh, she should be back any minute, she just went to go talk to the fire department about something. Hey,” he adds, proffering a folder, “if you’re going up there to see Iris, could you give this to her for me? She keeps forgetting that I need this done by tomorrow.”

The captain rolls her eyes. “I swear, I have no idea how West remembers to get up in the mornings. Twenty bucks says she’s forgotten she’s supposed to be heading out on a case with me at the ironworks in a few minutes. I’m sorry, Barry, I know she’s your friend, but I don’t know how I haven’t fired her by now.”

“It’s the eyes,” Eric tells them. “Seriously, have you ever seen Iris give you that look? All big puppy dog eyes behind those glasses of hers? I swear, she can convince you that she’s in love with you when she looks at you like that. Why do you think we all walk off the minute we stop yelling at her?”

They all laugh even though Iris has been giving him that look their whole lives, and even the people who work with her know what it means. “I can give it to her, no problem,” he says.

“Thanks, Barry,” Eric says. “I’ll send your mom up when she gets here.”

It’s been a while since he’s walked into Iris’ lab and she’s actually been there. They aren’t avoiding each other, not really, they’ve both just been really busy, but they haven’t spoken about what she told him at Christmas. She seems exactly the same, though – it’s him that feels it in the air when they’re around each other. Sometimes he feels like it’s easier to just not deal with it. Which would be fine except that he misses her far too much.

Things have never been this weird between them. He’s never had a problem that he couldn’t talk to Iris about, and it’s one of the things that he’s always loved about their relationship, but maybe this is where it’s become infallible. Because the one person he wants to talk to about the fact that his best friend is in love with him is his best friend.

 _Do you still love me_?

He catches himself thinking it at random times when they’re talking. Does she still love him when she nods a good morning as she gets her coffee? When she’s laughing at his bad jokes? When she’s fixing the mess he’s made of his computer for the millionth time? Sometimes he wants to ask but he never does, partly because he doesn’t want to make things awkward, and partly because he doesn’t want to know the answer. Because he still hasn’t figured out what it means that Iris loves him. “Yo, Iris.”

“Barry?” She’s watching something on her laptop; when she sees him she takes off her glasses and wipes her eyes. “What’s up? What are you doing here?”

“Eric wanted me to give this to you,” he replies, handing it to her. “Says he needs it by tomorrow.”

“Oh, wow, I totally forgot about that. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Hey, are you okay? What are you watching?”

“I’m fine,” she replies, putting her glasses back on. She gestures at the laptop, laughing. “I was just, um, watching the video you put up about Miss Miracle and the people she saved from that boat accident. The singing twins are really adorable.”

“Yeah, they are,” he agrees sitting down. “Don’t worry, I was crying too. It’s already got over three hundred hits and it’s only been an hour.”

Iris nods, biting her lip. “I mean, I knew what you were doing and I knew it was popular, I just never knew it had gotten so big. I never knew people…cared that much about Miss Miracle, I guess.”

Barry laughs. “What, are you kidding? Half the stuff on the site isn’t even half the stuff I get sent.”

Iris blinks at him. “R-Really?”

“Totally. I have video messages, voice messages, people _keep sending me poetry_ – do they think I’m going to sit there reciting sonnets to her?”

Iris laughs softly. “Wow, that’s… incredible.”

“Right? But, I mean, I kept thinking about what you guys said, about people not believing in her anymore, and I had this idea, and I guess people believe in her more than we all thought.” He sighs. “But I guess she doesn’t care.”

Iris flips her hair out of her face. “I’m – Barry, I’m sure that’s not true. Of course she cares.”

“Well, then where is she?”

Iris smiles helplessly, shrugging. “Good question.”

“Anyway,” he says, shaking his head. “Enough about me and my job as Miss Miracle’s social media flunkie. What’s been going on with you?”

“Well, I think if I work like a dog for the next two weeks and don’t eat or sleep,” Iris answers, laughing, “I _might_ have some free time around March. Don’t quote me on that, though.”

Barry bites his lip. “Really? You’re that swamped?”

Iris nods, studying the report. “Uh-huh. I might not even get to see my mom until next month.”

“Oh.”

Iris looks up then, frowning. “Bar? You okay?”

_Do you still love me?_

It comes again, unbidden, and he doesn’t want to ask. But it’s his graduation next week and Barry is worried that she won’t be able to make it, and the thought of graduating without Iris there to cheer him on feels wrong. Actually, it makes him feel a little sick. Because usually she would have remembered and mentioned it, wouldn’t she? But maybe now with this thing between them it’s too hard.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replies quickly. “Just, um, it’s my-”

“ _West_!”

“Oh, crap,” Iris breathes as they both hear Captain Singh’s heels approaching. “Jeez, what did I forget this time?”

“You’re heading out on a case at the ironworks,” he tells her quickly, and she gets out of her chair and starts getting her things together. She has her jacket and her gear bag on just as the captain walks in.

“Hi, captain,” she says brightly. “Ready to go to the ironworks?”

Captain Singh narrows her eyes at her. “You remember why we’re going?”

“I believe it was a break in – the perpetrators got away with an industrial-size freezer, ma’am.”

“Okay,” the captain says slowly, and Barry resists the urge to laugh at Iris’ ‘I know exactly what’s going on and I completely have everything together’ look. The captain walks out and Iris breathes a sigh of relief.

“I totally owe you,” she tells him, and leaves. Then she’s back a few seconds later to get her cell, which Barry knew she’d be back for.

“I really owe you,” she says, but before she leaves she turns back again. “Hey, what were you gonna-”

“WEST!”

“Run.”

***

“Mom.”

“…and you were so little…”

“Mom, come on.”

“…and now you’re so tall and you’re graduating…”

“ _Mom_ ,” Barry laughs. “This is the third time I’m graduating. Fourth if you count junior high. I’d think you’d be bored of it by now.”

His mother waves a hand at him, wiping away a tear. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m your mother, I could never get tired of celebrating your achievements.”

“You just want to brag to the other moms because your son has a PhD.”

His mother looks at him like he’s grown three heads. “Of course I’m going to brag to the other moms that my son has a PhD. I want to win.”

Barry laughs just as the person measuring him comes back over with a gown and a hat and his mother bursts into tears again and starts taking more pictures as he puts it over his head. “Does this one fit better, Mr Allen?”

“Yeah, this one’s good,” he replies, taking it off again, and the assistant smiles.

“Great. We’ll have it delivered to your house in the next couple of days.”

Barry and his mother head back to the car so he can go and get ready for dinner with Patty. He promised her this, that she could go with him to get his gown measured and fitted before the graduation at the weekend. They haven’t spent that much time together, what with the chaos of Calamity, and it’s nice that they’re doing something that’s not a rushed dinner before she runs off again.

“So, Mr Soon-To-Be-Graduate,” she says as they speed back to the house. “What’s your next move? What do you want to do with your life?”

Barry shrugs, not taking his eyes off the road. “I’m not sure. I can’t really see anything past graduating, you know? The only thing I’d want to keep doing is writing for the university paper, but I don’t think they’d let me since I wouldn’t be going there anymore.”

His mother thinks for a moment. “Well, what’s stopping you?”

“They can literally say ‘You don’t even go here’.”

She slaps the back of his head lightly and he laughs. “No, smartass, I mean writing.”

Barry makes the turning onto their street. “Writing my blog doesn’t exactly pay the bills.”

“You could still make a career out of writing,” she points out. “Books, or newspaper articles…you just have to find the thing.”

“Find the thing?”

“Find the thing.”

He’s still thinking about it when he’s sitting at his desk, ready to publish the letter that he’d written. It’s his last resort, really, and maybe it looks a little desperate, but they’re currently living in fear of an insane metahuman who can induce brain haemorrhages in people. He reads it over one last time before he presses _publish_.

_So, you all know me, since I’ve been the guy writing about Miss Miracle for the last four months. I just thought that it would be a little hypocritical for me to ask you all to send in messages and then not send in one myself._

_I remember the first time Miss Miracle saved me. Someone tried to throw me off a roof and she saved my life. It’s also the moment I saw her fly for the first time. That was just one thing in the long list of miracles she’s performed since. And for that, I’m grateful._

_Miss Miracle has turned Central City into a city of hope. A city of peace. A city of miracles. She has saved hundreds of people from countless situations. Yes, she let us down – me personally, and for a while I was mad at her. But a good friend of mine recently told me that superheroes wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t believe them, and he’s right. Yes, Miss Miracle may have let us down. She can do all these awesome things, and we want her to be better. But sometimes heroes fall, and we can’t just give up on the things that we love because they aren’t perfect, because then that’s love, or respect, or admiration. Miss Miracle chose to protect us, and sometimes she’ll fail. But the thing that will keep her going is that we don’t turn our backs on her when she does._

_And from me, I just wanted to say that I will always believe in you, Miss Miracle. And I’d appreciate it if you have any more miracles left in you, but I’ll understand if you can’t._

_(Although I’d really like it if you did.)_

Barry pressed send, satisfied. Maybe his mother was right – maybe this was the thing.

Patty, for her part, thinks it’s a good idea, though of course she’s distracted by the fact she hasn’t found something to wear to Barry’s graduation. She turns to him as they speed down towards Central City Suspension.

“What colour is your gown, again?”

“Blue,” he answers, then frowns. “Uh, no, wait, maybe it’s black. Or dark green. It’s definitely dark.”

“Well, what about your suit?”

“Uh…”

“Barry, you have a suit, right?”

“I most definitely have a suit,” he nods. “It is…a dark colour.”

Patty rolls her eyes and Barry laughs. “What are you so worried about? You’ll look awesome no matter what you wear. Besides, in a few weeks we’ll be living together and you’ll be able to pick what I wear.”

Patty grins at him. “That’s true. Although you’ve got decent taste already.”

Barry grins back at her, but it’s really because the only reason he has good taste is because of Iris. He remembers the summer before high school when she marched into his room, hands on hips, and declared that she was taking him shopping with some of the graduation money he’d gotten from Great-Uncle Rudy.

“But I dress fine, Iris,” he’d said as she was throwing his clothes out of his wardrobe. She spun around to face him, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“You have been wearing that same sweatshirt and jeans combo all through high school, and I’m not going to have you go off to college dressed like the white extra in a Nelly video.”

“Iris-”

“Barry,” she’d interrupted, and Barry realised that her glasses were misting up because she was crying. She rubbed her eyes. “My best friend is going away for four years, so will you _please_ let me dress you like an adult because right now, I think it’s the only thing that will make me feel better.”

And he’d hugged her and let her take him shopping, and when they got home she gave him rules. “Do not clash your colours, a T-shirt and jeans can look smart if you know what you’re doing, and do not, under any circumstances, wear your jeans around your thighs.”

“But-”

“Bartholomew Henry Allen,” she’d interrupted, grabbing his chin. And that had made him freeze and his skin heat up, for some reason. “I am not joking. We got belts for a reason, you have to wear them. Do I make myself clear?”

“Y-Yes ma’am,” he’d said, nodding, and then she did that Iris thing where she got all shy because she’d realised that she was holding his face, and then she told him to throw out his bad clothes. And it had taken him a while to realise that for some reason he kind of liked having his usually-timid best friend tell him what to do while grabbing his chin like that, and he wonders now if she loved him then.

“Well, it took me long – wait, what the hell is that?”

They frown as they came up to the bridge, where cars are piling up instead of moving forward. They can hear people screaming in fear and panic, and a few are fleeing their cars. Patty switches on her police radio and immediately hears Captain Singh’s voice.

“ _…tell the public not to engage, Captain Cold and Heatwave are armed and very dangerous, all police to the Central City Suspension, riot police are on route_ …”

Just as she’s speaking they see twin bolts shoot into the sky, one made of flame and the other made of ice. Patty curses.

“Shit,” she says. “Shit, shit, _shit_ …”

“Patty – Patty, where are you going?”

“I need to evacuate this bridge,” she says, looking for her service weapon. “And then I need to subdue those two. Dig under that seat, get me my bullet-proof vest, and then stay here, okay?”

She doesn’t give him any time to respond, just gets out of the car and starts barking orders into her walkie-talkie. Barry’s heart threatens to break out of his chest as he watches her run straight into the throng of people running away screaming. He looks out and sees that Captain Cold and Heatwave are shooting their guns at cars so that they skid away, leaving the bridge covered in streaks of cold or trails of flame. He fishes in his pocket for his phone and hits the second number on the speed dial.

“Barry?” his mother asks, sounding like she’s just been asleep. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I’m in the car, mom – Captain Cold and Heatwave are attacking people, they’re at Central City Suspension with their weapons.”

“Holy – Where’s Patty? What’s she doing?”

“She’s evacuating people – there are other police now and they’re setting up a perimeter.”

Barry’s right – more patrol cars have shown up to help Patty and they’re setting up blockades, but nobody is approaching the pair, who are still shooting.

“Good,” she continues. “I’m on my way. Be careful and stay there.”

His mother hangs up, and he listens for exactly two seconds before he gets out of the car to join the cops at the perimeter. He recognises them, of course, Perez takes one look at him and shakes her head. “Barry, get back in the car, it’s no safe-”

“Where’s Patty?”

They duck as more shots ring out and the beam above them freezes. “Barry, your mother will kill me if I don’t tell you to _get back-_ ”

“What’s the matter?” a drawling female voice calls. _Cold_ , Barry thinks as a slender woman in an oversized parka struts towards them, gun in hand. “Central City’s finest can’t handle a little cold?”

“Or a little _heat_?” Heatwave cackles, waving her gun around.

“Alright, ladies,” Eric says into a bullhorn. “That’s enough. No one’s been hurt, so just come in quietly and there won’t be a problem.”

Barry spots a couple of police officers jumping from car to car as Eric keeps talking, out of sight of Cold and Heatwave, and frowns. “What are they doing?”

“Trying to get a clear shot,” Perez says tightly. Barry swallows and watches, his heart in his throat, as they inch closer and closer, Patty in front. Her voice comes over one of the radios. “Almost there.” Captain Cold keeps talking.

“I don’t think so, officer,” she replies, flexing her arms.

“Come on, Cold. I’m giving you an out, here.”

“Oh, I know. But there’s one problem.”

“What?”

“I’ve never really liked _blondes_!”

It’s like a moment from a movie – the cold laser arcs out from the gun and heads straight for the car that Patty is hiding behind, clad in gear and riot shield in hand. He He screams her name and surges forward and the other officers pull him back, but not before pulling their guns and aiming them and he can practically see every icicle on the beam as it heads towards her and there’s nothing he can do to stop it and then-

A sharp flash, green sparks, and Patty is standing in front of them, along with the other officers. Barry stares, dumbstruck along with everyone else, and is the first to speak.

“M-Miss Miracle,” he breathes.

She blinks her glowing golden eyes at him from atop a car, breathing hard, and nods.

“Is everyone alright?”

“Everyone’s fine,” Patty replies in shock. Miss Miracle looks better and healthier and stronger – the way she stands, the way she moves, the way she holds herself. But the costume and the mask and her voice is the same, and when Barry hears it, he can’t help the smile that breaks out over his face.

“You’re back.”

“I was down, Barry. I wasn’t out.” She looks to where Captain Cold and Heatwave are advancing. “I see you’ve met some friends of mine.”

“They’re causing a little bit of trouble,” Patty admits, and Miss Miracle nods again.

“I think I can help with that. Everyone stay here until it’s time to fire.”

“How will we know it’s time to fire?”

Miss Miracle gives a short laugh. “Believe me. You’ll know when it’s time to fire.”

“Miss Miracle!” Cold greets her theatrically. “I missed you, sweetheart.”

“Feel like warming up?” Heatwave adds.

 _Oh, definitely_ , she says into everyone’s heads, and Perez gives a strangled laugh. “Are they trash-talking each other?”

“You’d be surprised,” Barry tells her. Then they watch in amazement as Miss Miracle fights the two criminals, flashing between cars and the floor so that they can’t catch her. Thankfully suspension bridge is made of sturdy material, but that doesn’t stop the officers from looking around in confusion. “What is she doing?”

“No idea,” Barry answers, still watching. It’s becoming more frantic between them, red and blue beams flying off in all directions and Barry thinks that maybe this plan won’t work, that these guns won’t ever run of power, until she stands right in the middle and makes them shoot each other.

“Holy shit,” he breathes. The beams meet in the middle and everyone ducks away from the sparks as they clash. Cold and Heatwave are staring in shock and Miss Miracle takes the brunt of the beams, crying out in agony, and Barry’s stomach twists, because she looks so small and vulnerable in that moment.

“It’s killing her,” he says. “Whatever it’s doing, it’ll kill her.”

Then the guns short out – they just _stop_ – and Miss Miracle falls to her knees, groaning. Cold and Heatwave abandon the guns and walk towards her, and that’s when Patty says “Time to fire,”, leaps out of the perimeter and fires two shots. One goes wide, but the other hits Heatwave in the arm. Then Miss Miracle swipes her leg in a low kick that brings Cold to the floor, before helping Patty march them over, ignoring their curses and protests.

“Good plan,” Patty says. Miss Miracle nods.

“Good aim.”

“Sorry I shot you.”

“Sorry I tried to kill you.” They grin at each other and Barry just stares at them. Miss Miracle bows her head briefly and is in the sky about to head off – and Barry is disappointed because he has about a million questions for her – but then another radio starts squaking. Perez frowns. “That’s weird. 584291 – isn’t that the code for the Central City Airport?”

“It’s air traffic control,” Patty says. “What do they want?”

Barry watches as Perez turns up the volume. “ _…Central City plane bound for National City is experiencing some loss of altitude. The pilot seems to be heading towards Central City Suspension after an apparent engine failure, and there is fear that he could crash into the bridge unless this course is altered, though they are of course doing everything they can…_ ”

Barry’s the first to look up and that’s when he sees it, far off into the distance – the plan is still pretty high, but it’s obvious that an engine has broken by the way it’s veering off to the side even as it hurtles towards them. “That thing will hit us in the next ten minutes if we don’t do something.”

“I’ll do it,” Miss Miracle says. “I’ll save them.”

“Works for me,” Patty says quickly. “What do you need?”

“The flight manifest, the speed, weight and number of people on that plane, and – well, fifteen minutes, but ten will have to do.”

“Air Traffic Control, this is Detective Patricia Spivot, I have Miss Miracle here to lend her assistance-”

“ _Negative, detective_ ,” the voice cuts her off. “ _Miss Miracle has been declared a public menace, and_ -”

But he never gets to finish his sentence, because then what sounds like people actually _on_ the plane start screaming.

“ _The hell with your public menace_!”

“ _You want me and my kids to die in this goddamn thing_?!”

“ _As the pilot of this aircraft, I would appreciate-_ ”

“ _I cannot authorise the involvement of Miss Miracle when there are civilians involved_.”

“ _That’s not the point-_ ”

“Listen to me,” a voice interrupts, and that’s when Barry notices that Miss Miracle has fetched a radio from somewhere and is speaking into it. “All of you, please listen. I…I know I let you down. Some of you more than others,” she adds, glancing at Barry and Patty. “But – but I can’t do this, any of the miracles, any of it, without you believing in me. I may have left before, but I’ll never leave you again. Everything’s going to be okay. I _promise_. Okay?”

Barry waits with bated breath, before the controller breaks the silence. “ _Okay_.”

Everyone springs into action. “I need someone to send the flight manifest to Bartholomew Allen,” she says, all business. “Barry, get your laptop. People who can drive, get in the cars and move them as far away from the centre of the bridge as possible.”

Barry looks at her as the plane edges closer – they can hear it now, and everyone is frantic. “What are you going to do?”

“It’s like the boat, right?” she tells him. Of course, the boat. She must have seen the video. “Just…bigger. And heavier. And scarier.”

“Hey,” he says. “I believe in you, alright?” She gives him a grateful nod.

“Thanks, Barry,” she replies, and disappears. There’s a flash of green near the approaching plane as it roars towards them, and then she’s back with a family of four. “Tell that man your name,” she says, pointing at Barry, “and then if you need a medic, go talk to the people near the cars.” She looks at him. “You got this, Barry?”

Someone hands him his laptop and he balances it on a car. “I’ve got it.”

“Good.” She disappears again, and the next few minutes pass by in a blur of checking names and ages against the flight manifest. Miss Miracle saves person after person, family after family, as the plane inches closer and closer, still ablaze. Patty is administering first aid and calling for backup while Perez and Eric direct traffic and allow paramedics through, all while Miss Miracle rescues people from the plane in flashes of green and gold.

“That’s it!” Barry yells eventually. “That’s everyone, that’s the list!”

“Did you get the pilot?” Perez asked.

“Right here! He was the last one!”

“Good,” she nods breathlessly. “Great. Now just, you know, the giant fireball heading towards us.”

Miss Miracle has flashed back to the plane and for a minute he wonders whether she can do it, but then he sees green sparks all around the plane and then – and then it starts to move.

“My God in heaven,” Eric breathes.

Impossibly, Miss Miracle is twisting the plane lower, lower, lower until it won’t hit the bridge but will go under it. Barry feels the heat and wind in his hair, and smells burning metal as it slides underneath the bridge with a slow, metallic whine against the bridge’s underside, before coming to a stop in the middle of the bay.

And nothing happens.

Everyone races to the edge of the bridge and presses their faces between the bars so they can see. All of the lights in the plane have gone out, and Patty calls for a paramedic and the fire department. Barry can’t breathe…

But then someone punches the window of the cockpit and it falls into the bay with an audible splash, before Miss Miracle, exhausted, drags herself out of the empty plane, and everyone starts cheering, the sound pounding through the air, Barry the loudest of all. She looks around, disoriented, and her eyes start glowing again. Then she flies towards them slowly, and the cheers die down. Barry smiles at her.

“Thanks for coming back,” he says. She shrugs.

“Thanks for believing in me.”

She looks up at everyone before bowing her head, and everyone cheers once more. Then she flies up, higher and higher, until she disappears, bathing them all in green sparks of light.

***

And she doesn’t stop.

Between the night before and now, where he’s waiting for his graduation to start with his mother, Miss Miracle has stopped the lightning girl, the teleporting man, and a girl who can throw sonic booms, as well as Heatwave and Captain Cold, who spent most of her arrest winking at Barry and asking for a latte. It’s all over the news, that Miss Miracle is back, and someone even managed to take a picture of her before she disappeared, eyes aglow and coated in green sparks. Even now, when they’re in the courtyard amongst the trees waiting for the graduation to start. But his absolute favourite part is the fact that while he was getting lunch with his mother, Central City Picture News ran a news piece about her. Only they didn’t because they had been trying to contact her all night, but all they got was her showing up in the newsroom, turning off all the lights, and saying in a clear albeit distorted voice, “ _I only talk to Barry Allen_.”

Which is cool.

“Barry?” his mother interrupts. “Are you alright?”

“Hm?” He stops looking towards the entrance. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just nervous, I guess.”

Nora smiles at him, dusting some imaginary dirt off his shoulders. “Well, you’ve got this, okay?” She peers up at him and frowns at his hair, licking her hand and making to smooth it down.

“Mom – Mom, leave my hair alone!”

“I have no idea why you style it like that.”

“Because it looks good!”

“It’s so _shiny_.”

“Mom – look, there’s my journalism professor,” he says, pointing to a man in a tweed jacket walking towards them. “Talk to him, embarrass me, but leave my hair alone. Professor Douglass, this is my mother, Detective Nora Allen. Mom, this is Professor Douglass.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you…”

They devolve into a conversation that Barry is certain will end with his mother telling the story of how he and Iris went out ‘investigating’ once and he ended up writing a newspaper about all the gossip in their neighbourhood on yellow drawing paper (which, of course, got them grounded because the neighbourhood didn’t need to know that Mr Sloan’s wore a toupee and that Mrs Batten wasn’t really a vegetarian). He makes all the appropriate noises of agreement and answers the questions, but he has his eyes near the arches where the guests are coming. He scans them quickly and then turns back, his heart dropping a little in disappointment, before adjusting his tie and cap.

Iris hasn’t called to say that she’s coming.

In fact, she hasn’t called since she ran out of the precinct the day before, and she hasn’t reply to any of his texts, which never usually happens. Barry hadn’t been seriously worried that she would skip it, but now it’s here and she’s not and-

“Barry? Look who’s here!” his mother says. He blinks again.

“Patty,” he grins and kisses her. She smiles gratefully, pushing her hair behind her ears. “See, this is a nice dress.”

Patty adjusts the purple dress and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, no thanks to you.”

“Right, and look how beautiful you look. Professor Douglass, this is my girlfriend, Detective Patty Spivot.”

He shakes her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

They start talking and Barry adjusts his tie again, trying not to look crestfallen. He’s happy to see Patty – of course he is. But he knew she was coming, and this is the first time he’s done something that hasn’t had Iris cheering him on. They always cheer each other on.

“Anyway, it appears that you’ve come at the right time, Detective Spivot,” his professor continues. “In light of his frankly stellar work for the city in getting Miss Miracle to come back, Mr Allen has been asked to give a short speech to the graduating class.”

“I-I have?” he splutters as Patty hugs him and his mother beams.

“Barry, that’s incredible!”

“It is,” he agrees, smiling breathlessly. “But, uh, I don’t know what to say, I don’t have anything prepared…” But the professor waves a dismissive hand.

“That’s nothing to worry about. Just a short speech, speak from the heart, maybe tie it to your love of journalism. It’s a high honour, Mr Allen, and you greatly deserve it. If you’ll excuse me…”

Barry watches him leave, his heart beating fast, and his mother and Patty start talking excitedly about what Barry can say and asking who’s got the camera, but he’s starting to feel a little hot. “I, um, I’m gonna go inside the auditorium, getting some water, okay? I’ll be back.”

He walks inside before they can say anything, the air-conditioned hallways a mercy on his face, and keeps walking until he finds a broom closet. Then pulls his gown over his head and loosens his tie and puts his head between his knees because he can’t breathe.

Barry doesn’t know how long he sits there, trying to force some air into his lungs, but eventually he hears someone knocking on the door. “Barry? You in there?”

He frowns, recognising the voice, but he still can’t seem to speak. The door opens, and Iris blinks down at him, her big brown eyes concerned behind her glasses. “I thought you’d be in here.”

“How did you find me?”

“I got here about five minutes ago and your mom said you looked like you were about to have a panic attack. You always find broom closets when you have panic attacks. Before our SATs, I found the janitor yelling at you for breaking a mop.”

Barry gives a nervous laugh and Iris comes to sit next to him, rubbing his back slowly. “Breathe, slow, slow, there you go. In and out, in and out. You okay? What happened?”

“I, uh,” he says, “I have to give a speech. About Miss Miracle and what it means that she’s back, and I can’t, I don’t know how…”

“Of course you know,” she says firmly. “Barry, you’ve been writing about her for months. Besides, do you think that she would have come back without you there to help her?” Iris pushes her glasses up her nose and tilts his chin so he looks at her, and he can’t help it, but he’s wondering if she loves him then, too. “Maybe she was the person who stopped Captain Cold and Heatwave and saved the people on the plane and stopped the plane from hitting the bridge, but you’re the one who kept the city going when she wasn’t there. She may be your hero and Central City’s hero and everyone’s hero, but Barry? I think you’re _her_ hero.”

Barry stares at her face, at once sincere and fierce in her belief of him, and smiles slowly. She smiles back before saying, “Besides, you already did all the work for this elective. I’m pretty sure you could get up there and start twerking and they’d still let you graduate. Just make sure you let me get my camera before you start.”

He laughs as she pulls him to his feet. “Yeah, because twerking is a great sign of professionalism.”

“Oh, you know what? Don’t even worry about it. You have a distinctly non-twerkable ass.”

Barry pokes her. “I’ll have you know I can twerk with the best of them.”

“Not with that tiny ass,” Iris deadpans as they leave the broom closet. “Get that thing onstage, start making the twerk gods cry.”

“Still, better than Miley Cyrus,” he points out. “You have to give me that.”

“True,” she admits, and he grins at her.

“You look really nice.”

“I always look nice,” she replies, adjusting her dress. It is a grey wraparound dress that Iris has worn with black boots and silver hoop earrings. “I bought this for your graduation weeks ago and planned it so I can look kind of professional, but so I can still kick ass in these boots. You know, as much as a five foot four CSI can kick ass.” She pauses, adjusting her glasses, and surveys him. “You look nice too, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“But – jeez, Barry, what did you do to your tie?” She beckons for him to bend over and she redoes it for him, before adjusting his gown and cap after he puts it on. “Better. Now, you’d better get back, because I’m pretty sure ‘A’ comes first in the alphabet, and you’ll be eating cashews with everyone if you’re not there.”

Barry gets back to his mother and Patty – who have been joined by Chesca is a pretty floral dress and white cardigan and Colin in a suit, as well as Captain Singh and her girlfriend – and just in time to hug them quickly before someone is motioning for everyone to get in line. Iris is right – he is right at the front, which is pretty useful when the dean of the university wants to announce him. He sees Chesca fiddling with some mints, and then Colin nudges her and makes her pay attention. Nora rolls her eyes at both of them and Patty smiles at him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the dean says, “thank you for coming. My apologies for making you all stand outside, but it seems like we’ve been blessed by a sunny day even though it’s February. I don’t know about you, but I call that a miracle.”

And _everyone_ rolls their eyes.

“But in all seriousness,” he continues, once the laughter has died down. “All of us standing here today have been in that position where we have faced impossible circumstances – where we have lived in fear or despair or hopelessness because we don’t feel that anyone can help us. And whether that is the stress of school or work, or the death of a loved one, or…or being attacked by a deadly force, we have all felt that. What is important is to realise that you are not alone. And today, this day where you’re gathered with your friends and family to celebrate, is your day, a _good_ day. Enjoy it, even if the world is giving you many reasons not to. And know that we here at Central City School of Arts and Sciences are proud of you.”

He pauses for applause and Barry laughs to himself when he sees that his mother had bullied Bobbi and Colin into holding disposable cameras, in addition to the one she’s holding in her hand. “And now, for someone that I think we all know, given that we all possess smartphones and laptops and we do not, in fact, reside underneath rocks. One of the students of our graduating class, and a promising writer from what I’ve seen, Bartholomew Allen.”

Barry rises on shaky legs as everyone starts clapping – Chesca even whistles, which makes him laugh – and walks to the podium, trying to concentrate on not falling over. He opens his mouth as the clapping dies out, and then closes it again before glancing at his family. His mother blows him a kiss, Patty beams at him, and Iris gives a tiny little shimmy in her chair to indicate twerking. Barry takes a deep breath.

“Thanks for the introduction – and if anyone’s looking to _hire_ this promising writer, I currently have student loans I’d love to pay off,” he adds, making everyone laugh. “So, one of the things I learned this past year is that you don’t really know that you need something until you get it. I wasn’t supposed to be here today. Last year a…” he swallows, “tragedy struck my family, and I was not able to graduate with the rest of my class. Back then, I didn’t think that anything could solve it, that anything short of a miracle could get rid of that feeling.” He pauses. “But then a miracle _did_ happen, and were it not for that, were it not for that tragedy, I wouldn’t find myself here today, with a passion that I never knew that I had and the opportunity to hone those skills. Because I _did_ get a miracle – I just didn’t know that I needed it.

“Most of you know me as the guy whose hashtag has been spamming the news for the past three weeks, because I write about Miss Miracle. And thing with her is that we never knew that we needed her, but we did. Maybe it’s tragedy in the form of explosions that wreck our city, or crazy metahumans that terrify us. Or maybe we just needed something to show us that the impossible is possible and that dreams can become real. We needed that thing to make us hope again, and we got it – her name is Miss Miracle, and she is the modern miracle worker.”

Barry pauses and looks down to see that his mother, Chesca and Patty are crying. Iris is, too, but she apparently hasn’t noticed because she’s still looking at him without doing anything about the tears tracking her cheeks. He clears his throat again.

“The truth is, none of us know exactly where we’re going, or how we’re going to get there. I mean, the only thing I can see in my future is my mom taking lots of pictures before I have to give back this gown.” People laugh again. “But we have to know that it doesn’t matter, and we have to find the thing that makes get up in the morning. Because you never know when you’re going to find the next miracle. And to everyone graduating today, I really hope you find it.”

***

Chesca brings enchiladas, Colin brings a cake that he bought because according to Chesca he can’t cook, and Tyler has stolen cakes and doughnuts from work.

“Consider it your graduation present,” he says as he sets the platters of food down on the table in the garden. Barry raises his eyebrows as he sips his beer.

“I’m not getting a graduation present, am I?”

“Nope.”

Barry laughs and Tyler moves off to go get some of Patty’s casserole before everyone eats it all. He hadn’t wanted a big thing after his graduation – just a few friends and lots of food (after his mother makes him take about a million pictures at the university, as well as the official graduation picture). That is why Bobbi and Patty are sat on the patio getting sun, Tyler is talking to Captain Singh about the developments with the state troopers, and his mother and Iris are bringing out the dishes of mac and cheese and chicken wings that Iris made before she got there.

“So, tell me again why you were late?” Barry asks, and Iris and Colin both look at Chesca.

“Yeah, Chess,” Iris says over her plate. “Tell her why we were late.”

“Listen, I couldn’t leave the doorman thinking such wildly inappropriate things about such an important piece of our culture-”

“She spent twenty minutes trying to convince the guy at the door that Han shot first,” Colin interrupts bluntly, and his mother laughs.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, and she wouldn’t let us leave in case she couldn’t find us later,” Iris adds. “So we had to sit there while everyone got mad at us.”

“Eh, it was worth it,” Chesca shrugs. “I got another one.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Barry says, and Iris laughs.

“What, that Chesca managed to convince a roomful of strangers that she’s a little crazy?”

“No, I just thought…I mean, I thought you weren’t coming, you said you were busy-”

“Barry,” she interrupts, frowning. “Of course I was going to come to your graduation. What are you talking about?”

Barry blinks at her and his mother seems to realise what’s going on. “Colin, Chesca, do you guys want some cake?”

“No,” Chesca says through a mouthful of mac and cheese, and Colin clears his throat.

“Let’s get some cake, Chesca.”

“But I…Oh, okay, yeah. Cake. Cake is good.”

Iris and Barry look at each other, before Iris sighs and pulls him into the kitchen away from everyone else. “I’m sorry, Barry,” she says. “I know I…dumped a lot on you at Christmas, and I know it’s been weird between us, but I didn’t think it was so bad that you thought…You thought I would miss your graduation?”

Barry sighs. “I mean, I haven’t exactly been the best kind of friend either. I was only thinking about me and how this would change things for me, and I wasn’t thinking about you. Are you…Are you doing okay?”

Iris shrugs lightly. “I’m okay. Kind of miss my best friend, though.”

“I miss you too, sunshine.”

Iris smiles at that, at the nickname he gave her when they were kids, and he realises that he hasn’t called her that in months. Iris takes off her glasses to clean them. “Listen, Barry, the one thing I promised myself was that we would still be best friends afterwards, no matter what. And I know it’s going to be hard, but all I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy, and-”

“Iris,” he says. “I am always going to be your best friend. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She tentatively steps forward, her arms out, and he steps into her embrace. They stand like that for a moment, and then Barry says, “You have to call me ‘doctor’ now.”

“I am not calling you doctor.”

“Excuse me, Miss West, I have three letters behind my name now. Two of them are capitalised. You will afford me the proper respect.”

Iris laughs. “Cashew-eating _asshole_.”

“That’s _Dr_ Cashew-Easting Asshole to you.”

***

The funeral is nice, Barry thinks.

He supposes it’s the right kind of day for it, though it’s weird saying that there’s anything right about a funeral. He meets Patty and Iris at the station with his mother, all three of whom are wearing their full police dress, the kind they wore when they were sworn in. Even Ted the security guy, who nods a sombre hello as Barry walks in with his mother.

Patty is pulling on her gloves, Iris fitting her hat over her ponytail. “Nora. Hey, sweetie,” Patty says, and Barry slips an arm around her. “Never thought I’d see one of these this soon,” she says. “Back at Midway we only had two, and it took me three years of working there. Have you guys had many?”

“One, while I was working here,” Iris answers quietly. “Uh, Robbins, you remember him? And then once, when we were kids-”

“Howell and Swender,” Barry says, remembering. He and Iris held hands the whole time Nora carried the casket, like if they did they could protect each other from the dark cloud that had come over the precinct that day.

“And Faye,” Nora adds, and Iris blinks.

“God, of course. I was in the coma, I missed it. What are you guys…What are your jobs?”

“Pallbearer for Ryan,” Patty answers. She smiles ruefully. “I guess long legs helps sometimes. You?”

“Flag team, for Skyler. Nora?”

Nora tucks her hair behind her ears. “Firing party.”

Barry knows enough about police funerals to know that the families will drive through the city in a slow procession, a mixture of family, friends and officers carrying the caskets to the church, before they do the speech and the flag-folding and the bagpipes, and then officers will stand guard until after the service is over. Barry won’t be doing any of that, but he’s offered to be one of the pallbearers and the families know him so well that of course they said yes.

“I’m with Tim,” he says. “His mom said she wanted someone to round out her boys carrying it. Do you know when the mayor’s getting here?”

“Which one?” Patty asks, and Barry frowns. “Yeah, the mayor from Star City _and_ Keystone City is coming, as well as some of their officers.”

“Well, police funeral,” Nora says. “We’re all one big city today. Come on, Singh wants us over.”

And so they go.

It’s weird that he has favourite parts, but there is something beautiful about the shared mourning of the city after what Calamity has done to it. Scott Evans feels like home as he softly and sincerely narrates the funeral as they proceed, the way that he and Patty are mixed in with some family members and even some public who just wanted to help carry the caskets, the officers from different cities sharing in the grief, Captain Singh as she makes the speech because she’s the funeral commander, and Iris folding the flag tenderly to place it in Skyler Clarke’s casket, before saluting as they lower it into the ground. It’s not his absolute favourite, though.

They are in a hall that the police rented for the wake, and Iris introduced him to Detective Dinah Lance, who she met in Star City, before going to the bathroom. Then Perez started shouting for them to come outside, he he has a sinking feeling that Calamity is back, but that changes when he gets outside.

Miss Miracle has found a flag from somewhere and has folded it carefully in her arms. She lays it carefully on the casket of the person they just buried, before saluting. Everything is still for one minute, before she turns and bows her head, her hand on her heart, before disappearing.

So it is, all things considered, a nice funeral.

***

Barry almost gives up and goes home, but then she flashes in front of him, as familiar as always. “Barry.”

“Miss Miracle,” he smiles. “Been a long time.”

“I was a little tied up.”

“Are you okay?”

“I will be.”

He puts his hands in his pockets. “I’ve been told to, uh…thank you. For coming to the funeral.”

“I was honoured to be there, Barry,” she says. Barry sighs, smiling.

“I’m really glad you’re safe.”

“Pretty happy about that myself.” Miss Miracle throws him something and he catches it.

“Another watch? You can’t give me this, the last one almost got you killed-”

“Calamity was the problem, Barry, not the watch.”

“Aren’t you scared of her?”

“I’m terrified. But my job is to keep people safe any way I can. That’s what I decided when I put on this suit.” She sighs, her hands behind her back. “Calamity and I have a very old, very complicated, and very personal fight. But it’s between me and her. I don’t want you getting involved, okay?”

Barry nods. “Okay.”

“I’m telling the police that, too. But I’ll still come when you call me. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Congratulations on your graduation. I liked your speech.” Barry blinks in surprise.

“You were there?”

“It was on the internet, Barry. I appreciated the shout out

Barry smiles. “My best friend gave me the idea. She says I’m your hero.”

“She sounds very smart.”

He shrugs. “She’s the best.”

“I’m sure. Well, I have to go. And Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“Try not to lose this one.”

***

“So you are all moved in,” Iris says as Barry settles into her couch. “Congratulations.”

“I hear you’re all moving in too,” he says, watching her go through her DVD collection. “What, the minute I move out, _then_ you decide to move back to the house?”

“Well, yeah. I lived with you for years, you think I’d subject myself to that again? Besides, Nora and I haven’t really spent a lot of time together since I got out of the coma.” She shrugs. “I mean, I’ll miss this place, but it’ll nice to be back home for a while, you know?”

“Yeah,” he smiles. “Home is good.”

“Especially when someone else is making dinner.”

“Right. So, um, Iris, I know Calamity killed your dad, and I know how much it means to you that you find her, but I just – please be careful. You saw what she did to all those people.”

Iris leans back against the shelves, adjusting her glasses. “You know, sometimes I forget that I’m not the only one fighting. But that funeral…we’re never really alone, are we, Barry?”

“No, we’re not.”

Iris says. “Anyway, let’s start. Barry and Iris’ Great We’re Grownups Now Rewatch Series isn’t going to start by itself, is it? And it probably wasn’t helped by the Iris part being in a nine-month coma.”

“Still mad at you about that, by the way,” he says, opening up one of the pizza boxes. “I couldn’t watch one episode of _Ugly Betty_.”

It’s one of their many traditions, started after they left college. They figured they were old enough to watch TV and not get swept up in teen drama and make decisions like adults. So whenever they got together they marathoned TV. And with everything that had gone on, it’s a tradition that Barry’s eager to get back to.

“Well, we’re done now. Verdict?”

“I think we said that the Underrated Angel was Justin.”

“That’s a given,” Iris says dismissively. “I think I actually love him more now.” She pauses and reaches for a cheese ball. “Best episode?”

“The one with the snow,” Barry says, mouthful. “And the people! And the murder and the music box and _Fat Carol_!”

“Ooh, that was a good one. Cashew-Eating Asshole?”

“Bradford,” they say together, and Barry puts his feet on the table. “Okay, I think that’s everything. Oh! Daniel and Betty totally should have gotten together, right?”

“Definitely. They were already pretty much married and they did everything for each other.” She turns from the shelf. “And – Barry, I swear to god, if you don’t get your feet off my table…”

“Sorry,” he says, getting up to join her. He sees that her glasses are dirty and plucks them off her face, cleaning them with his shirt and sliding them back on. “So, what next?”

“Uh, _One Tree Hill_?”

“Little melodramatic. How about _Brothers and Sisters_?”

“I think we lost disc four. Okay, _Gimore Girls_. That’s perfect rewatch material.”

“Awesome. Predictions? Who’s the Cashew-Eating Asshole?”

Both of them think for a moment, and then both say “Dean” in disgust. Iris puts the DVD in and Barry looks around. “You want me to take your trash out?”

“That would be great, the chute is just outside. Hey, your mom says you’re thinking of being a bigshot highbrow writer guy. So I don’t have to worry about you showing up at the police academy with an application?”

Barry laughs as he takes Iris’ trash to the garbage chute. It is a shame, though, that Nora never let him be a cop. Because if he did, he might have slightly better instincts than the ones blessed to him by his detective mother and grandmother. He might have realised that when he looked out of the window to see the view of the bay from Iris’ apartment that there was someone pointing a camera at him from the street. But he isn’t a cop. So he doesn’t figure it out.

And he isn’t a metahuman, he doesn’t have Miss Miracle’s mind powers, so he doesn’t know that the person with a camera has gone by many names, but most know him as Thawne.

And because he isn’t a cop and he doesn’t have those instincts, he doesn’t know that the man that some call Thawne has been following him for four months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like i said, i appreciate all the feedback. i just wanted to say, if there's something that you want to see more of or less of, feel free to tell me. obviously i have a plot for this, but if something's not working there's a chance i could change it. once again, thanks for reading, liking and commenting! EDIT: i now realise that Barry shouldn't have a PhD because of the way the US education system works, but I'm from the UK and for some reason completely forgot about that while I was writing. but hey, everyone on this show is a super-genius, Barry can be one too ;)


	9. Where My Demons Hide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone talks about their demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so rushed, but i really liked writing it. i hope you enjoy iris' POV! Title taken from the song 'Demons' by Imagine Dragons

 

“Um, so. Hi. Hi, Malina. It’s me, Barry. Your older brother. It’s your – You’re twenty-one today, so maybe you’re old enough and secure enough to be okay with that name. Or would have been, anyway. It’s Scottish, did you know that? Dad was – is, whatever – Scottish, and he wanted to name you ‘Malcolm’ if you were a boy, and Malina is, like, the girl version of that. I think it’s nice. Plus, I wanted to name you Bruce Lee if you were a boy and Baby Spice if you were a girl, so maybe it’s best that our parents picked the names. We would have been a pair though, huh? Bartholomew and Malina.”

Barry swallows, fiddling with the white camellias in his hands. There are lots of them now, many more than when he started doing this as a child, but it feels wrong to not continue the tradition. It is the middle of February – the twelfth, to be exact – and he is by himself at the docks before the sun will come up in a few hours. He left Patty sleeping this morning with a promise that he’ll be back later written on a note attached to their notice board, but even then he suspects that both his mother and Iris know where he is. After all, it was Iris’ idea to start doing this when they were seven – she even went with him to buy the flowers that first time, with his mother waiting in the car.

“Just tell her what you would want to tell your sister,” she’d said carefully, adjusting her glasses. “I don’t think she would mind what you say – she would just like to hear you talk.”

So he is here, eighteen years later, talking to his little sister. Malina isn’t buried here – she isn’t buried anywhere, the doctors took her away and he assumes that she became medical waste – but Barry told Iris that he’d wanted to take his sister for walks by the pier, so when Barry told Iris that he wished he could talk to her, she suggested the pier.

“So, what did you miss? Oh, I have a girlfriend now. Patty. She’s mom’s partner, the one I was telling you about last year. She’s great, really, she’s fun and and sweet and kind, and we just moved in together, which is great. I love her. It’s…light, you know? Light and simple and easy. You think it was ever like that for mom and dad? Well, no, scratch that. It can’t have been, since dad’s gone…and now I’ve killed the mood. Great.

“Oh, I graduated! Yeah, your big brother is a doctor now. Not a real one, not, like, a medical one with a stethoscope and stuff, but still. I had to do a lot of research and teach all these terrible undergrads the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, and I’m pretty sure I never want to do a presentation ever again, but I graduated! Finally. Don’t really know what I’m going to do next. I really wish I could spend it writing all day, but that doesn’t really pay the bills.”

Barry shifts the flowers in his hands as he watches his feet dangle over the edge, his converses nearly skimming the still water. People will start waking up soon, to take deliveries or clean their boats or do patrols, and he prefers to be alone so he knows he’ll have to wrap this up soon. “We have our very own superhero now, like Metropolis has Superwoman. Her name’s Miss Miracle and she’s amazing, Malina, I swear to God she’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. She can fly and move things with her mind and read people’s thoughts, and she does this weird glowy thing with her eyes. And okay, yeah, sure, maybe I have a little, _little_ crush on her, but I know you’re not going to tell anyone. Besides, you’d have a crush on someone like Marvel Man if…if you were around.” He swallows again and rubs the back of his neck with a free hand.

“What else? Oh yeah, Iris is awake. She came back, so I had to stop yelling at her doctors. And my dissertation supervisor. And Tyler. And everyone, really. But, yeah, she’s back, and everything is – Actually, it’s not back to normal. Iris said – that is, she told me – that she’s in love with me. That she’s been in love with me since we were kids. And I don’t know what to do with that. Sometimes I think what would have happened if she told me earlier but – I would know. If I liked her I would know, and it doesn’t feel like that. It just feels like we’ve always been – like I’m Barry and she’s Iris and we’re best friends. Besides, I’m happy now, with Patty, right? So if it’s fine for her and it’s fine for me, then nothing has to change, right? I just, I mean, I don’t want to hurt her, you know? It’s Iris, I can’t hurt her. I promised I would protect her. She’s my best friend, I’m supposed to protect her.” He sighs. “Anyway, maybe I’m just making a big deal about this. It’s time for me to go – I have to get some stuff for mom from work and then I have the day off. Maybe I’ll do a Miss Miracle post or look through some old story ideas.”

Barry stands up and holds the camellias in his left hand, the chill wind brushing at his hair and the first rays of the sun stretch over the lake. He picks up one camellia with his right and drops it, watching ripples spread out and then disappear as the surface calms once more. “One,” he says softly. Then he does another. “Two.” And another. “Three.” He keeps going until he gets to twenty-one, marking another of the birthdays with his sister that he’ll never get to experience with her like he did all through the time he was a child, and then a teenager, and now an adult. He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks out onto the lake.

“Happy birthday, Malina,” he says quietly. “See you next year.”

***

The first time he laughs that day is when he sees Iris at the precinct. Everyone knows why Nora isn’t going to be there today so everyone knows why Barry is subdued instead of being his usual (read: loud and nosy) self. But they nod sympathetically at him as he heads upstairs to Iris’ lab to grab a report that Nora wants for one of her case files. Iris is standing on a stepping stool, stretching up in her sneakers and _still_ not managing to reach the beakers on the top shelf. Barry watches her curse at the beakers and move her hand towards it, palm out, before clearing his throat. “You know, you could just put everything on lower shelves, sunshine.”

“Well, then how would I entertain you, Barry?” she quips as he chuckles at her. He reaches up and hands one to her, and his first instinct is to poke her or tickle her or something, but he remembers just in time to stop himself. Because they may have subconsciously decided between them that nothing would change, but he’s not an idiot – he knows how he is around Iris and constantly touching her all the time isn’t going to help things. Iris, for her part, hasn’t noticed anything different – or maybe she’s just silently agreeing it’s for the best.

“Thanks. How are you?” she asks quietly. She doesn’t go with him unless he asks her to, but she never forgets what day it is. He shrugs.

“Okay, I guess. It is what it is.”

“Barry.”

“Yeah?”

She points at her face and he frowns, reaching up, and notices that he’s kind of crying. He wipes his eyes. “Ah. Sorry. So, mom said you have something for her?”

“Yes, I do,” she says, climbing down for the stool. She rifles through her desk. “This is the report from the fire down on Tenth.”

“Thanks,” he replies. “Captain Singh’s got a couple of cases for her and she’s even thinking of looking at missing persons. She likes to keep busy, you know-”

“I know,” she interrupts, giving him a small smile. “Does Patty know?”

“I’ll tell her later,” he replies. “She knows it’s something serious, so she won’t mind.” He puts the reports in his bag and pinches the bridge of his noise, sighing through it. He opens his eyes when he feels Iris squeezing his fingers, and smiles at her.

“You know I’m always here for you, right?” she asks, and he nods.

“I know. See you later, sunshine.”

But his mother is in no mood to work when he gets home, because he finds her sitting on her bed with the old baby booties that should have been Malina’s in her hand. Her hair is still tied up and Barry is certain she hasn’t had her coffee yet. He goes to sit next to her and she puts an arm around him as he rests her head on his shoulder. “I think I would have made a good big brother,” he says quietly, and his mother sighs.

“You would have been perfect.”

Barry’s face is screwed up in that way that it is when he knows he is about to cry. “I’m sorry, mama.”

And Nora is already crying. “I’m sorry too, baby.”

***

If there is one thing that Iris West has figured out over the past few months, it is that being a superhero is complicated. Mostly. Not tonight, though. Tonight she is blinking in and out of existence up and down Central City, chasing down the Royal Flush gang as they tear through the streets. The wind is ripping through her hair and biting at the skin underneath her domino mask and she has two voices in her ear who won’t stop arguing, but this is one of the nights when being a superhero feels wonderfully simple.

“Left,” Colin says. “That way you can get the Queen and find the Ace before he gets away.”

“No, go right, you’re closer to the King,” Chesca says. “Then you can catch the Ace and finish with the Queen.”

“Guys!” Iris interrupts as they devolve into another argument. “You – I mean, you know you’re telling me different things, right?”

“Iris,” says the cool voice of Dr Wells. She instantly feels herself calm. “Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you.”

“Good. Now, while Colin and Chesca are both right, do not forget that you also have the CCPD on your side. Better to trap them into a corner where they can be arrested.”

Iris pauses in the middle of an intersection as the King roars away on his motorcycle, a hand to her ear. “How do I do that?”

“I’ll direct you.”

And Iris listens as Dr Wells instructs her to form several blockades around the city so that the Royal Flush gang are backed into a corner that consists of the CCPD. Iris grins as Nora walks forward, gun raised. “Hands in the air, don’t move!”

Iris nods at them and closes her eyes, and when she opens them she’s back in the Cortex, pulling off her mask and grinning at Chesca as she comes over to help her out of the suit. “That,” she says, “was incredible. Seriously, your best yet. It was even better than the plane crash.”

“Uh, it was good,” Colin tells her, “but the plane crash literally made the news.”

“But this was so _cool_!”

“It was very impressive,” Dr Wells concedes, nodding, her blue eyes shining. Iris looks around Chesca to grin at her as she puts her glasses back on.

“Couldn’t have done it without you, Dr Wells.”

“Let’s take a picture!” Chesca suggests. “Commemorate the moment.”

Colin stares at her. “Seriously? You don’t think that Iris having a secret identity will be ruined by the fact that we keep taking pictures in it?”

“Shut up, old man. Besides, you wouldn’t let me take one after the plane-”

“Because Iris almost got pneumonia-”

“And you wouldn’t let me after she ran on water-”

“Because _Plastique_ just died-”

“Guys!” Iris interrupts. “Jeez. Can we just take the picture? Maybe if I learn to do that memory wipe thing you’re all so excited about then we won’t have to worry about people finding the picture.”

Colin shrugs. “Fine, whatever. Just let me change my sweater.”

“Nobody cares about your work sweaters, Dr Frost,” she says dismissively, and Iris makes a noise in agreement.

“Besides, they all look the same. Do we have a camera?”

“Um…”

“Be right back.” Iris blinks out of existence and then appears again with a camera in her hand behind Colin, who jumps. “You know, it’s been a few months, you should be used to that by now. Okay, everyone ready?”

They all get into position in front of the Cortex, with Iris in the middle in front of Dr Wells and Chesca and Colin on either side of her, and Iris frowns at the camera. It lifts off the table until it is hovering in front of them, and she lets her face relax into a smile. “Okay, everyone, smile!”

The shutter clicks and there’s a flash, and Iris holds her arm out. The camera floats over to her and they study the picture, and Iris frowns.

“Good picture,” Dr Wells nods. “Goodness, I wear a lot of black, don’t I?”

“Because you won’t let me and Iris take you shopping,” Chesca says, walking towards the Cortex. “Okay, we’re out of here. Colin and I have a date with a zombie movie.”

“I can’t wait,” Colin says dully.

“I’m getting you a social life, grandpa, you should be grateful. Iris? You okay?”

Iris is still looking at the picture. “Huh? Oh, I’m fine, I just…I’m just glad the police trust me again, that’s all.”

“Well, like we said, they just needed a reason to believe in you again,” Colin smiled. “Trust is a pretty big motivator, isn’t that right, Dr Wells?”

Dr Wells nods once, smiling her cool smile. “Yes, Dr Snow. That’s right.”

“Great. Well, I have to go too,” she replies. She puts the camera down and heads to the changing room. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

Iris walks home alone – she lives in a pretty decent area and she _is_ a superhero, after all – still feeling uneasy. The picture was nice, she concedes, especially since Chesca has finally managed a design on the suit that doesn’t chafe, but there’s something wrong with it. And that something is that Barry should be in it.

And that is the complicated part of being a superhero.

There hasn’t been one day since this whole thing happened – when she woke up that day in September (and had a shower and curled her hair and picked out a dress because she wanted to look nice for Barry the first time he saw her after the coma) and realised that when Tyler dropped that tray Iris’ mind wanted to reach out and _grab_ it – that she hasn’t wanted to tell Barry. That she hasn’t wanted to walk up to him and show him everything she could do, and watch his face light up in wonder when he realised that his best friend was a superhero, finally someone worthy of him. But Nora had told her – and still continues to tell her – not to.

And then she tried to kill his girlfriend.

She still gets hot with shame whenever she remembers it, especially when she sees Patty and how the other woman is no nice to her, asking about her mother and her work and how the STAR Labs research into her condition is going (because that’s another lie that they have to tell Barry that eats her up inside, otherwise he’d wonder why she was spending so much time with these people without him) and whether she’s getting better. All she really remembers is that she was angry at everyone – at the precinct for taking her for granted, at Singh for letting it happen, at Olivia for trying to police her, at Colin for trying to baby her, at Chesca for being so goddamn optimistic all the time even though she always feels like she’s losing hope, at Dr Wells for doing this to her, at Nora for putting her mother in prison, and for Patty for being the woman that Barry was in love with. And Barry…Barry, she was mad at the most, even though it wasn’t fair, even though he didn’t deserve it, because she loved him and he never knew, he never figured it out. She was mad at him for not seeing her, but she knew that she was mostly angry at herself because she never told him.

So, yeah. It’s complicated being a superhero who’s in love with her best friend but forgot to tell him. Forgetting things, Iris West discovered a long time ago, is kind of the story of her life. And now it’s been too long and there’s too much between them that Iris can’t tell him but she knows he’ll figure it out eventually, and she’s scared that he’ll hate her so she keeps putting it off.

Nora won’t budge, though. Even from the first time at that farm after they got Chloe Mardon, or when Barry put his name on his blog, Nora has been adamant – Barry can’t know and Iris can’t tell him. She knows that she just wants to keep Barry safe, but she can’t help but think Barry will feel betrayed when he _does_ find out, and if there’s one thing Iris has never been able to stand, it’s Barry being mad at her for whatever reason. When Iris accidentally left the first edition copy of _The Catcher in the Rye_ on the school bus, she was so terrified that he’d be mad at her that she spent half her savings on a new one, and refused to budge when he insisted that she return it. One of the reasons – the many reasons – that she’s in love with him.

But things are different now. It is no longer that Iris has been in love with Barry for twenty years and he didn’t know – he knows now. Because even though she never told him out of fear to protect herself, she knows that she was never fair to Barry about her feelings. She never explained to him why her boyfriends were so uncomfortable about their relationship or why she got all shy and quiet whenever he did the _Barry_ things – poke her ribs or tickle her or pick her up. Sometimes it was just too much. So now he knows, and he’s with Patty, and now she can move on from him. She’s said that to herself many times before, but the difference is that Barry knows. She’s done all she can do, and he doesn’t love her. She has been okay with that before, and she’s okay with it now.

She hopes.

***

 _“Please…_ Please _…”_

_“I didn’t know you were one to beg, Miss Miracle,” the cool voice snakes down her spine, locking up whatever senses she has left to her as Calamity grips her around the neck. “Your heroics always seemed so…proud. Maybe I’ll have to reassess.”_

_“They didn’t do anything, none of them did_ anything _…”_

_“Oh, I know. But you and your city have to be taught a lesson, Miss Miracle. I don’t particularly want a Metahuman Task Force. Which officer shall we pick this time?”_

_And Calamity drops her in a heap on the floor and she tries to move, she really does, but Calamity’s powers are stronger than hers and she’s trapped there, unable to do anything but watch. Calamity flashes away and then comes back holding someone by the neck. Iris’ eyes widen in horror. “R-Ryan?”_

_Calamity drops Ryan on the floor, shaking, but when he spots her relief washes over his face. “Miss Miracle? Miss Miracle, save me! Help me, please!”_

_“Ryan, I’m sorry, I can’t-”_

_“Officer Bundt, I’m so very sorry,” Calamity says. “But I’m afraid your superiors and Miss Miracle here need to be taught a lesson. But wouldn’t you like to see her face first?”_

_And Calamity rips the mask off with a flick of her wrist. Ryan’s eyes widen again. “I-Iris? Iris West?”_

_“Yes, I imagine most people would be shocked. She’s so small and forgetful. The glasses don’t help, either.”_

_“Just let him go!” Iris screams. “Why are you doing this?”_

_“I am making you better, little Miss Miracle. You should be grateful. Say goodbye to Officer Bundt, now.”_

_“No!”_

_But Iris is too late, because Calamity has tipped her head in that deadly way that she will do many more times that night, and Ryan starts to shake and scream and grabs his head, sinking to the floor, until he goes rigid and collapses, dead. Calamity turns back to her. “Now, where to next?”_

Nora wasn’t home when Iris got there but she is there now, holding her as she screams her way out of the nightmare. When she stops thrashing she realises that she’s in her old room looking into Nora’s scared face, and she sags into her arms in a hug.

“It’s okay,” Nora says, rubbing her back as she gasps. “It’s okay, honey, I’m here.”

Iris nods and swallows before looking around. She holds out her hand and her glasses fly into them from her desk; she rubs her eyes and puts them on. “What did I break this time?” Nora gets up and walks around.

“You didn’t break anything,” she replies, bending down. “But you did knock all these comic book annuals off your shelf. Still, at least it wasn’t the glass paperweights this time.”

Iris hadn’t been lying when she told Barry that she missed Nora, but that isn’t the only reason that she moved back home. Because ever since that Christmas, where Calamity terrorised the city and plunged it into darkness, Iris has had nightmares so bad that she knocks things over in her sleep with her powers. When Nora realised that she could drop something on herself, she insisted that she move back home. “How bad was it?”

Iris runs a shaking hand through her hair. “It could have been worse. I mean, they’ve been worse. I just saw Ryan, which came after Skyler, so…”

“So the prison,” Nora sighs. “And the precinct.”

Iris nods numbly, lying back and closing her eyes. As long as she lives, she’ll never forget that night. She had been home, after spending all of twenty-four hours with the rest of the West family before someone started talking shit about her mother, when she got a distress call from Barry. And seeing as how he’d said he never wanted to see Miss Miracle again, she knew he must have been in trouble, so she went to the Cortex to change and then went to the roof – but he wasn’t there.

And then came Calamity.

She never saw it coming, and it was almost worse than when she was a child. Because this – this was a lesson especially for her, and she could do nothing but watch. First, she took Iris to the precinct and killed Skyler Clarke, to let her know how easy it would be for her to get to Nora. Then she went to the prison and killed Ryan Bundt, because that’s where her mother was. But Barry was the worst, and she’d been begging and crying by that point. Calamity killed Tim Dawson at the university, Leila Chance at Jitters, and Sam Bricker outside his house, just so Iris could see how easy it was. Just so she knew. And when Iris asked why she was doing this, she’d given that same maddening answer – _I am making you better_.

But better for what?

Nora leaves when Iris asks, even though she knows she doesn’t want to. But Iris wants time to think. The deaths were the worst part, because Calamity had shown just how helpless she was compared to someone like her. How little her powers mattered. And that had been the scariest thing ever, that she couldn’t protect the city the way she was supposed to. But then Barry’s hope and belief brought her back and Dr Wells and Chesca and Colin kept her grounded and now she can do it. She can be Miss Miracle for them again.

Iris just wishes she could sleep. She hasn’t been able to sleep in weeks, and she knows that the only thing that will work is Barry singing her to sleep like when they were kids. She hasn’t told Nora that – it’s one of the best friend things she’s sure they haven’t told anyone – but it’s true. And it’s not romantic and she doesn’t want him to love her, not if he can’t.

She just wants to sleep.

***

“West, did you forget the-”

But Iris reads Perez’s mind before she finishes. “I have your report on the jewellery store robbery right here, Rose,” she says, handing it to her. Perez gives her a suspicious look, and Iris smiles innocently at her. “Alright. But you better not forget anything else.”

“Course not.”

Iris knows she’s forgotten at least three things, but it’s five o’clock and she has to pack up and change clothes so she can see her mother before dinner. Patty walks in after she’s exchanged the sneakers, jeans and hoodie she does CSI stuff in for the boots and dress she wears to work, and Iris stuffs her clothes in her bag. “Hey, Patty, what’s up?”

“Nothing, I just needed you to sign this,” she replies. She leans against the desk as Iris looks over the report. “Any plans for tonight?”

“Just seeing my mom. You?”

“Well, I think Barry’s having dinner with you guys tonight, so I’m taking the opportunity to find somewhere to put a coatrack and find a stool or something so he can put his feet somewhere. First thing he does whenever he walks in is dump is coat on the couch and put his feet on the table.”

Iris laughs. “Yeah, I’ve been trying to train him out of that for years. It’s like talking to a brick wall.”

Patty laughs and then looks at her. “Listen, Iris, I don’t want you to feel like you’re not welcome at our apartment. I mean, you’re his best friend and his family – I just want you to know you’re welcome.”

She wrinkles her nose, smiling. "I don't know, you guys just moved in. I appreciate it, but you really don't have to."

"Iris, really, I mean it," she insists. She tucks a loose strand of her behind her hair, twists her fingers, looking like she had that time she and Barry had that fight and Patty revealed that she felt threatened by Iris, and then gives her a hopeful smile. "And, well...Barry adores you. I just want to make him happy."

Iris smiles at her. “Well, I’ve never felt anything different, Patty. So, um, anyway, I’ve added a note to say that the injuries were consistent with freeze burns from Captain Cold, which makes it a metahuman interest case even though Miss Miracle took care of her.”

“Great. You know, I can’t believe I ever tried to get her arrested.”

Iris shrugs. “People change.”

“Yeah, I guess they do.”

They walk down together as there is a shift change and the evening duty police officers get settled, and just as Iris is telling Nora she’ll pick up the chicken for dinner she sees Barry. And she knows she must be doing well at Getting Over Barry because she just had that conversation with Patty and her heart didn’t constrict, and she sees them kissing now and she doesn’t feel like she’s about to throw up. And then Barry looks at her and smiles, and his smile has always been able to pull one out of her, ever since they were kids and he told her he liked her glasses.

“Hey, Iris, what’s up?” he asks.

It’s something she’s used to, the way her heart leaps and her breath catches when she sees Barry. It happened when she was six on the first day of first grade, at senior prom when he danced with her instead of his girlfriend, and it’s happening now. She supposes that it always will. But she is Getting Over Barry.

So she ignores it.

“Nothing,” she shrugs. “Just going to see my mom. How was work?”

“Same old, same old. Tyler keeps making fun of me because I’m a graduate that works at a coffee shop.”

“Well, statistically speaking, according to the United States Census, the number of graduates working menial jobs after graduation has risen by almost sixteen percent,” Iris replies, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Most likely to do with the recent recession, the lack of jobs in the market, and increased expenses.” She blinks when she realises that they’re both staring at her, and blushes, cursing her photographic memory. “I – I mean, you know. You could tell him that.”

“I will,” he chuckles. “I’m sure he’d appreciate it. So, I have to go back to work, but I’ll see you at home, okay?”

“Sure.”

He kisses Patty goodbye and that’s when Iris leaves, because she is Getting Over Barry and it doesn’t hurt so much anymore, but that doesn’t mean she wants to watch.

The women’s section of Iron Heights prison is as familiar to her as her own house. She remembers the first time she went there by herself, after Barry helped her find the address on a map and then tried to go with her, but she hadn’t wanted him to get in trouble. Her mother had banned her from coming after that, and it wasn’t until she was older that she understood she had been ashamed and hadn’t wanted her daughter to see her like that. But Iris has never been ashamed, and she never would be.

Iris pins the visitor badge to her chest and waits patiently, adjusting her glasses, before her mother sits down. Everyone has always said that she looks like Joe, like her father – they have the same smile and the same nose – but she is sure that all her warmth and hope comes from her mother. “Hi, mom,” she grins.

“Hi, baby girl.”

And that is all it takes, her mother saying those words and looking at her like that, and Iris just starts talking. It has always been one of the favourite parts of her life, these visits, so that her mother can learn about her life as much as she can being in prison. Despite fourteen years in here Francine is extraordinarily perceptive – Iris supposes that it’s from years of having to read people’s manuscripts and meet dozens of authors before publishing them – so it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that she also knew about Iris’ feelings for Barry.

“I – You – Mom,” she’d spluttered. “I never told you that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Francine had laughed. “I’ve always known. Even from when you were small, I knew. It’s been twenty years and he’s still the only boy you talk about.”

So Francine is perceptive. Iris still hasn’t told her that she’s Miss Miracle, but she thinks that on some level she might already know. “So the state of emergency has been lifted,” Iris finishes. “Which is good. I think they’re shipping out the SWAT team tomorrow.”

“Good to hear,” her mother nods. “It was always a little worrying that the world my daughter’s in is actually scarier than prison.”

“Mom, are you okay in here? Do you need anything? I can make sure you have enough for commissary-”

“Honey, I’m fine,” her mother interrupts. “All I need is for you to be alright. Okay?”

“Okay,” Iris smiles, and she reaches up to press her hand to the glass. Her mother does the same and they smile at each other, before Francine frowns at her hand. “Iris, what’s that?”

Iris glances at her hands and her eyes widen behind her glasses at the smudged writing. “Oh, crap. I’m supposed to pick up the chicken for dinner – I forgot-”

“Go, honey. I love you.”

“I love you too, mom.”

***

“You’re late,” Iris tells him as he walks in. She’s obviously just had a shower because her hair is freshly brushed and she smells like coconut oil and cocoa butter. Barry’s always liked that smell. “Dinner’s in ten.”

“Cool,” he yawns, kicking his shoes off and throwing his jacket on the couch. Iris gives him a look from behind her glasses.

“Barry.”

“Sorry, Iris,” he grins sheepishly, hanging up his jacket and messenger bag, and she smiles sunnily at him as she pads to the kitchen in her socks. His mother is there, spooning rice into bowls. “Hi, mom. What are we having?”

“Chicken and cashew nuts,” Nora replies.

“Don’t choke,” she and Iris say together, and Barry rolls his eyes.

“Ha-ha. You want me to set the table?”

“Yeah, Iris can help you. Oh, you got a phone call from Central City Picture News yesterday.”

Barry frowns. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I am telling you.”

Barry goes into the living room to return the call. “This is Barry Allen.”

“Barry!” a cheerful woman’s voice says through the phone. “This is Erica Larkin, Editor-in-Chief at Central City Picture News. I’m glad you got back to me.”

“Is there something I can do for you?”

“Well, Barry, I’ve been keeping up with your blog and your writing for the university, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so impressed with someone that wasn’t me or Melissa Bridge.”

Barry blinks and them smiles. “Well, thank you. I love Melissa’s work, she’s incredible, so that’s a pretty high compliment.”

Erica laughs. “It is, but I didn’t call you just to compliment you. We’ve been looking for a new stringer for the paper, and we think you’d be perfect for it.”

When Barry stands there, too dumbstruck to respond, Erica clears her throat. “Barry? Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. That, um, that sounds great. I’d love to work for you.”

Erica rattles off some details and promises to email him with more, and he manages to say all the right things before she hangs up. “Fuck!”

“Barry?” his mother calls. “What happened?”

“I just got offered a job at Central City Picture News,” Barry tells them as he goes back into the kitchen. His mother gapes at him and Iris squeals.

“Barry, that’s amazing!” she leaps into his arms to hug him, and he breathes in the coconut oil smell of her hair. “When?”

“Tomorrow,” he says, letting her go. “It’ll be my first day, so nothing too stressful, but still…”

“I’m so proud of you, honey,” his mother says as she hugs him. They spend their dinner talking about it, after Nora has talked about work and Iris has explained about some CSI conference that she has to go to in a couple of weeks, and Barry can’t stop grinning about it. He texts Patty but she doesn’t reply, and then Iris suggests something.

“Why don’t you go in with one of your story ideas? Like the one you were telling me about the work-rehab programme for addicts.”

“Or the one where non-able-bodied kids get stray dogs for companionship,” Nora adds.

“Or the children’s shelter-”

“Guys,” Barry interrupts, looking between them. “I don’t talk that much about writing, do I?”

Iris and his mother don’t even hesitate. “Yeah, you do.”

“Don’t worry,” his mother says, patting his face, “it’s endearing.”

Barry laughs. “Hey, you mind if I hang out here for a bit? Might as well get the jump on finding a story.”

“As long as you don’t mind watching me sort through case files and listening to Iris squeal about Downton Abbey, I don’t see why not.”

It’s a night like one of their normal family nights, with Barry in the chair by the window on his laptop, Nora in the armchair by the fireplace, and Iris curled up on the sofa in shorts and a Janet Jackson tee with a cup of tea in her hands. The living room is filled with the sound of him typing and Nora writing and British accents, and then Barry notices something.

Iris looks different.

He doesn’t know when he notices, exactly, but something about her has changed, and he can’t figure it out. And he doesn’t realise that he’s staring until Iris notices too. She frowns at him. “What?”

“Nothing. Sorry.”

Barry goes back to his work and Iris turns back to the TV, taking another brownie from the batch he brought for dessert. He sneaks a glance at her again, thinking. He’s _sure_ there’s something different… “Iris, did you change your hair?”

“No, not really. Why?”

“No reason.”

This is ridiculous. There has to be something different. He glances at her – her hair, her glasses, her skin – is that it? “Did you change your make-up?”

Iris frowns at him, visibly annoyed now. “I’m not wearing any make-up, Barry, and you know I’m allergic to anything that’s not MAC.”

“Right. Sorry.”

But when Barry is looking at her again – he’s fairly certain it’s her glasses – she throws a couch cushion at him. “Barry, _quit it_.”

“Did you change your glasses?”

“No, I didn’t, you-” But then her phone buzzes and she looks at it. “Chesca needs my help for something. I’ll be back later.” She goes upstairs to change and then wishes them goodbye, shaking her head at Barry before she leaves. He turns to his mother.

“Does Iris look different to you?”

“Barry, Iris looks exactly the same as she always has.” He notices that she’s smiling into her reports. “Maybe you’re noticing something that you haven’t before?”

But that doesn’t make any sense. He’s known Iris for years – what is he now noticing? But then he’s walking home and he realises, and it makes him stop in the middle of the street.

At the end of middle school, they had a prom for the people who were leaving. Barry thought it was dumb because it meant that he had to go find a suit, but all of the girls in Iris’ class were excited about it and Nora really wanted to take Iris shopping, so after they got Barry his suit Nora said he could wander around and come back when they were done. So he did, but he came back early, and that’s when he saw Iris in her dress for the first time. He hadn’t realised it, but this was one of the places that did your hair and makeup while you tried it on, and Nora was taking pictures to send to Francine. So he snuck into the part where the girls paraded their dresses and waited for Iris to come out so they could leave.

“Okay, Iris, you can come out now!” his mother said, camera at the ready.

And she did.

And Barry couldn’t stop staring.

Her was doing this cool thing where some was pinned up and some wasn’t, and the makeup she was wearing made her eyes look bigger and prettier, even though she wasn’t wearing her glasses. But her dress…it was gold and long and really really pretty, and Barry thought she looked like a princess. Nora took a picture and Iris blinked at the flash, and then laughed shyly when everyone started cooing at her. Then she spotted him. “B-Barry? I thought you went to the arcade.”

“Barry!” his mother said happily. “There you are. Doesn’t Iris look nice?”

“…yeah. Yeah, she looks nice.” His stomach kept flipping and his palms were kinda sweaty. “Where are your glasses?”

“I was thinking of wearing contact lenses,” she replied, looking down. “But I can’t see to get down…”

Without a word, Barry grabbed her glasses from the side, crossed to the podium, and helped her down. Then he slid her glasses back on, hoping she wouldn’t notice that his palms were still sweating. “Do you like it?” she asked shyly.

“It’s nice,” he said again, because he couldn’t seem to say anything else. He was still looking at her face, so he didn’t notice all the women exchanging knowing looks. He figured was the dress. She would look different when she had her glasses back on and was in her normal clothes.

But she wasn’t. She couldn’t have been, because Barry’s stomach still did the flippy thing when he glanced back at her in the backseat, and she was just sitting there. “Barry, stop staring at me!” she said self-consciously after he’d done it for the third time.

“Sorry.”

He was pacing up and down in front of her bedroom when they got home, because he wanted to say something else about her dress. He felt like he hadn’t said enough. But he couldn’t describe what he wanted to say as ‘seeing you in that dress made my palms sweat and my stomach flip’ – she would think she made him ill.

“Barry?” she asked when she opened the door. “What is it?”

“I just wanted to tell you – about your dress,” he added. “Sorry I didn’t say a lot. You just…You’re a girl.”

She blinked, stung. “Thanks for noticing.”

Barry frowned. “Oh, no, Iris, not like that. You’ve always been a girl. But with the hair and the makeup you looked like a real girl. A _girl_ girl.”

“Right.” She folded her arms. Barry rubbed the back of his neck at her hurt expression. This was coming out all wrong.

“I mean, I just didn’t realise how nice you would look-”

“If I dressed like a real girl?” Iris interrupted. “I get it, Barry.”

“No, wait. Wait, Iris-”

“I have to shower,” she said quietly. “I have to get the rest of this gunk off my face.”

Barry had no godly idea how he managed to screw that up, and spent the rest of the evening trying to figure it out. He practically wrote out a speech to say to her, practiced it, and caught her as she was setting the table. “Iris.”

“Barry, I’m not in the mood-”

“I’m sorry I said what I said. I just wanted you to know you looked really nice in your dress. And you always look pretty in your glasses. B-Beautiful, even. So I think you should wear them.” He swallowed. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

He bit his lip. “Are you still mad at me?”

Iris smiled at him. “No, Barry, I’m not mad at you.”

Barry knows now that he was just realising that Iris was A Pretty Girl and his adolescent self didn’t know how to handle it without sounding like an idiot. But he’s an adult now.

It’s the glasses. Iris has changed her glasses and hasn’t told him.

Yeah, that’s it.

***

“Do I have a pimple?” Iris asks the next day.

Chesca frowns at Iris, who’s just blinked into the Cortex. “What? No. Why?”

“Don’t worry,” Iris replies as she takes off her jacket. She’d figure out what Barry’s deal from last night 8was later. “What do we got?”

“Someone is shattering windows,” Chesca answers. “Down by Rathaway Industries.”

Iris is an expert at getting into her costume now – she can do it in less than a couple of seconds, and rolls her shoulders as she steps out into the Cortex. She slides on her domino mask. “Advice?”

“Don’t die,” Colin says dryly, sipping his coffee. Chesca throws a gummy bear at him.

“Sorry. Just try not to get in the way of the blasts, and you should be fine.”

“Don’t die,” Chesca adds. “What? It’s good advice.”

Iris closes her eyes and blocks out the world. She knows Rathaway Industries – it’s the big building near the town hall. She sucks in a breath and there’s a rush of adrenaline through her – and then she is outside in the cool morning air, the noise of cars crashing and shattering windows filling her ears.

“Guys, there’s a girl here in what looks like a really bad Darth Sidious outfit using sonic booms to shatter windows,” Iris says. She’s dark haired and taller than her, the hood flowing around her curls. Iris ducks as she launches a car at her.

“Mask?”

“Nope.”

“Hacking into surrounding cameras now…”

“You mean opening up the surveillance stuff that Freddie left us?”

“Shut up, Colin.”

“Guys!” Iris rolls out of the way of one car and stops another from hitting some police. “Some help? If you can?”

“Holy…” Chesca’s shocked voice sounds in her ear as the metahuman spots Iris and points her gloves at her; Iris teleports out of the way. “Guys, that’s Hailey.”

“Hailey?” Colin demands. “Hailey’s gone.”

“No, she’s not, I can see her!”

“Chesca, Hailey left months ago-”

“You guys!” Iris ducks two more cars and teleports out of the way of another as Hailey advances again. “You mind telling me who Hailey is? _Before_ she turns me into a shish kebab?”

“Hailey Rathaway, her parents own the building. She used to work here.”

“What happened to her? Apart from the whole ‘becoming a metahuman and trying to kill everyone thing’ that always seems to happen when I leave the house.”

“It’s a long story,” Chesca replies, and Iris senses that there’s something they’re not telling her. “Just get her to STAR Labs.”

“That, I can do.”

Iris rolls out of the way of another sonic blast before teleporting to right behind Hailey. She rips off her gloves and throws them to the floor, before twisting her arms behind her back. “Hailey Rathaway? Miss Miracle. Nice to meet you.”

Hailey twists around to sneer at her. “Oh, I’ve heard about you.”

“Most people have. I’ve got a pretty famous name.”

“Oh, you wanna talk names? I know names. How are Chesca and Colin doing? They still blindly worshipping the ground Dr Wells walks on?”

Iris rolls her eyes. “Alright, honey. You’ll get to do your spiel, don’t worry.”

“And you? You’re letting her order you around after what she did with the Particle Accelerator?”

“That was an accident.”

Hailey grins slowly at her. “My. They never told me Miss Miracle was an idiot. Coward, maybe, but not an idiot. As it stands,” she adds at the look on Iris’ face, “leather-clad hotties with an ass like yours are my weakness, so go ahead and bring me back to STAR Labs. I get the feeling you’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”

***

Central City Picture News is a gorgeous building, Barry notes, so her hopes he doesn’t throw up with nerves down the side of it. He adjusts his tie and swallows as he walks in to sign in, get his badge, and is directed to the big table on the far side of the room. Some of the people smile at him, but most are on their phones or laptops or iPads, and then a middle-aged blond woman starts talking, and he recognises her as Erica Larkin.

“Okay, everyone, hope you’re all ready for a hectic week,” she says cheerfully. “Sports, features, politics, I need your pieces in by the end of the day. And let’s all give a warm welcome to Barry Allen, our new cub. I don’t doubt that you’ve heard of him, seeing as he’s the only Twitter account that gets more traffic than ours.”

“Hi, everyone,” he says as they all nod and smile at him.

“Who wants to be the cub’s mother?”

Silence.

“Hm. Missy, thank you for volunteering.”

Barry’s stomach drops out of his chest when he realises that Erica is talking about Missy Bridge, who is sitting across from him and drinking a latte. She narrows her blue eyes and pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. “Ricky, what was it on my face that made you think I’d be suitable for babysitting? I had Botox specifically to make sure my face didn’t move.”

“Maybe the fact that your article on corruption in the mayor’s office is late.”

“You can’t rush art.”

“Mother the cub, Missy.”

Barry swallows nervously when Erica dismisses everyone, and Missy gets up to go to her desk. “Follow me, cub.”

“I just – um,” he says as she strides quickly to her station, “wanted to know what an honour I think it is, working for you, and I know you can help me with some of the ideas I have-”

“Okay, cub, stop right there,” she says. “You don’t have ideas. You don’t have hopes or dreams or ideals. You’re the new boy, you do the grunt work, and so what you have right now is _me_. Specifically, my projects, my ideas, my work. Starting with my research, which is over there on my desk. Collect it, fact-check it, and make corrections on the article.” She makes to walk away and then turns back. “What was your name again, cub?”

“Barry. Allen,” he adds, holding his hand out. She waves a dismissive hand.

“I’ll never remember that. You’re Tim. I want this done by the end of the week, Tim.”

Barry sits at his desk after he’s collected Missy’s articles and the relevant research, his heart sinking. “I wouldn’t take it personally,” a voice says. “She’s like that with everyone.”

A tall, brown-skinned man in a suit walks over to the desk across from him and holds a hand out to shake, smiling warmly at him. “Nice to meet you, I’m-”

“Scott Evans, from TV. Yeah, I know you, my-” Barry refrains from saying ‘my best friend has a total crush on you’. “My girlfriend’s worked with you before. She’s a detective.”

“Yeah, I talk to a lot of those. I read your blog, by the way. You’re really talented.”

“Thanks,” Barry smiles ruefully. “Missy doesn’t seem to think so.” Scott laughs, scratching his beard.

“She’s just irritated that Miss Miracle will only talk to you. We all love your blog, even if nobody wants to say so. And don’t worry about the name thing – she called me ‘cub’ for a month before she learned my name. You’re doing fine.” Scott pauses and looks at the stack of research. “But I really would get those done. Missy throws things at people.”

***

“I just – I mean, I can’t believe she _knew_ ,” Chesca says for the third time. “And she didn’t tell us.”

“After everything that we did for her, she knew the Particle Accelerator could have been dangerous, and she turned it on anyway,” Colin sighs. He runs a hand through his hair, messing up his neatly-combed parting. Iris looks between the two of them, helpless. She hadn’t known what would happen when she brought Hailey back to the Cortex, but Iris is still reeling from her revelations. Hailey had worked at STAR Labs before the Particle Accelerator was ready to go off, and had warned her that it was dangerous, but Dr Wells had turned it on anyway. Colin and Chesca adore Dr Wells, so Iris knows that the resulting argument – when they outright told her that she had disappointed them – had to have been hard.

“Did you guys watch the press conference?” Iris asks. Dr Wells had come to CCPD to admit her part in the explosion, not asking to be absolved or forgiven, exactly, but acknowledging that she knew the risks and went ahead anyway. It isn’t Iris’ place to forgive Dr Wells, because this isn’t something to do with her, but she hates to see her friends hurting like this.

“Yeah,” Chesca answers, sipping her cappuccino. “It was okay, I guess. I just don’t know how we can trust her again, not after she lied about something like this.”

“Ronnie loved her so much,” Colin says, looking down at his hands. “That Dr Wells knew and didn’t tell me or her or any of us…”

“Yeah, it’s not something you can get over quickly,” Iris says. She pushes her glasses up her nose. “But listen, I know she’s disappointed you, but you have to think about how she’s tried to make up for it since. Chesca, she’s the one who funded and pushed through all your patents and projects, even when you thought they weren’t going anywhere. And Colin, she tried to get you that job at Mercury Labs, and talked you up to anyone who could listen. I’m not saying forgive her straight away,” she adds. “Just, um, maybe not be so quick to shut her out?”

They leave after promising not to be so harsh with Dr Wells, and Iris knows they’re going back to the Cortex. She rubs her eyes and orders another Americano. Hailey is still in the Pipeline, and Iris isn’t so sure they’re done with the woman who called herself the Pied Piper (“I’ll let her have that one,” Chesca had huffed. “It’s no ‘Captain Cold’, but…”)

“Okay, so I know why _I’m_ having a shitty day,” a familiar voice says, “so why don’t you tell me about _your_ shitty day, sunshine?”

Iris smiles as Barry sits down; they’ve always been able to read each other. “Come on, it can’t have been that bad. How was your first day?”

“Well, everyone keeps making me fact-check, nobody actually wants me to write anything, and I’m working under Missy Bridge, who I thought was amazing, but is actually grumpy and demeaning and refuses to call me my name.”

Iris frowns. “But what about the press conference?” she points out hopefully. “I mean, you didn’t let Dr Wells off the hook when she tried to get around talking about turning on the Particle Accelerator. That was pretty cool, I’m sure she was impressed by that.”

Barry laughs. “Yeah, she said I had gumption. And then she stopped calling me ‘cub’ and started calling me ‘Larry’, which is _almost_ Barry, but…” He sighs. “Plus, they just want me to keep writing about Miss Miracle. And I love writing about her, of course I do, but I also want to write about real stuff. No, wait. There’s the escaped jellyfish story that everyone wants me to write about.”

“Escaped jellyfish?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Well, Barry, you and I both know you’re an amazing writer,” Iris tells him. “You just have to keep going. It’s only your first day, you’ll be beating Missy and winning one of those Pulli- Pulint-”

“Pulitzers,” Barry corrects her. “And Missy has won two.”

Iris blinks and sips her coffee. “Oh. Have you considered bribery?”

They both burst into laughter and Iris thinks that this is good, they can be normal Barry and Iris together. She notices, for some reason, that Barry keeps focusing on her nose. He gives her a smile. “So, why was your day so shitty?”

“You saw, with Dr Wells. It took a lot for me to forgive her, but that was when I thought it was an accident.”

Barry sips his coffee. “Look, Iris, I know how you feel, believe me. It took me a long time to ever trust her anywhere near you after the explosion. But she worked night and day to make sure you woke up. If she’s sorry, I think she means it. Sometimes people fuck up.”

Iris sits back and thinks about what he says as he goes to get more coffee, and her phone buzzes. “Yeah?”

“Hailey’s out,” Colin says. “She knocked out Chesca and Dr Wells, and she’s headed to the dam.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a sec.”

And Iris is reminded of one of the many times she’s fucking up with Barry and this superhero thing, but there’s Nora and keeping Barry safe and her almost killing Patty… ”Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“I have to go, I have a…a thing, but tomorrow we can hang out and find you a good story, okay?”

“Okay,” he replies. “Sure, sounds great.”

“Great,” she says, and speeds off, thinking that she really has to get better at lying.

***

It’s fine. Everything is fine.

It’s just a crazed metahuman who can cause sonic booms and hates everything to do with Dr Wells. It’s _fine_.

Iris flashes into a car that Hailey has thrown off the side of the dam and flashes out again, depositing the passengers behind the police blockade. “Guys, not fine! Not fine at all!”

“Iris, you can’t get too close,” Chesca tells her. “Those blasts, that proximity…it could kill you.”

“Good to know!”

Iris ducks out of the way of another car and saves some more people, before twisting out of the blasts that Hailey shoots out. “Iris,” Dr Wells says. “Iris, be careful. Hailey is vindictive and vengeful, but she’s also a genius and she’ll be wanting to trick you.”

Iris clenches her jaw. She’s not sure how she feels about Dr Wells right at this minute. “Noted,” she says, and Hailey stalks towards her.

“Still think you can match me, Miss Miracle?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Guess Dr Wells didn’t tell you how smart I am.”

And Iris collapses as pain lances through her body, making her bones vibrate and tears leak out of her eyes. She sinks to the ground, her hands over her ears, and Hailey comes to stand above her. “While the four of you were having your soap opera theatrics, I was reconfiguring my gloves to match your frequency. Guess you aren’t so miraculous.”

Iris lies there, writing in pain, and catches snippets of Dr Wells and Chesca and Colin arguing about what to do next. Her vision starts to go blurry and she feels herself slipping away…and then lights start flashing everywhere and all the noise stops.

“ _Aargh_!” Hailey screams, sinking to her knees.

“Iris, now!” Dr Wells orders. “Take the gloves off and destroy them!”

Iris gets up, shaking her head, and uses her powers to lift the gloves from Hailey’s hands and crushes them in the air. Hailey glares up at her. “Maybe I don’t need to be miraculous all the time, Rathaway.”

Iris insists that she’s fine after they’ve deposited Hailey in the Pipeline for the second time, but Colin doesn’t believe her. “For one thing,” he says, wincing as he cleans her cuts, “you keep yelling. I’m right next to you.”

“Sorry,” Iris says loudly.

“Iris,” everyone says.

“Oops,” she says, quietly now. ”Sorry. Dr Wells?”

“Iris,” she says evenly, wheeling up to them.

“Thanks for saving me.”

“Well, it is the very least I can do. Although I couldn’t have done it without Chesca and Colin.” She takes off her glasses. “I want you to know, despite my…shortcomings as a teacher, and as your friend, I am truly grateful to have you here. STAR Labs would not be the same without you.”

Chesca smiles, glancing at Colin. “Thank you, Dr Wells. That means a lot.”

Iris is the last to leave, carefully putting her uniform away and grabbing her messenger bag. Dr Wells is checking over her medical reports from the fight, seeing if any of that will heighten her powers. “They’ll forgive you, you know.” Dr Wells looks at her, blue eyes clear.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you’ve always believed in them,” Iris says simply. “But it’s not just forgiveness you want from them. It’s trust. So you have to keep working to make sure they trust you again, because they may forgive you, but you need to get them back on your side.”

“I will keep that in mind.” Dr Wells fiddles with her ring. “Iris, I…People make mistakes. Big mistakes. Ones that we regret, ones that define who we are. And sometimes they’re not that simple to correct.”

“Well, you’ll never know until you try, right?”

Dr Wells’ eyes flash briefly. “Of course. You never know until you try.”

***

“I’m telling you, it’s Lyanna!”

“That makes no sense!”

“Duh, she was in the Tower of Joy with Rhaegar!” Chesca points out. “’Promise me, Ned’? What, you think she was asking him to remember to feed the direwolves?”

Colin shakes his head. “But if you-”

“As fun as this is,” Iris interrupts in a strained voice. “I’m carrying about thirty pounds in weights here. With my mind. Could we talk about Jon Snow’s parentage later?”

“Sorry, Iris,” Colin says. “Why don’t we call it a night?”

Iris narrows her eyes and the dumbbells find their place on the wall. When she walks out, Colin is scanning her vitals.

“You’re doing really well, Iris,” he says. “You’re already lifting more than twice what you could lift before Christmas, your telepathic range is getting wider. You’re good.”

“But I’m still not stronger than Calamity,” Iris finished, not even needing to read his mind. Colin shares a look with Chesca, and Iris sighs and looks at her suit.

It’s what they’ve been trying to get her to do since Christmas – be stronger than Calamity. They’ve tried exercises where she has to run far away and see how far she can read minds, increasing the amount of weight she can lift with her mind, even flying. But it’s not enough.

“Hey, come on girl,” Chesca says encouragingly. “You’ll get there. The Enterprise wasn’t built in a day.” Colin stares at her.

“ _Rome_ , Chesca. _Rome_ wasn’t built in a day.”

“I said what I said.”

Iris rubs her eyes behind her glasses. “Right. Listen, you guys go home. We’ve been working on this for hours, I know you’re tired.”

“Well, I’m very glad to hear you say that,” Chesca says. “Because I happen to have a date.” Iris and Colin round on her, intrigued.

“With you?” Iris asks.

“None of your business. And don’t you try your miracle shit with me, miss thing,” Chesca adds. “No mind-reading, I’m calling it.”

“Damn,” Iris laughs. “Well, whatever. Have fun!”

“Who do you think it is?”

“Louis Snart. He has a total crush on her.”

“Like Chesca would date a supervillain’s brother.”

“What?” Iris shrugs. “He’s cute.”

“Hmph,” Colin huffs. “Whatever. Anyway, Iris, I’m happy to keep working on this, if you want.”

“No, it’s cool. I have to go meet Barry, help him with a story for the paper. Otherwise, he’s stuck writing about an escaped jellyfish.”

Colin gets very interested in her mask all of a sudden and Iris groans. “Colin, no – we’re responsible for that too? What did we do?”

“For legal purposes, its best you don’t know.”

“Legal?”

“Maybe military. Perhaps some national security as well.”

“Great (!)”

“So, how are things with you and Barry? Since you…Since you told him?”

“They’re fine,” she shrugs. “I mean, I told him, he’s still with Patty. But he knows now. Cards on the table, he knows. So I guess I have to find someone else to be crazy about.”

Barry is coming out of the precinct as Iris suspected he would be when she left STAR Labs, but he’s arm in arm with Patty and wearing a suit. “Barry? You free to look for your story?” His face falls and he glances at Patty.

“I’m sorry, Iris, I know we made plans,” he says. “But we’re going to dinner with Patty’s mom – she’s only in town for a few days, and you seemed really busy-”

“It’s cool,” she interrupts, plastering a smile on her face. “We can hang out later. You guys have fun.”

And it’s okay. It really is. She is Getting Over Barry. But now she’s remembering that it’s a big deal, that Barry knows Patty’s mother, and she wants to get drunk, and since she can’t do that because of her metabolism, she at least wants to pretend she can. She gets out her phone and dials a number.

“Iris?”

“Hey, Colin. You ever been to Trajectory before?”

“The nightclub?”

“Yeah. Come get drunk and dance with me.”

“I don’t know, Iris, I’m kind of busy…”

“Watching Mary reject the third guy who’s proposed to her is not busy, Colin.”

“You watch Downton Abbey too.”

“So I know how sad and lonely you are.”

He sighs and Iris grins. “Fine. But I am not dancing to Drake.”

So, about an hour later, Iris is pleasantly surprised to find that Colin can actually dress like something not resembling a high school principal. “Chesca threw out most of my sweaters,” he says at her appreciative look at his outfit, a light blue striped shirt and jeans. “This is all I could find.”

“Well, you look great. Muss up your hair a little.”

Colin looks horrified. “What?”

“Muss it up. You look like a Stepford husband.”

“My hair is fine.”

“Whatever,” she says. She grins as _Survivor_ comes on, and hands Colin one of the two drinks she ordered. She clinks her glasses and makes him drink, enjoying the buzz…and yeah, it’s gone. Oh, well. Colin coughs a little. “What was that?”

“Double vodka and coke,” she shrugs. She grabs his arm. “Come on, I love this song.”

Colin Snow, Iris finds, is a lot more fun than she thought. _Survivor_ and _I Knew You Were Trouble_ have him a little tentative, but once _Ignition_ is on – and he orders a couple more double vodkas – he’s completely loose. Even several songs after that, when she goes to get some water for her dry throat, Colin is surrounded by a crowd of adoring (well, entertained) clubgoers.

“He with you?” someone says. Iris blinks up through the strobe lights to see a handsome black man staring at Colin, who’s doing some sort of shuffle-step to the song. “Yeah, he’s my friend. Probably shouldn’t admit that in public.”

“Well, he’s certainly got some interesting moves. But I meant whether he was your boyfriend.”

“Oh. _Oh_! N-No, he’s not my boyfriend. I don’t have a boyfriend.”

The mysterious man looks at her. He looks really familiar…”Good to know.”

“Iris! Iris, this was such a good idea!” Colin bounds over them, his hair messy and his collar pulled open. “I had a tequila shot!” he says proudly. “It was great, I – Oh, who are you? Wait, I know you. You’re Scott Evans from the news.” He gasps. “Are you flirting with Iris? If not, you should. Flirt with Iris. She’s really nice and smart, and in her prime fertility window. Perfect for a mate. I know that, I’m a doctor.”

“Colin!” Iris says desperately, but he puts a finger to her lips.

“No, Iris, look. He’s hot, I know you think he’s hot, you and Chesca and Patty talk about him all the time. Plus, if you get under him, you can get over-”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Iris says, blushing furiously, but Scott just laughs. Now that Colin has mentioned it, she recognises Scott – his voice, his face, that beard ( _lord_ ) – and it makes her more embarrassed. “Sorry,” she says. “He doesn’t get out much.”

“I figured,” he laughs. Someone taps him on the shoulder and says something to him. He turns back. “So, um, Iris, was it?”

“Yeah. Iris West.”

“Well, Iris West, if your friend was being drunk and stupid, I’m sorry. But if he wasn’t and you do think I’m hot…Well, I think you’re hot too.”

And he scribbles down a number and pushes it into her hand before walking away, and Iris is so dumbstruck she hasn’t noticed that Colin is swaying next to her. “Iris?”

“You are the best wingman ever.”

“Iris.”

“Seriously, Chesca has nothing on you.”

“Iris, I’m going to be-”

Pure instinct means that she flashes him into an alley just as he pukes his guts out, and then she takes him to his apartment and helps him get out of his clothes. She says nothing about the dinousaur pjs that she helps him get into, mostly because he’s still talking when she puts him to bed.

“I really did like the tequila,” he tells her, pulling the covers up.

“I know, honey. Okay, I’m leaving this water and this aspirin for you. Take it when you wake up.”

“That Scott guy was cool.” Iris smiles to herself, thinking of his bright smile under the strobe lights.

“Yeah, he was.”

“I think you could be crazy about him, Iris,” he whispers. She pats his side.

“What about you, Dr Snow? Find anyone you want to be crazy about?”

“No,” he sighs sadly. “I miss Ronnie too much. She would have loved this.” He sniffs. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like she’s really gone, you know? Even though I had to declare her dead because she’s been missing for so long, and we had the funeral and everything, sometimes I feel like I can hear something funny or see something she’d like and then I’d get to show her. But I can’t. And she was the only one…” he yawns. “….the only one who gets me, why I’m doing all of this…”

Iris frowns. “Doing all of what?”

But Colin is snoring now and she stays for a few more minutes, getting him water and crackers, and when she walks home she wonders about Colin. He is professional every day, always put together, and never letting on anything about what he’s going through. And she wonders how many demons everyone must be hiding underneath their friendly smiles and perfect hair.

***

Barry glances back at Iris in the rear-view mirror – she’s on the phone with someone, her hand shoved in her pockets as she talks. He hadn’t meant to blow her off, but he’d been texting her all day and she hadn’t replied. (Plus, he’s finally figured out that it was her glasses. Or her glasses and her nose. It was a cute nose).

“Everything okay?” Patty asks. Barry turns back to driving.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. So, is your mom actually staying for dinner this time?”

Patty laughs nervously. “That’s the hope. She has a big sales pitch this week at Wayne Enterprises, so she’s definitely sticking around.”

Barry has only met Eleanor Spivot once, when she was on the way out of Patty’s apartment after being told that she was needed for work. He doesn’t know exactly what happens when you’re an ammunition sales rep for Bree Wayne, but he imagines it must be pretty hectic if he’s only met his girlfriend’s mother once.

“Does my hair look okay?” Patty asks, checking it in the mirror.

“It looks fine.”

“Barry, I do not want ‘fine’. Eleanor Spivot does not do ‘fine’.”

“You’re her daughter,” Barry laughs. “She hasn’t seen you in months – I’m sure the last thing she’s worried about is your hair.”

“Spoken like someone who’s never met Eleanor Spivot.”

The restaurant is on the outskirts of town – Barry has never been there before, which just shows how fancy it is. Eleanor is sitting there already, and she gets up to hug them both when they arrive. Patty looks like her mother – same light blue eyes, blond hair, and fine features, even though Patty is about two inches taller and Eleanor is thinner, more regal.

“Patricia, Bartholomew,” she greets them warmly. She adjusts her dress as they sit down again. “It’s lovely to see you both.

“Barry, mom,” Patty says. “Barry is fine.”

“Nonsense, Patricia. Bartholomew is a wonderful name, he has no reason to be ashamed of it. That is a wonderful dress, dear, and did you do something with your hair?” she adds. “It suits you.”

Patty blinks in surprise. “Thanks, mom.”

“Of course. Now, I’ve ordered the chef’s special for all three courses, so we can get straight to talking. Bartholomew, Patricia tells me that this was the first day of your new job at the newspaper. That must be exciting.”

“It is,” Barry agrees. “I’ve actually been partnered with Missy Bridge, which is amazing.”

“The Pulitzer-winner?”

“Right.”

“Except she doesn’t remember his name,” Patty tells her. “She keeps calling him Larry.”

“Now, that’s insanity. Bartholomew is a much better name.”

“Bartholomew Henry,” he says. “Apparently, my parents didn’t want me to have a chance.”

“Henry? Now, that’s a grand name.”

“I was named after my father.”

“Well, he must be a wonderful man, with a name like that.”

Patty’s eyes widen. “Mom, Barry’s dad isn’t – He’s not-”

“My father isn’t in my life,” he says evenly, sipping his water. Eleanor’s hands fly to her mouth.

“I’m so sorry, Bartholomew-”

“It’s okay,” he assures her. “He worked in insurance. Believe me, he’s more interesting this way.”

“Well, if he’s going to leave a charming man like you, then Henry Allen must be a fool indeed.”

The night continues pleasantly, though Barry does find himself thinking about his father. All he remembers is a man who travelled a lot and always took the same book – _The Catcher in the Rye_. He doesn’t even look like Henry; everyone says that Barry looks exactly like Nora. He also finds that he likes Eleanor, but he does see where Patty gets her need to please from. Eleanor is pristine in everything she does – the way she balances the glass of champagne in her hand, the way she speaks to the waiter in expert French, and the way she knows exactly which kinds of fork to use for the salad course.

“So, Patty says you’re in town for a sales pitch,” Barry says over dessert. “That must be interesting, working for the Wayne industries.”

“Oh, it’s the best,” she agrees. “People think we just sell guns, but we also prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Wayne Technologies makes sure not to sell to anyone…untoward.”

“I’m sure.”

“Did Patricia tell you about why she became a police officer? I love this story.”

“No,” he says, turning to her. “I mean, I know why she became a detective, but not a beat cop.”

Patty laughs. “Thanks, mom. It was, um, from when I was a kid. My dad and uncle were at work – they worked in insurance too – and they were getting lunch, and they were held up. A lot of people were killed, and I saw it on the news.” She shrugs. “And from that point on I thought it was my duty to make sure bad men with guns got what was coming to them.”

“That’s my beautiful girl,” Eleanor says, reaching over to stroke her face. “Always correcting the wrongs of the world. But I wouldn’t make an enemy out of this one, Bartholomew. She may be pretty, but she could hit a fly at fifty paces.”

Barry grins at her. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Later, he watches as her mother wishes Patty goodbye, fluffing her hair and cleaning her clothes in only the way a mother does. Then she kisses him on both cheeks. “It was lovely seeing you again, Barry. I hope to be seeing more of you.”

“Your mom is awesome,” he says later, when they’re getting ready for bed. He adjusts his laptop. A little curious, especially about him, but that made sense because he was living with her daughter. “Why were you so worried?”

“My mother has certain…expectations. You saw how she was – she’s the definition of perfection.”

“Well, it was obvious that she loves you. Hey,” he adds. “You never told me that about your dad.”

She sighs. “It’s not something I really like talking about.”

“Well, you know you can always talk to me.”

And the smile Patty gives him is a little sad, but he has no idea why. “I know, Barry.”

***

“You’re blocking my light, Larry.”

Barry bites his lip, holding the file in his hands. He was looking through it last night, remembering what Iris said about him being a good writer, and realised that he hadn’t followed up on his case about the metahumans. Tony and the other one, who could send out light blasts with her hands, both had weird brands. And maybe if he figures out where they come from, he could actually help Miss Miracle defeat. He could actually be _useful_.

So he tells Missy.

“So you think that the people who went missing in the last few months may have become metahumans, and that’s why they haven’t been heard of,” Missy says. She narrows her eyes. “It’s not a terrible idea. Alright, fine. But I don’t want you slacking, Bart.”

So Barry is grinning when he goes back to his desk, and that’s how Iris meets him a few minutes later. She’s very pretty in a dark blue dress with her hair in curls, and she’s grinning at him. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Hey, sunshine. Oh, if you’re here to check on me, I already have a great story. I can tell you about it, if you want.”

“That’s great,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “But I’m not actually here to see you.”

“Wait, Iris, did you break your glasses?” he asks, peering at her. “I think I have your spares in my desk-”

“No,” she laughs. “Actually, I kind of have a date, so I'm wearing contacts.”

He blinks in confusion. “With who?”

“Uh…” she points behind him, and he turns to see Scott smiling at Iris.

And Barry’s heart constricts.

“Ready?” Scott asks.

“Sure.”

“Oh,” Barry swallows uncomfortably. “You guys…You guys know each other? How’d you meet?”

“Long story,” Scott laughs, and Iris takes his arm, and Barry blinks again.

“And I’ll tell you later,” Iris says. She tugs on Scott’s arm. “We should go.”

They wish him goodbye and leave, and he’s left staring after them with this weird feeling in his chest. His phone rings and he answers it on autopilot, still staring after Scott and Iris. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” Patty says. “So, interesting development. My mom got a job here in Central City’s division of Wayne Technologies. So we’re going to see a lot more of her. Isn’t that great?”

“Yeah,” Barry says hoarsely. “Great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooo that was that. let me know what you think! ;)


	10. Miss Miracle Goes Nuclear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How everyone learned to love the bomb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is kinda messy, but kinda great, so i hope you like it!

Iris isn’t surprised, given the amount of tequila that Colin consumed, that he doesn’t show up to STAR Labs the way he usually does, in jeans and a sweater. Instead, when the elevator doors open, Iris sees him walk out in a trench coat and sunglasses, with a scarf tightly wrapped around his neck. He’s also moving stiffly, and flinches when he sees the bright light of the lobby.

“Morning,” she says brightly, sipping her coffee, and he winces at her as they walk towards the Cortex.

“Mmph.”

“That bad?”

“Hmph.”

“I did tell you not to overdo it on the shots.”

“Grmph.”

“But at least you had fun, right?”

Colin lifts up his sunglasses and gives her a look, and Iris giggles. “Let’s just say, Miss Miracle, I admire your metabolism’s refusal to let you get drunk.”

“I’m sure.” She grins. “ _It’s the remix to ignition_ …”

“Iris…”

“Listen, you have some of the best hips I’ve ever seen, grinding on the dancefloor like that. I’m surprised no one gave _you_ their phone number.”

At Colin’s blush, Iris raises her eyebrows. “You did? How many?”

“Three or four…perhaps five women,” he amends quietly, “may have informed me that they enjoyed my dance moves and would like me to…instruct them in the ways of…of-”

Colin breaks off and gives her his phone, and Iris’ eyebrows go even further up her forehead when she finds her way to his text messages. “Alright, Dr Snow. Are you going to…”

“Right now, Iris, I’m concentrating on not throwing up after each step. And stop being so _loud_.”

“Noted.”

 But Colin doesn’t get his wish, because when they walk into the Cortex Chesca is yelling at someone on the phone in a mixture of English and Spanish, walking up and down the room. Every few seconds, a beeping noise sounds from the control panel, and Chesca turns it off all the while continuing her conversation on the phone.

“… _exactly_ why I don’t let you fix me up on dates anymore…”

“Make her stop,” Colin murmurs, wincing. “Please.”

“Sure,” Iris says uncertainty. “Uh, Chesca, honey-”

“…maybe I don’t _want_ kids yet…”

Chesca is either ignoring them or doesn’t notice them, and neither Iris nor Colin want to get in the way of her flailing arms. “Jeez, who pissed her off?”

“I don’t know, I took Russian,” Colin mutters. Iris looks up at him.

“Seriously?”

He takes her coffee from her and sips it. “I remain a mystery wrapped inside an enigma suffering from a hangover, Miss Miracle. Now, how do we get her to stop?”

“Wait, I think she’s winding down,” Iris mutters back. She and Colin watch as Chesca finishes with what sounds like a bunch of expletives in Spanish and then hangs up the phone.

“Thank God,” Colin mutters, and Iris clears her throat.

“Chess? Everything okay?”

“That’s the last time I ever let my mother set me up on a date,” she says darkly, shutting off the beeping that’s started again. “I swear, she drives me crazy sometimes.”

“That sounded like a pretty bad argument.”

“Nah, it’s fine, we were kidding. Mostly. So, what’s with the two of you?”

“Colin drank all the tequila in Central City,” Iris said, slapping his shoulder, and he winces again. Chesca whistles.

“You got him to go out? Nicely done, Miss Miracle. Where?”

“Trajectory. Did you know he can dance?”

“Dr Frost can _dance_? Is he good?”

“Got himself a few phone numbers.”

“Ooh!” Chesca says excitedly. “Give me his phone, he’s going to screw this up.”

“Hey!” Colin snatches his phone away as Chesca grabs for it. “Leave me alone. Anyway, Iris, shouldn’t you be calling Scott?”

Iris blushes and Chesca rounds on her. “Scott? Scott who?”

“Scott Evans,” Iris says in a small voice and Chesca squeals.

“Chesca, please,” Colin mutters, rubbing his temples. But she ignores him, shutting off the insistent beeping that’s started up again, and looks at Iris.

“You met Scott Evans? He gave you his number?”

“Yeah, after Tequila Sunrise over here started talking to him about my _fertility window_ ,” Iris points out. “I thought I was going to die of embarrassment. How you got all those numbers is beyond me.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Chesca tells her. “You’ve got Scott Evans – _Scott fucking Evans_ – interested in you and you let me yell on the phone instead of talking about it? You’d better call him.”

“If we consider the previously-mentioned fertility comment,” Colin deadpans, looking at the computer, “it would appear that I agree.” Iris adjusts her glasses.

“I don’t know, guys…”

“Colin, what was he like? Around Iris?”

“Well, his pupils were dilated, his body language indicated interest that was above platonic, and-”

“English, doctor boy.”

“The thirst was real.”

“See?” Chesca said triumphantly. “If that smile doesn’t convince you, that voice will. And that _beard_ – listen, you need to date him so I can live vicariously through you. The things I would let that man do to me-”

“Why am I here?” Colin moans, his head in his hands. Chesca and Iris ignore him, the latter twisting her fingers.

“You think so?”

“Iris,” Chesca sighs. “Scott likes you, according to Dr Frost, and he’s cute and smart and funny. Why are you so scared of seeing where that could go?”

And Iris knows the answer – _he’s not Barry_. It’s the answer she’s always given when it came to things like this, that whoever it is isn’t the boy she’s in love with. But it’s different now because he knows how she feels and he’s with someone else, and she is Getting Over Barry. And Scott is cute.

“I’ll think about it,” she promises finally. “I will – Jeez, what is that noise?”

“It’s Pipeline,” Colin answers, frowning at the computer terminal as he clicks. “It usually means that one of the prisoners is in distress or needs the bathroom. I’m trying to find out why it’s malfunctioning, but I can’t see anything weird.”

“Malfunctioning?” Iris frowns.

“Why else would it be beeping so much?”

“It’s not malfunctioning,” Chesca tells them. “It’s just Hailey.”

“Hailey?” Colin says. “What’s her problem?”

“She’s probably upset because I duct-taped her mouth shut.”

“ _You duct-taped her mouth shut_?” Iris demands. “Are you insane?” But Colin gives her an appreciative look.

“Ooh, good idea,” he nods. “Wish I’d thought of that earlier.” Iris looks between the two of them.

“Are you both crazy?”

“Look, Iris, if you spend enough time with Hailey Rathaway, you’d want to tape her mouth shut too.”

Iris throws her hands up and goes to get her suit. “I’m going to see if she wants anything. It’s bad enough that we’re keeping them here without due process, we can’t not see whether they’re in distress.” Chesca holds her hands up in surrender.

“On your head be it, young padawan.”

Iris rolls her eyes and flashes down to the Pipeline, before finding the coordinates for Hailey’s cell and then waiting for the Pipeline to turn and deposit Hailey in front of her. She remembers to turn on her voice modifier, since none of the metahumans in the Pipeline know her identity and she’d very much like to keep it that way. In the next second, Hailey comes to a stop in front of her, a bored figure in handcuffs on the floor. She raises her eyebrows when she sees Iris, and they go even higher when she opens the door.

“Try anything,” she says, pausing before taking the duct tape off, “and I’m going to let Chesca rick-roll you until your ears fall off.”

Hailey rolls her eyes but nods, and Iris carefully peels the tape off her face. “You know, death would have been quicker,” she deadpans. “Better than listening to Toni admire her muscles in the mirror or Rainbow Raider accidentally hypnotise herself all the time.”

“Funny, Rathaway. What do you want? Or were you just trying to piss off Chesca?”

“I’d like to change my lunch order. I suddenly have a craving for cuisine from the mountains of Tibet during the noon hours.”

“Are you – okay, you’re going back in the Pipeline.”

“No, wait!” Hailey stops her. “That’s not it. You’re going to want to talk to me. And you’re going to want to let me talk to the others as well.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I know what happened to Ronnie Raymond.”

Iris’ grip on Hailey’s shirt tightens. They may have been joking about Colin getting lots of dates earlier, but she knows well enough the pain that he went through in losing his fiancée. “That isn’t funny, Rathaway.”

“I’m starving, locked up, and forced to spend time with people who have the collective intelligence of a second-grade gym class,” she replies. “Do I really have the space to be making jokes?”

Iris narrows her eyes at Hailey’s head, scanning the shape and scope of her thoughts for the tell-tale signs of dishonesty – scattered thoughts, conflicting ideas, lack of concrete feeling. But Hailey is either immune to mind-reading or she is telling the truth, because Iris finds nothing. She considers for a moment, and then takes the handcuffs off.

“Stretch your arms,” she orders briskly. “We’re going for a walk.”

“Can’t you just take me there in the blink of an eye, Miss Miracle?” Hailey asks, doing what she says.

“You need to move your legs, or they’ll atrophy. Don’t worry, though, the handcuffs are going back on. Arms.”

“Oh, you’re the bossy kind,” she says appreciatively as Iris puts the handcuffs on her. “And forceful, too. Bet your boyfriend loves that.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“What about that Barry Allen guy?” she muses as they walk back up to the Cortex. Iris feels her face heat up.

“Barry’s not my boyfriend. He just writes about me.”

“Well, from the way he salivates over you on his blog, he might as well. I bet _he’d_ appreciate it if you handcuffed him to something and bossed him around. Or do you think he’s the kind who likes being tied up?”

“Be quiet, Rathaway.”

But Hailey ignores her and, seeing how uncomfortable it makes her, continues. “You know, I’d bet he’d appreciate that tight leather outfit you’re always swanning around in, too, if he’s got any sense. Maybe add a nice whip or a riding crop, get him really excited.” She pauses and her voice goes deeper and breathier. “’I’m so sorry for disappointing you, Miss Miracle, _so sorry_ , punish me, punish me, _please_ ’.”

Iris bites her lip and her face gets even hotter. “I’m serious. I wouldn’t do that to Barry.”

“So am I, because I’d love you to do all that to me, but unfortunately you’re so boringly hetero,” she sighs dramatically. “So I will be forced to remain in pathetic jealousy of a journalist who comes up with cutesy names like ‘Miss Miracle’.”

“That’s not…I’m not that kind of superhero.”

“In all honesty, I don’t think you’d have much competition. That Patty Spivot he’s dating is hot, don’t get me wrong, but she must be the most vanilla thing on two legs, even though they’re great legs. The kinkiest thing she does is probably pay a parking ticket late. I think she’s hiding something,” she adds after a second, “she must be. Nobody’s that perfect.”

“Apparently, Patty is,” Iris tells her, and she’s only a little bitter. “So you can stop talking about me tying up her boyfriend and…and _punishing_ him. I don’t take advantage of people like that.”

“Believe me, Miss Miracle, we’re all sorry about that.”

It’s at this point that Iris wishes she’d kept the duct tape on Hailey’s mouth.

Chesca grins at Iris’ expression when they arrive. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is called ‘The Rathaway Effect’, available in all shapes, colours and sizes. What’d she say to you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Colin says briskly. “The sooner we find out what she wants, the sooner she can go back downstairs.”

Iris is glad of this. She’s a girl, and she’s been in love with Barry since forever, so of course she’s thought of her and Barry doing…things, but them living together and them being so close meant that she often just had to train herself out of thinking about it. But it certainly didn’t help with Hailey talking about Iris tying Barry up and – and _doing_ things to him…

Great. Now she’s thinking about it.

“Hailey says,” Iris continues, shaking her head to clear it, “that she knows what happened to Ronnie.”

As expected, Chesca glares at her and Colin goes even paler. “That’s not funny-”

“Why do all of you idiots always assume that I’m joking? I know what happened to Raymond because unlike the rest of the metahumans in that completely illegal and inhumanely boring prison you have down there, I didn’t attack you all blindly when I first discovered my powers.” She pauses. “Have any of you heard of Professor Martina Stein?”

All three of them look at each other, before Iris snaps her fingers. “Yeah, I have, actually. She’s a professor at Central City University; I met her on the train back from Star City last year.” But Hailey shakes her head.

“She _was_ ,” she corrects. “She’s been missing for more than a year now, and the last place she was seen was here at STAR Labs.”

“What does that have to do with Ronnie?” Colin asks quietly.

“Uncuff me and I’ll tell you.”

“Fat chance,” Chesca snaps. “Do you think we’re idiots?” Hailey blinks.

“You want to pull on that thread?”

“Okay, I’ve had enough of this,” Iris declares. Without another word, she flashes into the Pipeline and dumps Hailey back there, before flashing back to the Cortex.

“What do we do?” she asks, taking off her mask and turning off her voice modifier. “I mean, it sounded like she was telling the truth, but you guys know her more than I do…”

Chesca puts a hand on Colin’s shoulder, who looks lost and a little confused. “What do you think, big guy?”

He thinks for a moment. “I…You guys know we never found Ronnie’s body. If there’s any way she could be alive, then I guess I want to explore that avenue.”

“We could talk to Dr Wells, too,” Chesca adds. “See if she can help shed some light on it.”

“Sounds good,” Iris says. “Now, I have to get to work, but keep me posted, okay?”

Colin sits down at the Cortex and Iris grabs her stuff. Chesca catches her on the way to the elevator. “Hey, Iris.”

“Yeah?”

Chesca sighs. “Just, um, think about it, okay? You deserve to be happy.”

Iris gives her a small smile. “I will.”

***

_“The Modern Miracleworker,” Calamity said silkily. “Isn’t that what they call you?”_

_Iris could speak, pinned by the silent power of Calamity’s will, and watched in horror as she flips the emblem she’d ripped from her chest minutes ago in her hands. “I must say, though, I enjoy the alliteration.”_

_She disappeared for a moment, and suddenly she was holding a knife dripping with blood in her hands. Iris gasped. “Make sure you’re watching the news for this next part.”_

“Iris?”

She jumps when she hears her name, and finds herself looking up at Patty’s blue eyes. She is standing in front of the precinct, her messenger bag clutched tightly in her hand. They replaced the door a few days after the attack, but sometimes she can still see her own emblem etched into the wood, covered in Eddie Thawne’s blood. She still has no idea what that happened, but it’s one of the many episodes of her nightmares.

“Are you alright?” Patty continues. Iris smiles lightly.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just daydreaming again, I guess.”

They slip into conversation as they go inside, talking about work and the weather and the latest spate of crime in Star City, both of them being glad that they don’t live there. Iris has always avoided looking at Patty for too long, even though they work together. It’s not because she’s a bad person – that’s the problem. Patty Spivot is nice and charming and loves Barry, and she is also a walking reminder of the fact that she forgot to tell Barry she loves him, and he went ahead and fell in love with someone else. Now that Barry knows, however, it’s a little better – before Christmas, it physically sickened her to see them together. And it certainly wasn’t the same the first time they met.

 

_Fifteen months previously_

 

“I’m here!” Iris says quickly, running quickly into the room. She comes to a stop in the office, pushing her glasses up her nose and gasping for breath, right in the middle of the people gathered there. Captain Singh, and several other cops, rolled their eyes. “Sorry.”

“Nice that you could join us, Miss West,” she deadpans. “What was it this time?”

“Well, you gave me the day off, and I guess I forgot and mixed up the staff meeting times, and…sorry, ma’am, won’t happen again.”

“I doubt it. Well, Iris, now that you’re here you can meet the newest member of our team, Patricia Spivot, a transfer from Midway. Spivot, this is Iris West, our CSI assistant. Don’t let the forgetfulness fool you, she actually is exceptionally good at her job.”

“Yeah, especially because we don’t even really have a CSI director,” Perez mutters. “Doesn’t he only come in once a week or something?” Everyone laughs and Iris turns to the new addition, beaming.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she says cheerily. “We’ll be seeing each other a lot.”

“Thanks, Iris. And you can all call me ‘Patty’,” she adds to everyone. “’Patricia’ feels too much like my mother is behind me.”

“Well, now that everyone’s met Spivot, we can all get back to work.”

This, of course, means that everyone hands Iris about five case files that she has to get done by the end of the day, and that’s when Barry decides to turn up as she’s starting to head up the stairs.

“Hey, sunshine,” he says cheerily, grinning at her. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, just behind on work, as usual. What about you?”

“Mom’s car is at the shop, so I was just dropping her off,” he answers, and Iris sees Nora striding off to talk to Faye Chyre. He reaches into the bag he’s carrying. “I got you something – Americano, extra shot, and an incredibly heavy cronut.”

“Thanks, Bar.” She sips the coffee and pretends not to see his face. Finally, she looks up at him. He’s biting his lip and making the puppy-dog face that he knows she can’t say no to, and she sighs, smiling. “What do you need?”

“I wrote another chapter,” he tells her. “You know, the one about-”

“The psychopathic gene.”

“And you know I was worried about-”

“The Nature vs Nurture argument.”

“Right, and I wanted-”

“Me to read it to make sure it makes sense,” she finishes. She glances at her watch. “I think I have some time at lunch. You wanna meet later so we can talk through it?” Barry sighs in relief.

“You read my mind.”

“Aren’t you glad I know you so well?”

“One of the many reasons I adore you,” Barry grins, and Iris smiles breathlessly back, because it’s been years and he says stuff like that all the time, but it still unravels her. He squeezes her shoulder. “Okay, I have to teach a class, but I’ll be back with your favourite brownies and pizza. I mean, if you-”

“I will also check the referencing.”

“You’re the best.”

“I _am_ the best.”

Iris wishes him goodbye and sips her coffee, reading over the cases, when Patty walks up to her. “Who was that?”

“Barry. You know Detective Allen?” Patty nods. “Yeah, well, that’s her son.”

Patty’s eyes widen. “That’s him? He’s not supposed to-”

Iris frowns. “Not supposed to what?”

“Just, I heard he was this total genius criminal psychology student who’s the youngest PhD candidate in his class.”

“Well, that’s Barry,” Iris shrugs, unable to keep a note of pride out of her voice. “Everyone always underestimates him.”

“I’ll say. He’s hot.”

Iris’ stomach tightens, and she resists the urge to roll her eyes. This is fine, this is normal, this is a consequence of not telling your best friend that you’re in love with him – you have to contend with statuesque model-types with legs longer than the River Nile calling him hot. “Yeah,” she says tightly. “He is.” Patty looks at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were together-”

“We’re not together,” she interrupts. “We’re just friends. Best friends.” Patty’s face clears.

“So he doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“Nope,” she says. “No girlfriend. He’s been busy with teaching and research, so…”

Patty walks off after that, after mentioning that knowing he was smart made him hotter, and Iris goes upstairs to work. Really, Iris isn’t that worried – she’s had to deal with Barry’s girlfriends before, and Patty is so much like She Who Shall Not Be Named in appearance that she’s fairly sure Barry won’t give her the time of day.

 _Or_ , a little voice says, _you could just tell him_.

But she’s got work and she’s going to Star City this weekend and she’s fairly certain she needs to be drunk before she can tell Barry she’s in love with him, so she decides that if Patty and Barry ever date, she’s just going to have to make sure she doesn’t hurt him before Barry inevitably gets bored (something that Nora, for some reason, is always pointing out to Iris, that he always gets bored of his girlfriends). Because if there’s one thing that Patty Spivot does not want to be, it’s a girlfriend that was worse than Becky Cooper.

***

But Patty hasn’t hurt Barry, so Iris doesn’t have to do what she did in high school. Even though she _is_ pretty vanilla.

She runs into Nora on the way to her lab and pulls her to one side. “Nora, got a sec?”

“Does it involve coffee that doesn’t taste like tar?” she mutters, peering into her cup. “I’m proud of Barry, don’t get me wrong, but I miss good coffee.”

“No, more metahumans,” she answers. “What do you know about Martina Stein? She went missing last year and apparently it had something to do with STAR Labs because she was near there when it happened.”

“Of course it did,” Nora replies. “A lot of the security tapes from that night haven’t been reviewed because of the lawsuits and there’s a lot of backlog, but we can look through it. Where did this new info come from?”

“You remember when I came home last week and I kept talking at a thousand decibels?”

“Ah,” Nora nods. “The Pied Piper.”

“Right. Hailey apparently knows what happened to Ronnie, and apparently it’s got something to do with Professor Stein.”

They find the video and watch it in Iris’ lab. “It’s the night of the explosion,” Nora says, looking at all the protestors and reporters. “Where were you and Barry?”

“We left,” she answers. “You see the timestamp? I was in my lab watching the news when the storm got this bad, so – Wait, there she is.”

Martina Stein is white-haired and medium-sized, and wants to get out of the storm as quickly as possible, understandably. She is hurrying away and then drops her briefcase, and that is when the storm hits. Iris gasps.

“Oh my word,” Nora breathes. As they watch, something fiery explodes out of it and engulfs her, and then the video cuts out. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. I have to get this to STAR Labs,” Iris tells her. “Maybe Dr Wells and the others can figure out what went wrong.”

“Good, I’ll see if I can come by later and help. Did you remember to hand in the forensics report on the fire by the library?”

“Crap,” she sighs. “I knew I forgot something.” Nora raises her eyebrows.

“Have I ever pointed out to you the irony of someone with a photographic memory forgetting everything all the time?”

“Several times,” Iris answers dryly, and Nora laughs before walking down the stairs to her desk. Then she sees Barry standing in the atrium talking to Patty and her heart does that thing again, but this time she’s sick of it. Chesca is right. And it _is_ Scott Evans. The fact that one of the only things that she and Olivia Queen can agree on is that Scott is too hot for this earth definitely means she shouldn’t pass up the chance of dating him. So she fishes her phone and his number out of her back and stares at it, before biting the bullet.

 _So, I’m totally sober now. You still think I’m hot?_ She almost drops her phone when he replies almost immediately.

** Definitely, Miss West **

_What do you say we do something about that?_

** I’m open to anything **

_How about lunch?_

** Sounds good **

***

Wow.

 _Wow_.

Scott Evans should be illegal. _Illegal_. Seriously. He’s wearing a blazer that emphasises his broad shoulders and he keeps smiling at her and _God_ , that _beard_.

The man should be fucking illegal.

“…Iris?”

“Yeah?” she says, coming back to the present. He laughs again, giving her a view of his perfect teeth.

“I asked you why you picked a double major in physics and chemistry.”

“Oh,” she said. She took a sip of iced tea and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Well, I’ve always really liked science, because apparently being short and having glasses wasn’t enough for me. And I wanted to be a CSI, so it seemed like the logical course to take. Though I did take a semester of neurology classes. What about you?”

He smiles, kind of embarrassed. “Um. I liked to listen to myself talk all the time.”

“Might as well get paid for it, right?”

“I’m saying!”

They laugh and the waitress brings them their sandwiches (after Scott leaves Iris will have to order at least two more to the precinct, since her metabolism is so ridiculous), before Scott turns back to her. “So, why’d you want to become a CSI?”

Iris puts down her panini. She knows, of course, ‘to find my father’s killer’ isn’t an answer that works for everyone. “I like figuring things out, I guess, especially ones that can be explained by science. It’s actually surprisingly interesting, especially with the advancements they’re making in crime scene technology, and you actually have to have a significant amount of knowledge on the psychology of a criminal to… realise that I’ve been talking for ten straight seconds and you’re staring at me.”

Scott laughs. “Apparently I’m not the only one who likes to hear myself talk.”

“What can I say? Us nerds get all excited about science.”

“Don’t worry, it’s cute. With that face and a broadcast journalism degree and you’d be taking my job.”

Iris giggles and snorts, before clapping her hand over her mouth as Scott laughs. “Sorry,” she says. “I usually wait until the third date to let that one out.”

Scott’s smile widens. “That’s good to know.”

“What, that I sound like a pig when I laugh?”

“That there’s going to be a third date.”

And Iris can’t exactly say no to that, can she?

***

_Do you still love me?_

Watching Iris take Scott’s arm is the closest Barry’s come to asking that question, and he has no idea why it popped into his head at that moment. He also has no idea why he needs to know. It should matter, right? Because he has Patty and he’s happy, and he should be happy that Iris is dating someone. And Scott is funny and smart and nice. He _definitely_ isn’t jealous. Because that wouldn’t make any sense. He’s just…It’s just weird that Iris is dating one of his colleagues. He’s fine. It’s _fine_. He has his new job and Patty, and he can totally ignore the fact he’s started to notice the adorable way Iris’ glasses sit on her nose and that she’ll inevitably have to push them up again, because that doesn’t mean anything either.

So he goes back to work on his story even though he’s checking the time for when Scott gets back from his lunch date with Iris. The reason he thinks that metahumans are really missing people is because he looked into Toni Woodward’s case and she was reported missing by her mother three weeks before it happened. Then, when he went on his blog, he realised that the same thing was true of Multiplex. He knows that it’s a long shot and lots of people go missing every year, but he’s clocked enough research hours to know when there has to be some correlation.

Barry diligently works through the list of metahumans on his blog and notes down the ones without real names. He also marvels at their ‘metahuman’ names. Way back in the beginning he started a thing where there’d be a poll to vote on the best metahuman name, and the same person – _spocklovesuhura_ – keeps winning. So far they’ve named Multiplex, the Mist, Captain Cold and Heatwave, Dr Light, and the Pied Piper.

It is the easiest thing in the world to draw parallels between the metahumans and missing people, and then crossing out the least likely candidates. Eventually he realises that Linda Park is the most likely person to be Dr Light. He finds that they were reported missing by Wally West and frowns. He’s gotten out of the habit of thinking that everyone with the last name ‘West’ is related to Iris – for starters, it’s one of the most common names in America. He googles him and finds that he is a surgical intern at Central City Memorial, but that is all. He shrugs and notes down his details.

He has his first lead.

“What are you working on?”

Barry looks up. “Oh, hey…Scott. It’s just something I’m following up about all the metahumans in the city, so I’m just looking for someone to talk to.”

“Sounds cool,” Scott says warmly. “And it’s cool that Missy let you do this. Is she still calling you Larry?”

“No,” Barry laughs. “It’s ‘Bart’ now.”

“Progress.”

“Exactly. So, uh, how was your date?”

“Amazing. Iris is amazing – how has she been single this long?”

Of course, Scott doesn’t want the real answer to that, so he just shrugs. “I guess she was just… waiting for the perfect guy.”

“Well, I don’t know about perfect,” Scott laughs. “But we have another date again tomorrow, so…”

“Oh, you do?” Barry says, trying his best to get rid of that awkward high note in his voice. “That’s, uh, awesome.”

“Thanks.”

Just _awesome_.

***

Iris stops the video after the explosion cut the feed. “Anyone care to explain that?”

Chesca, Colin and Dr Wells look at each other. Colin clears his throat. “Actually, with what Hailey told us, it makes a lot of sense.”

“It does?”

“Professor Stein was working on something called the F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. matrix, which is about quantum splicing. When the explosion went off, it fell out of her briefcase, and what we saw on the video…” Colin taps a few keys on his computer and a picture of the outline of a woman comes up. “…is the south side of STAR Labs.”

Iris frowns. “Who is that?”

“That,” Chesca answers, “is Ronnie.”

“Seriously?”

“If my theory is correct,” Dr Wells says, taking off his glasses, “the exposure of the matrix at the point of the explosion would cause the cells in Professor Stein’s body to become mutable with the nearest living organism. And because Ronnie was locked in that side of the Particle Accelerator-”

“Ronnie merged with Professor Stein,” Iris realises. “So what are you saying, they’re not dead? Or only one of them’s dead?”

“No,” Colin answers, and his voice sounds hopeful. “Neither of them are dead. Chesca and Dr Wells did some computations, and we realised that the splicing would cause them to have these powers that mean they can propel themselves with fire. However, it would also mean that they’d be unstable due to the way they were exposed. Remind you of anyone yet?”

Iris stares at him and then gasps. “The Woman on Fire. From Barry’s blog?”

“Exactly.”

“But she hasn’t been seen since before Christmas – where do you think she could be?” They share a look.

“Well, we don’t know yet,” Chesca admits. She crosses to the computer and pulls up Barry’s blog. “But look, Barry has that tracking function that means we can see where she was seen last. Look, last seen at Pine Crest Drive. Is that important?”

Iris frowns. “I have no idea. Maybe her husband lives there?”

Chesca taps some more. “Bingo, 4673 Pine Crest Drive has been the home of Mr Charles and Dr Martina Stein for thirty years.”

“That makes sense,” Dr Wells nods. “The matrix must have adversely affected her mind. Even in times of great stress or trauma, the mind will usually pick an anchor or a tether through which to help them cope. It makes sense that a mind dominated by Professor Stein would constantly visit her husband.”

“So, what do we do?” Iris asks. “Wait until we find her and then bring her in?”

“Yes,” Dr Wells answers. “I’m confident that this is the only facility where we can safely figure out what’s wrong with her. Them.”

“Plus, she – they are kind of on fire, and that sounds like the perfect way to attract one General Wanda Eiling,” Chesca says, shuddering. “I’m still mad at her for how she did my boy Plastique. Oh!” she adds. “We have to change her name on Barry’s blog.”

“How do we do that?” Dr Wells asks.

“ _We_ don’t do anything,” Chesca answers. “ _spocklovesuhura_ , on the other hand, is about to name another metahuman. I like Firestorm.” Iris blinks, realising what she’s agreed to.

“So we’re all okay with sending Miss Miracle after the possibly-crazed metahuman who doesn’t recognise reason and shoots fireballs out of her hands?” They all look at each other and then nod.

“I think it’s a great plan,” Chesca shrugs, but Colin bites his lip.

“Iris, I know it’s a lot to ask, and it’s dangerous-”

“Come on, I’m kidding,” she interrupts. She puts her hands on his shoulders. “Plus, I’d like the meet the girl who Chesca says makes you more fun.”

“You are going to _love_ Ronnie,” she adds, bounding up to them. “You know, once all the fire stops.”

“Yeah. Really looking forward to that part.”

***

“Crap,” Iris breathes, reaching for her mascara. “Crap, crap, crap. Nora, have you seen my pumps?” Scott is getting a third date, alright, he’d just be lucky if Iris turns up properly dressed and made up.

“Which ones?”

“The black ones!”

“Check downstairs!”

He is the oldest of four – another boy and two girls – and his mother is a doctor and his father teaches English at the high school. He’s a little older than she is, which is cool, she likes that he’s sophisticated. He’s also a lot funnier than he’s allowed to be on television, and she learned on their second date that he apparently holds the record at Bertinelli’s for eating their spaghetti and meatballs in the shortest amount of time.

“Sorry,” he apologised, wiping sauce off his face. “But their food is really, really good.”

And maybe it was how mesmerised by him she was, or the fact that this is the first guy who’s actually seen her in the longest time, or maybe it was the red wine, but that was when she chose to lean over the table and kiss him, long and lingering, and everyone started clapping. She loved the look on his face when she pulled away, and she especially loved the part when the owner gave them lots of free bread and declaring how _bella_ she was.

They’ve been on a few lunch dates since then, but this is the third real date they’ve been on, where Iris wears a dress and he wears a suit (actually, she doesn’t think she’s seen Scott out of one, no matter how many times Chesca has asked). And Iris is happy. Scott is good to her, and she doesn’t feel jealous of Patty anymore, and Nora even says that she wants to meet him.

“Barry,” she says, glancing at him in surprise. “I – Did we have plans?”

“Ah, no, mom called me.” He holds up a toolbox. “Her door is making that creaky sound again; she wants me to oil the hinges.” He pauses and takes in her red backless dress and her newly-curled hair, and Iris avoids his eyes. She knows exactly what that look is, she just doesn’t want to get mad or sad, because she is Getting Over Barry. It’s just her luck that the best friend she had feelings for needs to see her in makeup, heels and a dress to remember that she’s a real girl.

“Date with Scott?” he asks, rifling through the toolbox

“Yeah, we’re going to dinner and then going dancing.”

“Oh,” he says. “Awesome.”

And that is the problem. With everything that’s been going on – training to get stronger than Calamity, trying to find Ronnie, and dating Scott – she hasn’t actually talked to Barry about it. She would assume he liked Scott, but every time she mentions him he calls him ‘awesome’, which would be fine except she’s fairly certain he’s never said that word in his life. _Second date? That’s…awesome. He’s awesome and you’re awesome and it’s, uh…awesome_.

Also, she doesn’t know why, but he keeps looking at her nose. She feels like she’s got a permanent pimple.

“No contacts today?”

“I ran out,” she shrugs. “Besides, I like my glasses. I just have to hope they won’t fall off when we’re dancing.” She looks herself over in the mirror again and sighs. “You know those days when you hate your hair?”

Barry studies her for a moment, before reaching over to a vase on the kitchen counter and pulling out one of the red flowers. Without a word, he tucks it into her hair over her right ear. And it’s one of the moments – one of the many – that feel too intimate and too small, and send electricity shooting across her skin. She holds her breath as he adjusts it, his long fingers working through her hair. “There, now you’re perfect,” he says. “It goes with your dress.”

“Barry, the precinct got these for your mom for her birthday-”

“She won’t mind, Iris.”

Iris blinks, trying to decipher the look on Barry’s face. “O-Okay. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he shrugs. “You, uh, look gorgeous, by the way. Have fun on your date.”

It’s not until Barry’s gone upstairs and Scott has picked her up that she realises it’s the first time he’s ever called her that. But the night is cool and the stars are out and she has her arm linked through Scott’s, so she pushes that out of her mind.

Mostly.

“You know,” she says, “it really ruins the illusion when we find out you all use teleprompters.”

“We don’t _all_ use teleprompters!” he laughs. “Just, you know, when we need help.”

“Or when you’re drunk from partying at Trajectory all night.”

“…that only happened once.”

“Really?”

“Okay, three times, but nobody noticed.”

Iris laughs and Scott moves off to use the ATM. It’s right then that her phone buzzes and she rolls her eyes in irritation. “Guys, I’m on a date!”

“Robbery on Honeycomb Lane,” Chesca says, and Iris hears that she’s got a slushie.

“Can’t the police handle it?”

“Sure, if you think they can get to the little old lady in time?”

Iris groans and looks at Scott, who’s going to be at least a minute. “Why is it always – okay, be there in a minute.” Iris flashes to the scene of the crime and has the robbers tied up before they even know what’s going on, and she’s back on the street and adjusting her clothes in the next second.

“No little old lady, Chess.”

“I know, but that was fun.”

Iris hangs up and Scott joins her, smiling. She smiles back. “Everything good?”

“Considering payday was yesterday, great.”

Iris laughs and they have an uneventful walk to the restaurant, which is Mexican. A memory of a night in high school comes to her, unbidden, despite the fact that she was trying not to think about Barry. She Who Must Not Be Named had broken up with Barry, so Iris had decided that she would take him out for dinner, and they subsequently spent the rest of the night trying the spiciest foods. Despite the fact that they both almost ended up in the emergency room, it was the first time Barry had smiled properly in weeks, so Iris it had been worth it.

“Okay, CCPD’s Iris West,” Scott said once they’d ordered their mains. “Anything interesting going on that the people need to know about?”

“Are you trying to get me fired? Besides, I’m just the CSI – nobody ever tells me shit.”

“Keep lying like that, you could have a career in politics,” he deadpans, and she laughs.

“I’m not nearly drunk enough to tell you anything, Mr Evans.”

“Well say the word and we can correct that, Miss West.”

Then her phone flashes with a message: _Jumper, Baldwin Towers_.

“Um,” Iris says, getting up. “I’ll be right back. Need to powder my nose.”

“Sure,” Scott nods easily. “Red okay?”

“Yeah, red’s fine.”

Once she’s in the bathroom, she’s at the Cortex again and then is immediately downtown, where Perez is shouting at a woman on top of the building. “Please, ma’am, you have everything to live for!”

And then the woman is right next to her as Iris teleports her down to the street. She doesn’t stay for the next part, though, teleporting back to the bathroom to fix her hair. “That better be the last one.”

“Hope so,” Chesca says cheerily. “How’s the date with sexual chocolate?”

“Stop calling him that!”

“Oh, come on. You’ve seen him, tell me that’s not an appropriate name. Are you following my instructions?”

“Only the first two,” she answers, because Chesca’s instructions, when she was helping Iris get ready for the date over the phone, were 1) curl your hair, 2) wear red, and 3) sit on Scott’s face.

“There’s still time for number three.”

“Hanging up now.”

***

Iris is trying to decide whether she likes Scott’s apartment.

It is neat and sophisticated and stylish, like him, and is located at the top of a high-rise in a very nice part of town. She snuck out of bed a few minutes ago for some coffee and toast (seriously, her metabolism is no joke), and now she’s looking around his living room for clues. Chesca has already texted her half a dozen times with ridiculously invasive questions that she’ll only ever let Chesca ask, but all Iris has said so far is that Scott indeed deserves the nickname ‘sexual chocolate’.

But she is _not_ calling him that.

Iris decides that she likes Scott’s apartment when she sees that his record collection is almost as big as the one that her dad left her and she’s been expanding ever since. She’s put her mug in his sink and seeing how much Marvin Gaye he has, still texting Chesca, when he wanders into his living room in shorts. She looks at his chest again and decides that yes, sexual chocolate is a good nickname, if not wildly inappropriate. He grins sleepily at her.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” she replies. She nods to his collection. “Nice records.”

“Thanks.”

“Not as nice as mine, though.”

“Is that so?”

“I mean, it’s an adorable start,” she admits. “For a millennial.”

“For a…” Scott laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Thanks, Iris, I appreciate that. So, that was…”

“It was.”

“You’re incredibly bendy.”

“Ten years of yoga will do that to you.”

“You know, I could have made you breakfast,” he says, nodding to the toast she’s just finished off. “You didn’t need to leave the bed.”

Then it’s Iris’ turn to laugh. “Yeah, I don’t know if you know this, but I kind of got struck by lightning last year, and one of the effects is a crazy metabolism.”

“Is that why there were so many enchiladas last night?”

“They were good enchiladas!”

“They were,” he admits. “But how about breakfast?” Iris grins at him.

“That sounds – Crap,” she snaps as her phone buzzes. “Sorry, this is work.”

 _Firestorm near the water tower, need backup_.

“Bad, that sounds bad. Okay, I have to go,” Iris says quickly, hopping down from the counter. Scott frowns.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah – no – I mean, yeah, it’s fine, but I need-” she breaks off as she pulls on her dress and shoes. “I need to get to work and deal with a – thing-”

“Okay,” Scott says uncertainly as she whips past him adjusting her dress and looking for her jewellery. “Can I call you?”

“Yes! Yeah, you can call, this was really – fun,” she says, backing towards the door. “I had fun, especially the second time, the thing with your hips was – it was fun, I’ll see you later!”

The good thing about being a metahuman is that there’s no need for a Walk of Shame; Iris just teleports herself home once she’s in the elevator. The bad thing?

Split personality metahumans shooting fireballs at her.

Ronnie – Dr Wells has explained that during the fusion, they picked the younger, stronger body – is firing off balls of flame at the abandoned cars, staggering forward in a haphazard path. Iris swallows, grasping the small syringe-gun in her hands. “Remind me what I’m doing with this again?”

Dr Wells’ voice sounds in her ear. “What you’re holding in your hand is a very powerful sedative. What you need to do is get close enough to fire it into her so that she’ll stop, and you can bring her to STAR Labs.”

“Get close enough to the fire-throwing metahuman to drug her,” Iris says to herself, rolling her shoulders. “Great.” She flips it around in her hands and approaches. Ronnie’s hair and hands are on fire, and Iris swallows.

“Ronnie!” she calls. She turns to look at her, and Iris can see the whites of her eyes through the reddish-orange flames. “Ronnie, I’m trying to help you-”

Iris yelps and teleports out of the way as Ronnie shoots more flame at her, and appears behind her. “Ronnie, _please_!”

Ronnie growls and shoots a double load of flame at her, and Iris rises into the sky out of reach. “Guys,” she says, shaking her head, “guys, I’m not getting through to her or she can’t hear me or what. Plus, her mind is a mess – whoever is in there is totally panicking.”

“She must be in a particularly vulnerable state,” Dr Wells murmurs. “Colin, do you know of anything that can calm her down?”

Colin’s voice is firm but quiet. “Uh, she used to like it when – when we talked about our wedding. We were having it on a beach, and then we were gonna go to Paris.”

“Okay,” she says. “Ronnie? Ronnie, can you hear me?” Ronnie looks at her, head cocked, and Iris continues. “Ronnie, do you remember Colin? Do you remember you were going to get married on the beach?”

“It’s working,” Chesca says.

“Good,” Dr Wells adds. “Keep going, Iris.”

“You were going to get married on the beach with lots of carnations,” she says, inching towards her. “And then you were going to go to Paris. It’s beautiful, Ronnie, you would have liked it.”

The flames are lessening and Iris aims the syringe. “Guys, get ready,” she whispers. “Ronnie, I’m gonna take you back to Colin, okay? Everything’s gonna be fine. Just…stay… _there_!”

The tranquiliser dart shoots into Ronnie’s chest and she stumbles, looking down at it, and Iris sighs triumphantly. “It’s in, guys, I’m bringing her in. Okay, Ronnie, you have to listen to me, okay?”

Ronnie’s fists clench and she looks at her. “ _I’m. Not. RONNIE_.”

Iris is caught off get when she launches her fists at her, and the flames hit her squarely in the chest.

***

Barry worries his lip as he works, still thinking about Iris before she went off on her date. Patty has asked him three times what he wants for dinner this weekend before she went in for her shower, but all he can think about is how he’s noticing all these stupid things about Iris, like her nose and her glasses and the hair flip that she does sometimes. She’s always done them – why the hell is he noticing these things now? She’s Iris, and she’s his best friend, but now he’s got this ridiculous urge to scoop her up in his arms and pinch her nose and stroke her hair.

Which is _ridiculous_.

He sighs through his nose and glares at his computer. He’s been finding out the best way to contact all the missing people who were later reported found, but his computer has a virus and it’s making everything slow. He closes it and gets Patty’s easily bypassing the password (Truffles, the name of her dog), and taps the table as it loads. He’s about to open Chrome when he frowns. Sitting on her laptop is a file marked ‘Barry’.

What the hell could that be?

“…and my mom wants to come into work and meet the people I work with, which should be fun for Captain Singh,” she says, coming out of the shower dressed in sweats. “Oh, is your computer broken again?”

“Yeah, I need to get Iris to look at it,” he answers. “Hey, what’s this file?”

“Which one?”

“The one with my name on it.”

Patty’s eyes widen. “Barry, don’t open that.”

“Is this the part where you tell me you’re the Joker?”

“No,” she replies, “it’s the part where I tell you my anniversary gift ideas are saved on my laptop because I’m lame.”

Barry just shrugs it off, but he could swear that the blood had drained from her face before and she’s jumpy for the rest of the night.

They meet Eleanor for breakfast the next day and they find themselves in the precinct. “And this is where Calamity attacked?”

“Yeah,” Patty answers. “I was in National City with you, but Barry was here when it all happened.”

“Apparently, danger is my middle name,” Barry says. He looks around the precinct and spots his mother, who is having a very urgent conversation with Iris. He frowns, worried, but then Captain Singh walks up and starts talking to them both and they seem to calm. Patty links arms with her mother.

“Look, mom, it’s Barry’s mom and the captain. You wanna meet them?”

“I’d be delighted.”

The Captain, who by the look on Iris’ face was giving her more work, smiled when she saw them all. “Spivot, Barry,” she said. “Who’s this?”

“This is my mother, Eleanor Spivot. Mom, this is my boss, Captain Singh, this is Barry’s mom, Nora Allen, and this is Iris West, our CSI.”

“And my best friend,” Barry feels compelled to add, and she gives him a small smile.

“It’s lovely to meet you all,” Eleanor says warmly, shaking Nora’s hand last. “And I look forward to getting to know them all.”

“You know, I’m having the strangest feeling,” his mother says. “We haven’t met before, have we, Eleanor?”

“I think I’d remember someone as lovely as you, Nora,” she laughs, her eyes glinting. “Maybe I just have one of those faces. Anyway, Iris, Patty says you’re _the_ CSI for the whole precinct. That must be quite a responsibility.”

“It is,” Iris agrees. “I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a lot to remember sometimes.”

“And while I’d usually agree, your work has been impeccable this past week,” the captain adds. “What’s changed, and is it permanent?”

Everyone laughs, and Iris tucks some hair behind her ear. “Well, let’s hope me forgetting my jacket will be my one mistake today. Plus,” she adds, glancing at Nora, “I made the mistake of walking by the Water Tower to get to work, and now my hair smells like smoke.”

“Right, I got an alert about that,” Barry says. “Apparently the Woman on Fire made an appearance.”

“Are we sending someone to deal with that?” Patty asks, but the captain shakes her head.

“No, she disappeared just as we were getting the alert. But don’t worry, we’ll get there.”

“I just can’t believe there are so many metahumans around,” Eleanor says, and Barry laughs.

“You get used to them.”

“Iris?”

They turn at the addition of a new voice, and Barry is surprised to see Scott is there, holding a jacket. Iris’ jacket. He clears his throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he says, offering to her. “Iris, you kind of rushed off so quickly this morning you forgot this.”

“Right,” she says in relief, taking it. “Thank you, I was looking for this.”

“Of course. We’re still on for lunch?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you then.”

Scott leaves and everyone swivels around to look at Iris, who’s adjusting her glasses. “Okay, I guess we all know what changed,” the captain says, raising an eyebrow.

“Goodness,” Eleanor says. “He’s quite handsome, isn’t he?”

“I’ll say,” Nora agrees. “He’s even better in person.”

Patty grins appreciatively at her. “Go, Iris! Doesn’t he work with you, Barry?”

“Barry, are you alright?” Nora frowns. “You look like you’re about to throw up.”

“I’m fine,” he answers quickly. “Fine, I just figured out I need to get to work or Missy will start calling me ‘Larry’ again.”

Iris looks at him. “Are you sure, Bar?”

“’Course. I’m awesome, really. Just…awesome.”

***

Iris bites her lip as she heads to CCPN to meet Scott for their lunch date later that day. She’s recovered from Ronnie’s fire blasts this morning, and now Dr Wells and the others at STAR Labs are trying to figure out how to find her and stabilise her mind, which was obviously the problem. According to Dr Wells, Martina had the mind but Ronnie had the body. Thank god for accelerated healing, or Iris would have been a human shish kebab.

“Iris!” Scott says when he sees her. “Wow, you’re early.”

“First time for everything. So, what’s on the menu today?”

He gets up and buttons up his blazer. “I was thinking that Italian bistro by the bakery.”

She smiles. “Sounds good, I-” Her phone buzzes, and her heart sinks when she reads the messages.

_Firestorm at Charles house, help._

_Firestorm setting fire to car._

_Shit._

_HELP_

_HELP PLEASE HELP_

“Damn,” she curses, looking between him and her phone. “Scott, I am so sorry, I have to go-”

“Again?”

_SHIT SHIT SHIT_

She makes a frustrated noise. “Yeah, it’s…It’s something only I can figure out, and they need me.” She backs away from him for the second time that day. “I’ll call you, okay?”

He nods. “Okay.”

“Great,” she sighs in relief. She turns and almost runs into Barry, who looks surprised to see her, but she runs out and ducks into an empty alleyway before teleporting. Chesca is already by her suit, helping her get into it. “What happened?”

“She just showed up at Charles’ house,” Chesca says. “We went there this morning after you left to tell him that she could turn up – we just didn’t expect it to be soon.”

“Remember, Iris, the priority is to get her here,” Dr Wells says as she takes off her glasses and slides her mask on. Chesca had them fitted with the same lenses as her glasses, useful since those would definitely fall off in the field.

“Is there anything that protects me from the whole fireball thing? No? Okay, I can handle that. Yeah. Sure.”

Iris closes her eyes and visualises the street – she’s never been to the house before, so she can’t get herself there – but it’s easy to see where Ronnie is. It’s probably the house that looks like someone’s setting off fireworks inside it. She teleports inside to see a scared Charles Stein hiding behind a piano. “Charles?”

“Y-Yes?”

“Miss Miracle, I’m here to help.”

“Charles?” Ronnie’s voice says, and Charles pales.

“How does she know that?” he whispers. “How does she know my name?”

“Because that’s your wife in there,” Iris answers. “She’s fused with someone else, which is why she looks like Veronica Raymond. Listen, you have to get her to trust you, it’s the only way we can help her. Is there something that only your wife would know?”

Charles thinks for a moment, and then stands. “Martina? It’s Charles…Charlie.”

“Charlie,” she says slowly, and Charles nods.

“Martina, how do I take my Old Fashioned?”

Iris blinks, not knowing what they’re talking about, but Martina apparently does. “No…sugar. You say its…”

“Infantile,” they say together, and Charles smiles. Suddenly, the fire goes out, and Iris holds her hands out to both of them.

“If you come with me,” she says, “I can help you get better. Alright?”

“They can help, Marty,” Charles says quietly, and Ronnie (or Stein In Ronnie’s Body) looks at him, mouth agape. When Charles takes Iris’ hand, Ronnie does too, and then they are in STAR Labs. Colin lets out a shocked gasp and stumbles towards them.

“Ronnie,” he breathes, but she flinches back and Iris holds a hand out.

“She doesn’t know it’s you,” she says. “She’s still confused.” Colin nods.

“O-Of course,” he says. “We’ve, uh, prepared a drug used for treating dissociative personality disorder. It should help stabilise her brain, and then we’ll think of what to do next.”

“I’ll explains things, Mr Stein,” Dr Wells adds, and the man sighs in relief.

“Whatever you need to do, doctor,” he says. “I’m just happy I get to have my wife back.”

As they move into the medbay, Iris takes Chesca to one side. “Hey, I have to go, but you’ll keep an eye on-”

“Of course,” she replies, their eyes both on Colin. “You heading back to work?”

“Nope, trying to salvage my date with Scott.” Chesca grins.

“Girl, go head. Get yours.”

Iris rolls her eyes and changes, and is in the elevator dialling his number in minutes.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Scott, it’s Iris,” she says. “You still up for lunch.”

“Yeah, about that,” he sighs. “I don’t think it’s going to work. Between us, I mean.”

Iris stops. “W-What? Why?”

“Well, I know what it’s like to be hung up on someone, and with Barry-”

“Barry? Who told you I was hung up on Barry?”

***

Barry watches Iris leave and gives a fond shake of his head, because she’s probably forgotten something. Scott is watching her too and sighs, and then he spots Barry.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Iris is always forgetting things.” But he doesn’t say anything else, because ever since this morning in the precinct when Scott returned Iris’ jacket he’s been feeling strangely like he wants to punch Scott in the face, and he’s trying very hard to ignore what that could mean.

“Right.” He pauses. “You don’t think – Iris isn’t the kind to date several guys at once, is she? I mean, we never said we were exclusive-”

Barry frowns, offended that anyone would ever think that Iris would cheat on them. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, not in all the time I’ve known her.”

“Then I don’t get it,” he says. “We get along great, we have lots of fun, like last night, god, she was-”

Barry has to physically stop his hand from forming a fist, because he really is going to punch this guy. “Scott.”

“Sorry, it must be weird thinking of your sister-figure and your colleague-”

“She’s not my sister,” Barry cuts him off. “We’re best friends, she’s not my sister.”

“Sorry,” Scott says again, and he sounds genuine. “I just really like her and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

Barry sighs – he’d hate for this to get messed up for Iris, and he doesn’t usually meddle, but he knows how much she likes Scott. “It’s probably, uh…She had feelings for this guy – well, she was in love with him, and he didn’t really return her feelings. So she might just be getting over him. But she really likes you,” he adds. “So yeah, just give her time.”

Scott folds his arms. “Time. Right.”

But Barry has no time to say anything else – he’s realised that Wally West frequents Jitters at this time and he needs to ask him about Linda Park going missing. He camps out there with his laptop and looks for him, but apparently today is not that day. After an hour he makes to leave, disappointed, but then someone taps him on the arm. And he knows what Iris upset with him looks like because it so rarely happens, which is why his stomach drops when he sees her face.

“Why did you tell Scott I had feelings for you?” she asks quietly.

“Iris, I didn’t say that,” he tells her. “I said you had feelings for _someone_. I…I guess he figured it out.”

Iris sighs and he swallows. “It’s just, he thought you didn’t like him, and I knew how much you did, so I thought I would cover for you.”

“Barry, I appreciate that, I really do. But I would have rather you had him talk to me, because he just dumped me because he thinks I’m still in love with you.”

Barry’s stomach drops and he blinks at her. “A-And you’re not.”

Iris takes off her glasses to clean them. “No, Barry. I’m not.”

And he should feel fine and happy, because now they can be normal Barry and Iris again, but all he feels is strangely sick and a little panicked, because Iris has changed the rules again and he is struggling to catch up. “Of course, of course you're not,” he says quietly, nodding. “Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No, I can do it,” she says, putting her glasses back on. And he knows she must be really mad at him, because she barely looks at him when she wishes him goodbye. He goes back to work, still thinking about why Scott with Iris’ jacket and everyone calling him handsome and Iris not having feelings for him anymore has left him feeling strangely hollow. But he doesn’t figure it out until he goes back to Jitters, trying to see if he can catch Wally this time. He goes in the side entrance, and that’s when he sees them.

Scott and Iris are locked in an embrace that makes it clear that they don’t think there’s anyone else in the world, so Barry thinks they must have made up somehow. His arms are around her waist and hers are wrapped around his neck as she stands on her toes to kiss him, and it’s right then that he realises why this is bothering him so much. Why he’s spent the entire day wanting to punch Scott, why he’s noticing all this stuff about Iris, and why this – them kissing as if no one else exists – is making him sick.

Because Iris was always just his best friend – and he’s only just realised she is a girl he was always allowed to have.

It’s this he’s thinking about when he meets Wally West, so he almost misses him. In fact, it’s Wally who finds _him_. He’s tall, though not as tall as him, with brown skin and dark brown eyes. He’s also dressed in surgical scrubs. “Barry? Barry Allen?”

“Yeah?”

“You probably don’t know me, but my name’s Wally West,” he says. “And I need you to help me talk to my cousin.”

***

“…so then I said, ‘well, I’ll prove you’re the only one I’m thinking about’,” Iris finishes. “And I kissed him.”

Chesca nudges her approvingly. “Go, Miss Miracle. And it worked?”

Iris shrugs as they make their way to the Cortex. “I guess so.”

She still doesn’t know what possessed her to do that, grab Scott in public like that and kiss him. But she convinced him, and her words convinced Barry, and she is hoping all of that all convinced herself that she is finally over Barry Allen.

But then she and Chesca enter the Cortex and it’s clear all hell as broken loose. Colin is yelling at Dr Wells, who is frantically tapping at the computer terminals and so is Charles, and Ronnie is nowhere to be found.

“You were supposed to be _saving_ them!” Charles snaps. “Where are they?”

“Colin, what happened?”

“Ronnie and Martina,” he replies. “We separated them but they were too unstable.” He bites his lip and Iris sees tears in his eyes. “They’re going to detonate, guys, and it’s going to be with the force of a nuclear explosion.”

Iris heart is in her throat. “Don’t we have any way to stabilise them?”

“There’s a matrix…thing.” Charles looks helplessly at Dr Wells.

“A stabilising matrix,” she says. “It could stop the explosion if they’re wearing it at time of detonation.”

“Could?”

“It’s our only hope!”

“Then we’re doing it,” Iris says firmly, and gestures for Chesca to help her into her suit. “Where are they?”

“…Badlands,” Dr Wells says successfully. She looks at Iris and Colin. “You two, _go_.”

Iris grabs Colin’s hand and leaves, and soon they are in the barren lands on the edge of town. They look around and spot Ronnie – they must have fused. When Iris teleports them over there, she stares at them both, and Iris sees she is already seconds away from detonation.

“Colin, we told you to stay put!” she snaps. “It’s not safe!”

“We have something that could help,” Colin says. He bends over her and fixes the matrix to her chest. “You have to separate when you think you’re going to detonate, okay.”

Ronnie bites her lip. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Colin?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

He lets out a breath and kisses her gently. “I love you, too.” Then he turns and grabs for Iris’ hand, his features laced with pain, and she understands. She teleports them away…

…and then they see the world explode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooooooo that happened. let me know what you think!


	11. Fallout, Blackout, Everybody Scream and Shout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get dangerous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i HOPE this all makes sense - it's long and very complicated, so let me know what you think!

Iris doesn’t have enhanced sight – as evidenced by the fact that her domino mask has flexible lenses in them because she _still needs glasses_ – but she doesn’t need it to see the explosion that invades her senses. It’s not just tall, it’s vast, a mushroom cloud that flattens everything in its path. She and Colin cling to each other – well actually, Iris clings to Colin to make sure he doesn’t run straight into the explosion, because he’s shouting Ronnie’s name and running towards it. It’s a good thing that lightning strike gifted her with above average strength; otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to keep him there with her.

“Colin,” she says desperately, her arms wrapped around his chest as he tries to scramble away from her. “Colin, _please_ -”

“Ronnie, Ronnie’s in there, she-”

But he’s cut off by the deafening boom as the mushroom cloud reaches its peak and flames shoot out in the sky, bathing them both in brightness. They cover themselves instinctively as they’re sprayed with dust and debris shaking until the explosion stops and the skies clear. When it’s safe to look, Iris and Colin gasp at what’s left. Iris had flashed them away to a high rock, away from the blast, so now they can see the large crater that has been left.

And the two bodies that were laying in the middle of it.

Ronnie is walking towards it before Iris is, but she flanks him and keeps an eye out for anything dangerous as they approach. The two figures are stirring as they get close, and Colin runs straight to Ronnie, gently cradling her face. Her eyes flutter open and she stares at his hopeful face.

“What-” he swallows and starts again. “What’s your name?”

She blinks at him and Iris holds her breath. “Ronnie Raymond,” she says slowly, and Colin lets out a breath, hugging her close. Iris sighs in relief, grinning, before a haughty, rather annoyed voice interrupts them.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Professor Martina Stein says. Iris looks at her. She is exactly how she remembers her from the train – medium height, grey hair with blond highlights, rimless glasses. “But it would appear that I need a change of clothes.”

Iris resists the urge to laugh because she’s right, her clothes are in tatters and she’s covered in ash, when her headset starts to beep. “Hey, are you guys okay?” Chesca says quickly, her voice panicked. “The explosion showed up on our scans.”

“Yeah,” she laughs looking at Colin cradle Ronnie and Professor Stein surveying her clothes. “Yeah, we’re all fine. And we’re coming home.”

Thankfully all Iris has to do is make everyone hold hands so she can teleport them all back to STAR Labs. They go up the elevator, and the first thing they hear is an excited squeal as Chesca runs straight towards them, her brown curls bouncing, to shove Colin aside and envelop Ronnie, who is another person taller than Iris, in a hug. Ronnie laughs, her hazel eyes bright.

“Ronnie Raymond,” Chesca grins. “I missed you so much, _mama_.”

“Hey, Chess,” she grins. “Good to see you haven’t changed.” Behind her, Dr Wells wheels up, relief plain on her usually calm face.

“Miss Raymond, Professor Stein,” she says. “I’m glad you’re both safe, and once again, I apologise for the distress-”

“That’s okay,” Ronnie says. “You are the reason we’re still alive, after all.”

“Indeed,” Martina agrees. “Now, where is my husband? I can’t imagine he was making the entire ordeal pleasant for anyone while he was here.”

“He went home,” Chesca tells her. “I think he wanted to be alone. But don’t worry, we can call him, or take you home afterwards.”

“I want to run some tests,” Colin interjects, his hand slipping into Ronnie’s, “before anyone goes anywhere. On all of us. We were just in the middle of a nuclear explosion, there’s no telling how much radiation we absorbed.”

“Actually,” Chesca says, “we checked the Geiger counter in Iris’ suit – there was no radiation in the air while you were out there.”

“Seriously?” Ronnie frowns. “But – I mean, we were literally harnessing nuclear energy.”

“But you were using your own bodies as the fission material, since you’re fused with one another,” Iris points out. “Maybe that’s why?”

“Perhaps,” Dr Wells. “But I think perhaps the two people in the aforementioned fusion dance should be tested for any long-term effects.”

It’s okay, though, because the only thing that they find is that both of them are running at a temperature a few degrees higher than the normal one. “It’s a little worrying,” Colin admits, taking the electrodes off Ronnie’s chest. “Both of you are at a temperature above a hundred degrees, but I think that may have something to do with the blast.”

“A small concern, you are correct,” Martina agrees. She is in a STAR Labs shirt and, if the tone and shape of her thoughts are any indication, is rather impatient to get home to her husband. Sure enough, those are the next words out of her mouth when she speaks. “But I wonder if I could go home to my husband soon? I appreciate the help, but I would like to be in my own clothes and in my own home.”

“I’d be happy to take you,” Iris says helpfully, and Martina looks at her.

“Ah, Miss West, it’s nice to see you again. How’s your boyfriend? I believe you were particularly excited about seeing the Particle Accelerator turn on with him the last time we saw each other. Wait,” she adds at Iris’ expression, “actually, wasn’t he a boy who was not yet a boyfriend?”

“Something like that,” Iris answers, ignoring her friends’ smirks. “But Barry’s fine. And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“She’s actually dating Scott Evans,” Chesca adds helpfully, because any excuse to embarrass Iris. Martina’s eyebrows go up.

“Well, that’s something. I think he’s on my – what do you call it – three list. My daughter suggested him to me, he’s quite a good-looking young man.”

“That’s what people tell me,” Iris says. “Anyway, enough about that. What was it like to fly, Ronnie?”

“Absolutely terrifying,” she replies cheerfully as she pulls her zipper up. She glares at Martina. “Seeing as I didn’t have any control over the flying part.” Martina frowns.

“Excuse me?”

“You weren’t exactly the most conscientious body mate,” Ronnie tells her.

“You don’t appreciate the fact that I kept the two of us alive?”

“ _Alive_ – we were living under the freeway and eating garbage.”

“Well, Veronica-”

“Ronnie!”

“ _Veronica_ , I was doing my level best to balance keeping us alive with your debilitating fear and rampant confusion,” she deadpans. “Pardon me if that was an inconvenience to you.”

Ronnie glares at her. “You kept me from Colin.”

“Which is probably why Colin is still alive.”

“Okay,” Iris says brightly, because she’s fairly certain they’re just going to keep snapping at each other all night, “how about I take you home, Professor Stein? I’m sure Charles will want to see you.”

“That,” she says regally, “would be wonderful. I am eternally grateful, Miss West.”

“Good,” Ronnie says. “Now I can have _pizza_.” She directs this last part at Martina, who gives her a withering look.

“Miss West, shall we?”

“Sure.”

She and Iris walk towards the elevator, which is when Iris’ phone starts buzzing. She answers it – and then immediately wishes she hadn’t. “Hey, Nora – yeah, it was me. I mean, it wasn’t me, but – oh, it made the news? ...Duh, haha, of course it made the news, it was a nuclear explosion, right. No, I’m fine, everyone’s fine, and there’s no radiation, either…You…didn’t know about the – okay, I’ll explain when I get home.”

Iris grimaces when Nora hangs up, because she’s going to get her ass kicked later, she’s sure of it. Martina gives her a curious look as they enter the elevator.

“Who was that?”

“Nora. She’s Barry’s mom, and she’s going to give me hell before dinner.”

“You live with her?”

“Yeah.”

“So you live with the mother of the not-boyfriend,” she muses. “And I thought my life was complicated.”

“Oh, Professor Stein,” Iris laughs, “you have no idea.”

***

Barry frowns at the young man in front of him, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. His mind is torn from thoughts of Scott kissing Iris and whether she’s still in love with him as he takes in the sight of Wally West. He is about three inches shorter than him with brown skin and friendly features that right now are arranged in a slightly apprehensive expression. He was wrong, then. The Wally West he’d been researching is indeed Iris’ cousin. But what were the chances of that? And what does he mean when he says he needs to help him talk to Iris?

“You're Iris’ cousin?” he asks, to confirm. Wally nods.

“Yeah. I haven't seen you in a while, Barry.”

Barry nods once, remembering afternoons around birthday cakes and in parks. And being the only one to talk to Iris at the funeral, until she called his mother to take them both home because she couldn’t take everyone looking at her. “Not since we were kids.” But Wally sighs and looks at the ground briefly.

“That's not true, actually.”

“… it isn't?”

He peers at him. “You really don't remember, do you? We met last year, at the hospital. When Iris was in the coma.”

 

_One year previously_

 

Barry bites his lip, his arms folded and his brow furrowed, as the doctors pump Iris’ chest amidst the sounds of beeping and frantic voices. Iris’ heart stopped again, just as Barry was telling her about a seminar he was planning to give. So of course he was pushed out of the room while they try to restart it. That's when someone comes around the corner in light blue scrubs.

“Uh, sir? Are you okay? Would you like to go in?”

“I can't,” he replies quietly. “I'm not allowed.”

The doctor moves forward to peer through the glass pane, his face clearing when he recognises his colleagues. “Right, Iris West. The…the one in the coma.”

“Yeah, she's pretty famous around here. Especially since none of you know what you're doing.”

The doctor blinks and Barry sighs, turning to him. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, I’m not usually that person, the one who’s rude to doctors. I get that you’re doing everything you can and I’m grateful – we’re grateful. I just-“

“She's your family,” the doctor says simply. Barry looks at him. He is brown skinned, with light brown eyes and an easy, smiling expression. He looks kind of familiar, too, but then Barry has been here so much since Christmas that he supposes he knows all the doctors.

“Are you one of her doctors?”

“Well, no, not really. I was on-call when she came in, but I'm a surgical resident, so I only know of her.”

“Oh,” Barry says. “What's your name?”

“Look, why don't you just call me Wallace?” the doctor puts his hands in his pockets. “I get the feeling you're kind of sick of doctors.” Barry frowns.

“How do you figure that?”

“It's not just Iris who's well-known around here.”

Barry rubs his eyes tiredly, thinking of every time he’s yelled at the doctors. “Sorry. I-“

“Barry, please don’t apologise. It’s completely understandable, and we’ve suffered through much worse than worried and scared family of patients.”

“Like what?”

“Well, medic exams.”

Barry laughs, despite himself, and Wallace smiles back. “You can leave, if you want. We’re doing our best to take care of her.”

“No, I’m okay,” Barry says, shaking his head. “I don’t like to leave her alone like this.”

“It’s almost midnight, Barry,” he says gently. “We’ll call you if there’s any change.”

“I know you will. It’s just…” he shrugs. “We’re best friends, and we protect each other. I don’t know, it’s just what we’ve always done. When I was thirteen, my appendix burst, and my mom was at a conference in Star City. Iris rode all the way with me to the hospital in the ambulance, even though she wasn’t supposed to, and she was the only reason I wasn’t scared.” He laughs suddenly, wrapped up in that memory. “She even made one of the doctors tell her how small the appendix was so I wouldn’t be frightened, and then promised we’d eat lots of ice-cream once I felt better. I guess she got that from her dad.”

Wallace stiffens at that, briefly, but Barry doesn’t really see it. “Her dad?”

“Yeah, he was a doctor, so he was really good at the whole bedside manner thing. But he’s gone now, and my mom and I are all she’s got.”

They are silent for a while, watching them get Iris back under control, before Wallace speaks again.

“Barry,” he says quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Never stop protecting her like that.”

***

Back in the present, Barry just stares at him. “That was you? And you knew it was me?”

Wally nods, his eyebrows knitted. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Barry. The last time I remembered seeing you before that was the funeral when we were kids, and Iris weren’t exactly the biggest fan of her family.”

“ _Your_ family,” Barry says before he can stop himself, because it is old, this anger, borne of years of watching Iris have no one but them, of not being able to do family tree projects, of having to figure out how to do her hair by herself. “You left her alone when she was a kid, and none of you ever bothered to see how she was doing until she almost died.”

“Barry, what the hell was I supposed to do?” Wally demands. “I was a child, and her mother killed my favourite uncle. He’s the whole reason I wanted to become a doctor, and suddenly I wake up and he’s gone, there’s evidence that Francine did it, and Iris refused to listen to us. My mom lost her brother, of course she didn’t want to associate with Francine anymore.”

“Well, what changed her mind?” Barry asks, gentler now, he knows all of that makes sense. He’s just mad on Iris’ behalf. Wally seems to notice this as well, because he deflates and his expression turns thoughtful.

“I’m not sure,” he shrugs. “I mean, she always felt bad about it, that Iris went to people who weren’t even her blood relatives. I guess it finally got to her. And then last year she had lunch with my folks, and I would have been there at Christmas-”

“I think that was your grandparents,” Barry says. Iris had told him, in between responding to attacks by Calamity, that Wally hadn’t been there and her grandparents had been rude about her mother, so she wasn’t sure whether she was going to go back there. Wally let out a breath.

“Christmas,” he says slowly. “Yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, and why I need you to help me talk to Iris. How long do you have?”

“As long as you need to tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

They order coffee, each wary of the other person who was at once Iris’ family and not. They sit and Barry starts first, unable to help himself.

“I was looking for you, you know,” he says. “I’m looking into something, and you ended up being a big part of it.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. I did some research, and I realised that you declared your girlfriend missing around the same time Dr Light was in the news, and that they could be the same person.”

Wally cocks his head to one side. “Well, damn.”

“What?”

“That’s what I was coming to talk to you about.”

“It was?”

“Barry, did Iris tell you why I wasn’t there at Christmas?”

He frowns briefly. “Uh, I think she said you had exams.”

“Probably because my mom told her that,” he replies, sipping his coffee. And Barry notices that his hands are shaking. He swallows.

“Wally,” he says slowly. “You didn’t have exams, did you?”

“No, Barry, I didn’t. I was being – held. By Calamity.”

Barry is surprised and he isn’t, because the dread that had crept into Wally’s voice and face and the shaking of his hands can only be described by the woman in the black lightning that still haunts the vestiges of the city’s consciousness. But he’s surprised because he does not know the chances of Calamity attacking Joe West and then capturing his nephew more than fourteen years later.

“It was…God, Barry, it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced. I’m a second-year surgical resident, which basically means I don’t get any sleep or take any breaks, and Linda’s a weapons technician for Wayne Industries here in Central. So, yeah, we’re both pretty busy, and it’s totally normal for me to not see my parents for months because of residency kicking my ass. But then around October, Linda and I were…taken.”

Barry regards him. “You don’t seem so sure about that.”

“Because I’m _not_ ,” he replies, frustrated. “But it’s the only way I can explain everything. Dr Light showed up and robbed Jitters in October, right?”

“Right, I was there,” he answers, remembering the woman who could shoot out light blasts, the one with the brand on the back of her neck.

“Of course, I remember. And then Miss Miracle took her away, right?”

“I think so.”

“Except that’s not true, and I only just figured out how. I don’t actually remember any of what I just explained to you – I got the whole thing from your blog. There’s this whole…gap in my memory, where four whole months is missing, but everyone around me talks like nothing happened. Like, all the other doctors are talking about the placement they sent me on for four months, but I don’t remember it. She even convinced the guy that works here, Tyler, that they were a thing so Linda could break in. And my neighbours were asking how my sick relatives are, and whether they got better over the four months, but I don’t remember that either. And my parents-”

“Thought that you were busy with medical exams,” Barry finishes, “but you were really being held by Calamity? How did you figure that?”

“Because she told me.”

“She _told_ you?”

“Yeah, but listen. She was holding us in this kind of…warehouse, and she wasn’t shy about the fact that we were her prisoner. I think the thing with Calamity is, she must use some sort of memory block on you to make sure you don’t remember anything she’s telling you. Remember how Francine said she could only remember parts of what happened when Joe died?”

“Yeah,” Barry says slowly. “All she could remember was cold.”

Wally snaps his fingers. “And that’s exactly what Linda said when I asked her, even though _she_ couldn’t explain the brand. I think Calamity is capturing people and making them…metahumans, making them do stuff for her, but then doing something so they can’t remember it. But even though her mind control powers work on me, her memory block powers won’t.”

“And she captures people in twos,” Barry realises. “One to do it, and one to make sure the other person does it. What better way to make sure someone does your bidding than threaten someone you love?”

Wally’s face clears and he sits back, his hands clutching his coffee mug. Barry’s mind is racing – Wally has just confirmed everything he’s been researching, and he’s buzzing with anticipation of how he’s going to uncover the truth, how he’s going to report it and expose Calamity. And this – this could get Iris’ mother out of jail. But there is still something he doesn’t understand…

“So Calamity captures people and makes them metahumans, captures someone they love to force them to do it, and uses a memory block to make sure they don’t remember. Only for some reason it didn’t work on you.”

“Right.”

“Well, why are you telling me? Why didn’t you go to the police?”

Wally just laughs. “Because I watch the news, Barry. Maybe she did it on purpose, I don’t know, but Calamity let us go on Christmas Eve, so we got to watch her little reign of terror from the comfort of our apartment. Only we didn’t remember that we’d been captured, so we were just as terrified as anyone else. By the time I figured all this out, I’d seen her murder all those people on TV.”

Barry nods. That makes sense, at least. “And you want me to help you.”

“Barry, everyone knows you know Miss Miracle. I figured if you and her were working together, you could figure out what was going on.”

“And I’d be happy to help,” he replies, “but I she asked me not to look into Calamity. She said it was too dangerous, and I believe her. But,” he says, “that doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re right. Here’s the thing – our theory makes sense, but it’s only one occurrence. I figure if we try to find more like this and _then_ give her the evidence, she’d have more grounds to look into it.”

Wally nods. “Okay, that sounds good. What, did she makes you promise not to do anything dangerous anymore?”

“She’s surprisingly persuasive,” Barry admits. He doesn’t know why his first instinct is always to believe her or do what she’s telling him. Even when she had that mad period where she attacked him and Patty – and given what they’re currently dealing with, he now believes her when she says that a metahuman messed with her head – there is something about her that is so earnest he always feels like he can trust her. “What about Linda? Does she know about this?”

“Yeah, once I figured it out and told her I wasn’t talking to the police, she came around.”

“Good, I’ll need to talk to her.”

They exchange contact details and agree to meet again. Barry is eager to get home and start researching, putting together clues, but then something stops him. He looks at Wally. “You said you wanted to help me talk to Iris. What do you need to talk to her about?”

Wally bites his lip. “Look, I know my grandparents messed up at Christmas, and I know it’s fucked up that I only believe her now, but I’ve seen what Calamity can do. And I don’t want Iris to keep thinking that no one believes her.”

“She doesn’t,” Barry reminds him. “I’ve always believed her.”

“I know that. But I’m trying to make up for lost time. So, uh, if you could just tell her that I want to meet, I’d appreciate it. It’s nothing big,” he adds, “nothing more than coffee, if she wants. So, uh, no pressure.”

Barry regards him for a moment before nodding slowly. “But I’m not telling Iris about any of this, not until we have something solid. She’s still kind of fragile from the coma, and this thing with Calamity-”

“I know,” he says. He stands and shakes his hand before wishing him goodbye and walking away, and Barry spends the next twenty minutes quickly transposing everything Wally just said before he forgot it (a skill he learned from months of doing interviews for his dissertation). He works until almost closing time, and he’s packing up his stuff when someone taps him on the shoulder. A little part of him briefly thinks that maybe it’s another person who’s been attacked by Calamity and this case will be easier than he though, but it isn’t.

“Barry Allen?” he asks.

“Yeah…”

“Oh, wow, it’s great to meet you,” he smiles. He holds a hand out. “Jay Garrick, big fan.”

Barry relaxes and shakes his hand, though there’s something about this man that’s oddly unsettling. It something dancing on the edges on his memory, like ripples on the surface of water, but when he tries to capture it, it disappears. He is about his height but very broad in the shoulders, about the same age as his mother, with a handsomely-wrinkled face and friendly blue eyes.

“That’s always good to hear,” he replies easily. “Uh, can I help you with something?”

“Not really, I just wanted to tell you I think your blog is great, I’ll let you get on. I’m new in town and I wanted to tell you, it’s really great for people who want to find out about metahumans. Are you still writing it?”

“Well, I still keep up with it,” he shrugs. “Moderating comments, making sure the metahumans have names so the police know, that kind of thing. And I still write some stuff. But, I had to get a real job, or I’ll be _homeless_ with an awesome blog. And I wouldn’t want that, would I?”

They laugh and Barry walks off, so he doesn’t see that the man is still watching him. “No, Barry Allen,” the man who is not really Jay Garrick says to himself. “We wouldn’t want that at all.”

***

“You’re really not selling this whole ‘I have to go to work thing’, you know.”

“That’s your fault. You’re too cute.”

“So all it takes for Scott Evans to be distracted is a cute face?” Iris asks, raising her eyebrows. “And you call yourself a journalist.”

“ _Really_ cute,” he adds, kissing her again. “And really hot, too. I’m totally powerless.”

Iris grins against his mouth as he kisses her, his hands pressing her into him as she grips his shoulders. Scott had brought her breakfast, which she thinks is appropriate after a few weeks of dating, which of course led to them kissing. So much kissing that she got completely distracted.

“Scott, go to work,” she tells him, coming up for air. “I don’t want anyone to blame me if you get fired.”

“Just one more.”

But they don’t get one more, because they’re interrupted by someone knocking on the door. “Iris, are you – Oh, sorry.”

Barry is standing in the doorway, a question in his eyes. Scott and Iris let go of each other. “Sorry,” he says again. “I wanted to talk to you, but I can come back later if you’re busy-”

“No, it’s cool,” Iris tells him. “Scott was just leaving.”

Scott rolls his eyes and kisses her goodbye. Barry clears his throat as he walks past. “Uh, you got a little, ahem, lip gloss on your…face.”

“Oh,” he says. He wipes it off, embarrassed, before walking off. “Oops. I’ll see you at work, Barry.”

“Sure,” he says. Iris pushes her glasses up her nose. “Sorry, that was-”

“No,” he interrupts, “don’t worry about it. I’m happy you’re happy. You are happy, right?”

“Yeah,” she says slowly. At least, she thinks she is. Well, she’s working on it. “I’m happy. But if I’m not – well, you still have that two by four handy, right?”

“Always,” he says firmly, and she laughs.

“Great. Anyway, I’m glad you came, because I have something for you.”

She searches around her desk until she finds it. She had the idea after Barry had been worried about his job at the paper, but the craziness with Hailey and Firestorm and the explosion meant that she hadn’t given it to him yet.

“Uh, iris?” he says. “This is a framed photo of Missy’s article on corruption in the Mayor’s office.”

“I know that, Barry. Look at the by-line.”

He glances at her and then reads. “ _By Melissa Bridge…with additional research by Barry Allen_.”

“I just thought,” she says, adjusting her glasses, “you know, you were really worried about people not giving you enough to do. And I wanted to remind you of how far you’ve come, since you got this job by yourself. And,” she adds, pulling out another, nicer frame, “ _this_ one is for your first article that you wrote by yourself. And a real one, that you researched, not like the jellyfish that escaped from captivity that they’re making you write about.”

Barry smiles slowly at her and she smiles back. “You can’t have this one, though,” she says, taking it from him. He frowns.

“Why not?”

“Duh, Barry. This one’s mine.” She hangs it up next to her window, with the other frame underneath it, before handing him his own identical set. He runs a finger over the smooth surface of the glass and smiles.

“Thanks, Iris. This really means a lot.”

“Sure. Just wanted to remind you I’m in your corner. Although your ass better remember me when you’re winning your Pulin – Puliti-”

“Pulitzer,” he laughs. “Are you ever going to remember that?”

“Win one and we’ll see.”

Barry smiles again and squeezes her hand briefly. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?” she asks, sitting down. “You looked pretty serious.”

“Yeah, well it is pretty serious.” He sits down in front of her desk, like he’s done since she started working here. And Iris knows, from the way he’s looking at her and the way he keeps rubbing his neck, that Barry is serious and that it’s something she may not want to hear.

“You remember Christmas?” Iris freezes.

“Which part?”

“When Calamity attacked, and you came back to Central because you didn’t want to stay with your grandparents,” he continues, and Iris lets out a breath. That is her other biggest fear – that in addition to Barry finding out that she’s lied to him for a year, that he’ll find out through some other person, not because of her telling him. But she’s safe for another day, at least.

“Oh,” she says. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m not seeing them again.”

“You’re not?”

“Nope. I mean, I know they mean well, and maybe I’ll eventually talk to my cousins or something, but I have you and Nora and my mom. I don’t really need anyone else.”

Barry glances at his hands. “That’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?” Iris asks.

“Well, your cousin – Wally, the one who’s here in Central – found me the other day, and he wanted to ask me if it was alright that he meet with you to talk. Like an olive branch kind of thing.”

Iris stares at him in disbelief. “He…found you? How?”

“My blog, I guess. I was in Jitters and he came to talk to me. I guess he heard that I worked there.”

“Oh.”

Iris studies the picture on her desk – the one from Disneyland, with her hand Barry – and picks at the wood of her desk. Her entire life, she has only had three people in her life, and she’s been fine. So even though she has sometimes felt pain because of the family that have consistently rejected her, and yeah, growing up she felt insecure because the family that raised her was white and she was black, but she doesn’t care about any of that, not anymore. And she’s not sure she wants to invite that back in. She takes her glasses off and cleans them, scrunching her mouth to one side.

“I don’t know, Barry…”

“You don’t have to decide straight away,” he tells her quickly. “Just promise you’ll think about it, okay? Wally seemed like he really wanted to get to know you.”

Iris puts her glasses on and curses the earnestness in Barry’s face, because that’s how he manages to convince her to do everything, from rollercoasters, to the Ultimate Chocolate Surprise at Disneyland, to getting in Nora’s sports car, when she broke her arm. Getting Over Barry or not, she supposes that he’ll always have that hold on her. “I’m not promising anything,” she says finally, “but I’ll think about it.”

“Good, great!” he grins at her. He stands. “Okay, I have to go, because I should be at work with Scott.”

“Cool,” she says. “I’ll see you later.”

“See you later, sunshine.”

Iris watches him leave, a warm feeling in her chest. She had been worried that Barry wouldn’t like Scott, not by virtue of his personality, but because of the fact that they were dating. Even leaving out the fact that she’d been in love with him since forever, they have always known that they are so close other people sometimes feel weird (really, the amount of ‘you never have any time for me anymore’ arguments they’ve had is truly ridiculous). Having said that, she knows that Barry truly does want her to be happy – he’s wanted that her whole life. Iris remembers a time, when they were teenagers, when Barry barrelled (he knocked, of course, but Barry always makes his presence known) into her room one night and sat on her bed.

“Iris, what’s your type?”

She blinked at him, trying to concentrate. He had just come out of a shower and his long eyelashes were sticking together. His hair was also sexily rumpled where he’d run a towel through it and he smelled like cedar wood soap. She closed the book she was reading, frowning. “My…type?”

“Yeah. What kind of guys do you like? Or do you not have a type? I mean, that’s okay, I don’t have a type. It just makes my job harder.”

Iris raised an eyebrow. “You have a type, Barry.”

He frowned. “No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do. You like thin blondes with blue eyes.” Okay. Maybe she could have tucked in her bitter a little. “Just, um, Becky’s like that. And so was Audrey. And Baby Spice-”

“We promised not to talk about that!”

“Sorry. Anyway, what do you mean, your job?”

“Duh, finding you a guy.”

Iris sighs. “Barry-”

“Come on, Iris, I want you to be happy. And to show you that you’re better than-”

“Barry,” she interrupted. Because whenever Barry talked about Lance Burke he started saying words that made Nora threaten to wash his mouth out with soap. “Seriously…”

“Come on,” he wheedled, poking her, “tell me. I promise, only guys who are good enough for you. As hard as that may be.”

“Okay.” Iris pushed her glasses up her nose and looked at Barry. “Um. I guess…tall?”

Barry grinned at her. “Everyone’s taller than you, sunshine.”

“I know, but still. And kind of…skinny, I guess. Like, I don’t really like big muscly guys all that much.” She looked up at him from underneath her eyelashes, her heart thrumming in her chest. “And, um, pretty. Ish. So not the rugged type. And I don’t really care about eye colour, but I like green.”

“Because it’s your favourite colour,” he said.

“R-Right. My favourite colour. And I want him to be nice. And trustworthy. Just a decent guy, really.”

Barry sat back, studying her, and she thought, this was it, he was going to figure out that she was in love with him. Her heart was so loud in her chest that she figured he could hear it. “Well, there’s no one _exactly_ like that on the track team, but there’s Brad Chilton. He’s really cool. Hey, I can invite him to sit with us at lunch. Promise you’ll talk to him, okay?”

“Sure, I’ll talk to him.”

(She ended up dating Brad for a while, but for whatever reason he and Barry must have had some kind of falling out, because Barry didn’t talk to him as much after that. Iris figured it was a track team thing).

But they are older now, and she has Scott and he has Patty, so they’re happy for each other.

Aren’t they?

But she pushes that out of her mind, starting on all the work she has. She is sleeping a little better lately, but she thinks that is mostly to do with the fact that she knows she can’t terrify Scott when he’s sleeping. She is also visiting her mother more lately, just to reassure herself that she can get to her quickly enough. Francine, for her part, is happy that her daughter is dating an actual boy, though Iris is concerned because when Miss Miracle’s exploits came on the news while she was visiting, she gave Iris one of her knowing looks, but didn’t say anything.

Nora comes in later that morning along with Patty and Iris raises her eyebrows. “Okay, don’t like that look,” she says, putting down her test tubes. “What happened?”

“Regent Street Parking Lot,” Patty says, looking at her notebook. “Apparently the people there were robbed by a flash of blue lightning. Dented all the cars and…”

“What?” Iris frowned.

“Well, according to reports, some of them were hit with the blue flame, and now half of them can’t remember when they got there.”

“Have I mentioned today how much I love my job?” Nora says, sighing. “Alright, let’s go.”

The parking lot is cordoned off from the general public, and Patty and Nora immediately set about interviewing everyone as Iris pulls on her gloves and gets to work. First she labels each of the cars that were robbed, before studying the indentation marks on the car. It takes her a few minutes to realise that most of them are handprints, and wanders over to Nora and Patty after lifting fingerprints from all of them. They are surveying video footage of the attack, and Iris’ heart sinks when she sees the flashing blue light flitting between the cars.

 _Nora_.

 _Please don’t_.

_This could be dangerous – you have to let us handle it._

_You and your metahumans, Iris._

_Why are they_ my _metahumans when they do something bad?_

Iris halts the telepathic conversation she’s having with Nora and clears her throat. “Find anything?”

“Apparently a few of the people were hit with that blast and can’t remember the last few minutes.”

“How long?”

“No more than fifteen, but more than five, depending on the person.”

Iris gives Nora a look, and she clears her throat. “Patty, could you ask if anyone got a good look at the perp?”

“Sure,” she says easily, and Nora turns to Iris as Patty walks off.

“Okay, what is it?”

Iris leads her back to one of the cars with indentation marks, kneeling. “See these? That’s a person’s hands. I’d guess male, around six feet. But the only way a human being could cause that much damage is if he were a very strong metahuman, like Superwoman or Marvel Man, or if he were moving so fast that the force gave him enough strength. My guess? About six hundred miles an hour.”

“And you guys know who it is?”

“He’s attacked before,” Iris admits, “but sporadic, and not very often. “Barry’s written about him, actually – Chesca calls him Cobalt Blue, but someone else on the site sent in a picture of the back of his head, so they were thinking ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’.”

“You all,” Nora says tiredly, “are going to drive me to an early grave. You know that, right? Do you guys have any idea of how to catch him?”

“Not yet,” she sighs, removing her gloves. “Between this guy, trying to beat Calamity, whatever has been causing all the blackouts for the last two weeks, Firestorm, and that stupid escaped jellyfish-”

“I thought you were going to tell Barry to stop writing about that,” Nora says, and Iris just laughs.

“The last time I told Barry not to write about something, he wrote his name on his blog and we didn’t speak for a week.” She adjusts her glasses. “I’m just trying to see if I can find it myself before he gets put in danger. Because if you heard what Wanda Eiling and Dr Wells did to-”

“Please don’t tell me,” Nora interrupts. “It’s bad enough that you’re working with that woman. And I thought Firestorm was a done deal. You know, after you guys thought it was a good idea to blow up the Badlands.”

Iris starts to put her things away. “It is. But, you know, Firestorm was wanted by the government, which means we have to hide both Ronnie and Martina from the government. And neither of them feel inclined to be told to stay indoors all day. But it’s cool, we-” Iris broke off as her phone buzzed with a message from Chesca. She frowns. It’s a picture of several men and women in suits, surrounding Dr Wells, Chesca and Colin.

 _Help_.

“Hey, Nora,” she says quietly, showing her the picture. “Recognise these guys?”

“Who the hell are they?”

“No idea,” she says. “But I have to get to STAR Labs, because they sure as hell don’t look friendly. I’ll try to get back before my lunch break is over.”

“Okay. Don’t forget, Barry’s making dinner for us tonight, so it’s your turn to bring dessert.”

“I never forget dessert.”

“If you’re going to keep lying like that, don’t do it next to me. I don’t want to get struck by lightning too.”

***

Iris is lucky, she thinks, that she has a spare suit in Nora’s house, because she can change into it and teleport to STAR Labs without revealing her secret identity. Much to her amusement, most of the people in the room jump in surprise when she appears at the back of it, mask on and eyes glowing. Several curse, and all of them stare at her. Chesca makes a relieved noise.

“See, she’s here. Now can you get your goons out of here?”

“What do you want?” Iris demands, her voice distorted. “What are you doing here?”

“They seem to think,” Dr Wells answers, “that it would greatly benefit Miss Miracle to join their organisation.”

“And what organisation would that be?”

“One moment.” A tall, lean and muscular man with dark brown skin steps forward. Unlike the rest of his colleagues, who are all wearing plain black suits with white shirts and ties, his own is adorned with a black shirt and six silver dice arranged in a hexagon on his lapel. “Miss Miracle, I – that is, my organisation – have a proposition for you.”

“And you thought the best way to get me to agree would be to burst in here and frighten my team?”

“Alright. Everyone leave.”

Iris blinks in surprise when the gathered people do exactly that, filing past her into the elevator in silence. All that is left is the man who spoke before, and another man in the same outfit as his colleague, only he has five dice instead of six. Iris comes to stand in front of Chesca, Colin and Dr Wells. The man faces them with a solemn expression, completely devoid of warmth or humour.

“My name,” he said, “is Amadeus Waller. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”

Iris stills, careful not to betray her emotions on her face. What precious little she knows about Amadeus Waller – and his Suicide Squad and A.R.G.U.S. – from Olivia Queen is enough to have her running in the opposite direction as quickly as possible. The corner of his mouth lifts in a smile.

“I see that you have. I am the head of A.R.G.U.S., the founder of the Suicide Squad, and the director of M.A.I.M.E.D. And you,” he adds, before Iris can ask what on earth that last one is, “are Iris Ann West, CSI assistant at Central City’s Police Department, and Miss Miracle – Central City’s Golden Grace, and the Modern Miracleworker. Did I get all the names?”

Iris hears Chesca fire off a string of curse words in her mind, while Colin and Dr Wells share a shocked look. Amadeus continues, walking around her in a circle. “After your spectacularly irresponsible display in the Badlands last week, Miss West, we became aware that General Wanda Eiling wished to commandeer the Firestorm research, as well as Veronica Raymond and Professor Martina Stein. When we contacted her, she informed us that in your attempt to give Benedict Sans Souci – aptly-named by Miss Ramon here as ‘Plastique’ – a tearful goodbye, you revealed your face.”

Iris blinks. She remembers the day he’s talking about – Plastique was a metahuman who happened to be a human bomb, and it was his death at the hands of Eiling that made Iris beg Barry not to write his blog anymore for fear it would put him in danger. When she looks at Dr Wells, she sees that the older woman is just as surprised as she is. Then Iris makes a decision. “Who else knows?”

“Only myself and my colleague, here.”

Who did not care to mention his name.

Very slowly, Iris removes the mask from her face, switches off her voice modulator, and returns her eyes to normal. “We’re not giving up Firestorm,” Colin says suddenly, and Iris realises that he must have been waiting to say that as soon as he mentioned Ronnie’s name. But Amadeus waves a dismissive hand.

“Don’t worry, Dr Snow. Your fiancée and Professor Stein are perfectly safe.”

“And General Eiling?” Dr Wells wants to know. “I don’t think it wrong to assume that she still would like the Firestorm matrix in her custody.”

“General Eiling has been taken care of. What we are more interested in, Miss West, is _you_.”

Iris eyes him warily, fists clenched inside her golden gloves. “Is that so?”

“As mentioned, I am the directed of the Mobilisation, Assembly or Internment of Metahumans Directive – or M.A.I.M.E.D., for short.”

“That instils a vote of confidence,” Chesca mutters.

“We are responsible for the recruitment of metahumans to work underneath us, or failing that, the monitoring of their activities as it pertains to the general public.”

“You want me to work for you?”

“We want you to work _with_ us.” Now the other man is speaking, and Iris looks at him for the first time. He is very tall (but then at five foot four, everyone but Chesca is tall), with blue eyes and brown hair. And there is something about him…Iris doesn’t like looking at him, it’s like he can see right through her. His face is friendly, but she has dealt with enough metahumans and been around Olivia enough to know that a friendly face didn’t equal a friend. “Our agents offer support and guidance when dealing with metahuman activities – they are very highly-trained, and have experience in these fields. Were you to work with us, you’d have access to an immeasurable amount of resources.”

Iris raises her chin. “We are perfectly fine by ourselves, thank you.”

“Indeed,” Dr Wells agrees. “Perhaps, Mr Waller, you’d like to see all of our resources.” She gives Iris a knowing look as she wheels off with Colin, and Iris knows they won’t show him anything too revealing. Chesca and Iris turn back to his colleague.

“Iris-.”

“My friends call me Iris. You can call me Miss Miracle.”

“Would it help if I told you my name?” he asks, smiling. He holds a hand out. “Eobard Thawne, big fan.”

“Thawne?” Chesca frowns. “That’s-”

“A pretty unique name,” Iris interrupts. “And is that what your friends call you, Mr Thawne?”

“Actually, my friends call me curious,” he laughs. He peers at her. “You know, I’ve been very impressed with your exploits over the last few months. I do understand what they say when they call you the Modern Miracleworker. And thank goodness for Barry Allen, is all I can say.” Iris freezes again.

“What?”

“His blog. It’s been an invaluable source of information for the agency. He lives around here, doesn’t he? Does he still work at Jitters?”

Iris resists the urge to telepathically hit this man with a brick. Instead, she composes her features and attempts a shrug. “Barry Allen writes about me, not the other way around. I have no interest in his personal life.”

But Thawne is holding up his hands in surrender. “Of course. My mistake.”

“Well,” Waller says as he comes back over to them, “it would appear that Miss West is correct. They have been managing perfectly well by themselves.”

“Sometimes you don’t need big flashy tech to save the world,” Colin says cheerfully. “Isn’t that right, Dr Wells?”

“Yes, Dr Snow,” she says. “That’s right.”

“Nevertheless,” Waller continues, “I would appreciate it if you gave some more thought to the offer. I get the feeling we could be of mutual help to one another.”

“I will give it as much thought as it deserves,” Iris promises.

No one relaxes until they both leave, and Chesca has reported from the security cameras that they have all gone. Before anyone else says anything, Iris says, “Over my dead body.”

“Seconded,” Chesca adds. Colin shakes his head.

“What was their problem?”

“It would seem that M.A.I.M.E.D. is making a reappearance,” Dr Wells says quietly, and everyone turns to look at her.

“You’ve heard of this?” Iris asks.

“Of course. Why do you think Superwoman and Marvel Man are allowed to operate? Or Aqualady? They are all a generation older than you, Iris, which explains why you haven’t heard of their organisation before now. But there is not a metahuman on the planet that operates outside the realm of Waller’s organisation.”

“What about Batgirl?” Chesca asks. “Or the Green Arrow?”

“Civilians, in the most technical sense of the word,” she answers, wheeling to stand next to Iris’ costume. “Iris’ capabilities catapult her far, far beyond the title of civilian, most of whom have no idea that M.A.I.M.E.D. exists.”

“Well, how do _you_ know about it?” iris wants to know, one eyebrow raised. Dr Wells fiddles with the ring on her finger, twisting and turning, before she answers.

“Let’s just say that I have had…altercations with them in the past. They haven’t always been my biggest fans.” Iris snorts.

“Well, whatever. I don’t trust them – did you hear how friendly Thawne was trying to be? What a creep.”

“Hey, why’d you cut me off?” Chesca asks. Iris looks at her. “When he said his name was Thawne. That’s like Eddie, and he’s still missing – you think they’re related?”

“I cut you off,” Iris asks, “because that’s not his real name.”

“It isn’t?” Colin frowns. “How do you know?” Iris casts about, before gesturing for Chesca to stand in front of her. She frowns at her forehead.

“What’s your name?”

“Chesca Ramon.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Who shot first?”

“Han.”

“See?” Iris says, turning to the rest of them. “When you ask someone those questions, the replies are immediate, because the answer is innate – you’ve grown up with them. When I asked Chesca, her mind didn’t move, it just answered. But ‘Thawne’…when I asked him, I could feel his mind searching for a name. And he knew that name would get a reaction out of us, which is why he used it.”

Dr Wells nods as this, as Iris knew she would. “Miss West is right, of course. That answer would have rested in the mind for but a moment before it came out of her mouth. And Waller?”

“She’s like you and Colin,” Iris admits. “I couldn’t read it. You know my powers don’t work on everyone.”

It’s something they discovered early in training – for some reason, her powers don’t work on certain people. There is no real reason that she can see for it, and no correlation. Captain Singh, Colin and Dr Wells all have minds that read like white noise to her, while Barry, Patty, Nora and Chesca all have perfectly open minds (though of course she tries not to read their minds). She doesn’t usually worry about it, but when Amadeus Waller is part of that list, her antennae go up.

And she could really punch ‘Eobard Thawne’ for talking about Barry.

“Okay,” she says, making a decision. “I have some time off this weekend. I’ll go see Olivia, see what she says about it. She’s worked with Waller before, maybe she can tell me the best way to go when it comes to dealing with him. And I’ll ask Freddie to dig up some dirt on ‘Thawne’ – although I don’t know what he’d want with Eddie. Beats my original idea, anyway.”

“Which was?” Colin wants to know.

“Throw him off a roof,” she replies simply. Chesca and Colin share a look.

“Iris, you can’t promise grievous bodily harm on people because you think they’re threatening Barry,” Chesca says. Iris folds her arms.

“Well, why not?”

“Because it’s illegal,” Colin tells her. “Nobody’s in danger yet, okay? Anyway, don’t you have to get back to work?”

“Yeah, probably. Oh!” Iris snaps her fingers. “The Man in the Iron Mask made another appearance.”

“His name is _Cobalt Blue_!” Chesca says through gritted teeth. “Who is this newbie trying to take my rightful nicknaming spot? I should get Freddie to find him so I can tell him who’s boss.”

“Whatever, Chess,” Iris says. “We just have to get rid of him. I’m not sure how the Modern Miracleworker can stack up against the fastest man alive.”

Iris walks towards the elevators, but Colin follows her out. She turns to him. “What’s up, big guy?”

“Are you sure Ronnie is safe?” he asks. “I mean, she’s fine now, in our apartment, but she’s freaked that Eiling will come back. And now with this Waller guy-”

“Of course she is, I’ll make sure of it. Hey, bring her by my house before dinner, and we can think of a game plan. That should get her less worried.”

“Thanks, Iris,” he replies, twisting his ring. “That would be helpful.”

It’s not until Iris is back at the station running the prints that she notices why her last conversation with Colin felt odd. He and Dr Wells had been twisting their rings in the same way – _exactly_ the same way.

Weird.

***

Barry, however, is not thinking about mysterious men who seem to know too much about him. He is in Jitters (he seems to spend just as much time there as when he worked there), typing up some notes on the escaped jellyfish story that he’s been forced to write about. It’s probably the weirdest thing _anything_ has ever written about, to be honest, and he can’t believe he has to write about strange noises in sewers and poisonous tentacles. He’s happy that Wally turns up, because he’s not sure he can take much more of this. Iris’ cousin is in normal clothes, since it’s his day off.

“Ready?” he asks. Barry closes his laptop and puts it away.

“Yeah. Did you tell Linda what we’re talking about?”

“I told her it was just a few questions, nothing major. Thanks for doing this, Barry, I appreciate it.”

Barry nods as they walk. It has been a week since Wally asked him to do this, and Barry realised that the first thing they needed to was ask Linda about what happened. He knows nothing about Linda apart from the fact that she is a weapons technician at Wayne Industries, so they’re heading over there now. Wally spends about half the short walk there fielding calls from nurses (even though it’s his day off, he’s still on-call). They are about halfway there when he gets a text from Iris.

 _Hey, Scott can’t make it to dinner, didn’t want you to make extra for him_.

No problem. Does he want to come next week?

_I’ll ask._

Awesome. You remembered you’re bringing dessert, right?

_Of course I did_

_I totally remembered_

_Um_

_I have to go, talk later_

Barry smiles to himself and pockets his phone again. By his own assessment, he is doing better with the idea of Iris dating Scott. It had been his idea to invite him to dinner, after all, and he always tries to talk to him at work. For her part, Iris appears to have forgiven him for what he said to Scott, since she never mentions it and things are pretty much back to normal between them. He admits that there is a small part of him that _maybe_ wanted Scott to know that it was him, Barry, that Iris had been in love with, but then he didn’t actually say it was him. Maybe it had been obvious on his face. Besides, Iris is always so busy these days that she barely has any time left for him – actually, it’s been that way since the coma. He just didn’t want her to lose a guy that she liked over it, even though a part of him thinks that she’s pushing him away or hiding something for whatever reason. Anyway, he and Scott are fine now, and so are he and Iris, and he is doing a very good job of ignoring the fact that the way Iris flips her hair sometimes is kind of sexy.

Wayne Industries is a large, vast building made of steel, concrete and glass, the tip seeming to brush the clouds. Wally leads him into the lobby and through to a café area, where many of the employees are gathered for lunch. Some of the people nod at Wally, probably recognising him from coming here so often, and they walk to the far side of the café where the windows overlook the bay. A woman is already sitting there – part Korean, Barry thinks, from the surname ‘Park’ – and she smiles at Wally as he approaches.

“Hey babe,” he says, kissing her. He slides into the seat next to her and gestures to Barry. “This is Barry Allen. Barry, this is Linda Park, my girlfriend.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” he says, shaking her hand.

“Likewise,” she replies. She looks around and leans forward. “And thanks for agreeing to help. I know it could be dangerous.”

“All in a day’s work, right? Although Wally tells me you’re a weapons technician, so you should be used to danger.”

“Yeah, but I’m trying to lessen the danger,” she points out. “The weapons we’re testing right now, for example, are supposed to minimise the danger to civilians, even in situations of dire consequence. It’s important when-”

“Lin,” Wally interrupts, looking at a menu, “you’re doing it again.”

Linda blinks and then sighs. “Sorry. Wayne Industries is holding a fundraiser for victims of gun violence next weekend, and we’re all going to be there. I guess we get a little passionate about it.”

“Hey, that’s always good to hear,” Barry laughs. They order lunch and then he gets out his laptop.

“I’m just going to ask you a few questions, Linda. If you don’t want to answer you can say so, but it’ll help me if you can answer all of them.”

She glances at Wally, who squeezes her hand underneath the table. “Okay,” she breathes. “Sure.”

The story Linda recounts corroborates with Wally’s – there is a brand on her neck that she doesn’t remember getting, whenever she thinks about Calamity she feels cold, and she is certain that she did certain things during the time period where Calamity is supposed to have taken her. The only difference is that Linda was not aware of the gap in her memory until Wally told her about it.

“What are you guys doing next?” Linda asks. “I mean, what’s the next step?”

“Well, Dr Light is only one metahuman,” Barry explains. “That is, _you_ are. I wanted to get a look at Girder, but she was taken by Miss Miracle, and I don’t know where she is right now. I’m looking into finding anyone in her immediate family or close friends that were reported missing, but I really want to find a new case. That way we can give it to Miss Miracle, and she can investigate it herself.”

“I guess not all heroes wear masks. You, um, you’re keeping it anonymous, right? Because-”

“Nobody will know your names,” he promises. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Linda smiles. “Great, now I don’t have to worry. So, Barry Allen, what’s it like being Miss Miracle’s social media manager?”

“Pay’s terrible. And it’s definitely not more exciting than designing weapons – what are you working on?”

“Well, if I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

Barry laughs before he realises that Linda is just looking at him, one eyebrow raised and a smile on her face. Wally raises his hands. “Hey, don’t look at me. I haven’t known anything about what she’s doing for the past month.”

“Yeah, my new boss and I are working on something top-secret,” Linda continues. “She’s this big sales rep but she also does weapon design, and she’s big on her secrets not getting out. Hey, there she is now.”

Barry looks to where Linda is pointing and starts in surprise. “Eleanor?”

Patty’s mother, dressed impeccably as always in a navy blue pencil suit, gives him a surprised smile, her perfect teeth shining. “Bartholomew, Wallace, Linda. I didn’t know you were all friends.”

Barry clears his through. “Well Wallace – Wally – is helping me with a story. The escaped jellyfish apparently has incredibly venomous tentacles, and when I contacted the hospital for news on whether any victims had been admitted, they sent me Wally.”

“You know me, Ms Spivot,” he adds smoothly, thankfully picking up on Barry’s lie, “always willing to help.”

“I do know that,” Eleanor agrees, smiling at him. Barry nods, ignoring the way he feels unsettled under her gaze. Patty loves her mother, but he can see why she sometimes calls her ‘Ice Queen. “Well, it’s lovely to know that you’re getting along with my star worker – Linda is an invaluable part of my team.”

“Keep the praise coming, boss,” Linda laughs, and Eleanor smiles, dusting off her jacket.

“Well, it was lovely meeting all of you. If you’ll excuse me, I have to discuss something with Mr Hinds.”

“Ouch,” Linda grimaces as she moves off. “Hinds is going to get his ass handed to him.”

“She just said she wanted to talk with him,” Barry points out, and Linda laughs.

“Eventually, you’ll figure out the many faces of Eleanor Spivot. Sure, her _mouth_ said she was going to have a normal, civilised discussion with him, but her _eyes_ were saying ‘I’m going to eviscerate this asshole and then go for a salad afterwards’.”

“Yes another reason to not piss off my girlfriend’s mother,” Barry says, and Wally frowns.

“You’re dating One-Shot Kill?”

“…One-Shot…Kill?”

“Sorry, Patty,” Linda clarifies, giving her boyfriend a playful poke. “Eleanor’s daughter. She came in a few days after she started working here and gave a shooting demonstration – she was damn near perfect. Hence the nickname. She must have been shooting for her whole life.”

Barry shrugs. “I mean, I guess. She went into the police academy after college, so I guess six years?”

But Linda is frowning slightly. “Well, Barry, I’ve been doing this a long time, and you don’t usually get that kind of skill and accuracy unless the person’s been shooting since they were a kid. But then,” she adds thoughtfully, “I guess she could just be insanely talented. God knows Eleanor is – could be a mother-daughter thing.”

“Anyway,” Wally interjects. “Do you need anything else from us? I know you have to get back to work…”

“No, this should be cool,” he says. He hesitates before leaving. “I asked her. Iris. She said she’d think about it, but it’s only been one day, so-”

“That’s okay,” Wally interrupts, giving him a small smile. “She said she’d think about it. That’s all I ask.”

***

“I just find it hard to believe that _no one_ saw it coming.”

“Oh, totally. I was on the internet when it happened. It was like the apocalypse.”

Iris rolls her eyes at Ronnie and Chesca studying her record collection. She snaps her fingers and the Beyoncé vinyl that Barry got for her jumps out of their hands. They turn to her in indignation and she raises her eyebrows. “Hello? Figuring out what the men in suits want and trying to keep Firestorm away from Eiling? Ring any bells?”

“Someone explain who these men are, again?” Nora asks, rolling up her sleeves as she comes out of the kitchen. She lowers herself into her armchair. “Or is this one of those things that I don’t want to know?”

Iris, standing by the fireplace, shares a look with Colin, who clears his throat. “Well, technically it doesn’t exist, but-”

“Let’s just say,” Iris interrupts, “that they’re dangerous. And that I’m not working with them.”

“Yeah, but why would they be interested in Eddie Thawne?” Nora wants to know. “I mean, I’m assuming that’s why he used the name on you – to figure out whether you knew anything. You think they’re related?”

“I thought that,” Iris admits. “But I don’t think so – they have completely different colourings. Eddie was all blonde hair and icy blue eyes and pale skin. This guy has brown hair, darker blue eyes, and tan skin.”

“Also, what the fuck is an Eobard?” Chesca demands. “That name sounds made-up.”

“You said that about Patty Spivot.”

“I stand by that.”

Iris pinches the bridge of her nose. “Fake-sounding names aside, can we all agree that those guys are shady? Plus, Dr Wells said they were less than friendly when she worked with them.”

Nora suddenly finds the table very interesting and Chesca starts to hum. Iris narrows her eyes. “What’s with you two?”

“We think Dr Wells may more than she’s letting on about Calamity,” Chesca says slowly. Nora snorts.

“I think she _is_ Calamity.”

“That’s also a thing that we think.” Iris stares at them both.

“Nora, not this again. Dr Wells is helping me, Calamity-”

“Said, and I quote, that she’s making you better,” Nora points out. “She could have killed you at any time, but she didn’t.”

“You said you stopped investigating her, Nora,” Iris says. “After you found out about the accident that killed her husband-”

“She did,” Chesca says quickly. “After Calamity broke into your house and threatened Barry-”

“ _She broke into the house and threatened Barry_?” Iris demands, and some of the picture frames and ornaments start to shake. Chesca throws Nora a frantic look.

“Not exactly,” she admits. “Something – I didn’t see what, exactly, only black lightning – broke into the house and stole all of your dad’s files. When she was gone, there was a knife through Barry’s high school graduation picture with the words ‘stop looking or else’.”

Iris swallows and unclenches her fists, which had been digging little nail-shaped marks into her palms. “Nora, I’m sorry. But why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’ve got this,” Chesca says. She walks over to her friend. “Iris, you know we love you. You’re so cute and adorable and nice, and you have these ridiculous Disney Princess Bambi eyes that you break out without warning, especially around…ahem, people. But when it comes to Barry being in danger, the Bambi eyes disappear and we remember that you’re this metahuman that can read minds and control planes…like now. Jesus, woman, I didn’t do anything.”

Iris pouts. “That’s not true. I have some self-control, you know.” Colin snorts.

“Yeah, it is. There was that time you went after a woman made of steel because she visited Barry.”

“Or when you went after the Mist without back-up because she implied she’d go after Barry next.”

“And Colin tells me you wanted to throw this Eobard guy off a roof,” Ronnie adds helpfully.

“And then there’s Becky Cooper,” Nora finishes, and Chesca wheels around to look at her. Iris’ face gets hot.

“Who’s Becky Cooper?”

“ _No one_ ,” Iris grounds out. Nobody needs to know that story quite yet. “Alright, fine, I may be a little protective of him. But can we at least agree we need to keep M.A.I.M.E.D. out of our lives?”

“After you ask Olivia, I guess we’ll be good,” Colin says. Iris sighs.

“Great. Now all of you leave – Barry’s making dinner and he’ll be here any minute.”

“It’s not like he doesn’t know any of us.”

“Well, there’s Ronnie,” Iris deadpans. She twists her fingers and bites her lip. “It’s bad enough that I’m lying to him about who I am, I don’t want to lie to him about _everything_.”

“Colin and I were talking about that, actually,” Ronnie says, looking at him. “Professor Stein has this friend in Pittsburgh who he thinks could help us control our powers. As fun as it is being mentally connected to an old woman who hates my dress sense.”

“But you just got back,” Chesca says quietly. Ronnie smiles at her. “It won’t be for long. Maybe a couple of months or so? Less, if we figure this thing out.”

Iris looks at Colin, who is quietly studying their interlinked hands. “And are you both okay with this?” she asks. Colin nods.

“Anything to keep safe, right?”

Before Iris can reply, however, Barry walks into the living room with groceries. Her heart sinks when he takes in everyone seated around the place, his face furrowed in confusion. “Uh…hi, everyone. Who’s this?”

Everyone looks at each other, and Iris’ heart twists at the thought of having to lie to him, again, when Colin steps forward. “This is Ronnie.”

“…dead Ronnie?”

“Well, that’s what we thought. What actually happened was that the Particle Accelerator had negative effects on people, and one of them was that Ronnie here had damage to her brain, resulting in what resembles amnesia. We found her, very recently, and now she’s at STAR Labs while we try to figure out if there’s any more damage.”

“Oh, you mean like how after the lightning struck Iris, she eats everything in sight?”

Nora lets out a snort and Iris folds her arms. “I don’t eat _everything_ in sight.”

“Iris, I think a third of my paycheck at Jitters went to feeding you after you came out of the coma,” he laughs. He sets down the groceries. “Uh, so, dead fiancé?”

“That’s me. Ronnie Raymond.”

“You like Cajun chicken, dead fiancé?” Ronnie’s eyes widen.

“Oh no, we couldn’t impose-”

“It’s cool,” he shrugs, taking off his jacket. “There’s enough for everyone.”

“I’ll help.” Iris takes one of the grocery bags as Barry heads into the kitchen, before turning back to Colin. “Thanks. You didn’t have to-”

“Lying’s never easy,” he says simply. “Plus, I really do like Cajun chicken.”

***

“You’re not helping.”

“I am helping.”

“You’re eating all the cheese.”

“Well, Mr Tell-Everyone-Iris-Eats-A-Lot, you probably should have seen this coming.”

Barry laughs and Iris stops eating handfuls of cheese. He insisted that she could go and hang out with her friends, but she wants to hang out with him, so now she’s helping him mix cheese for the sauce. He gives her a look and she rolls her eyes, but obediently gets the flour down from the shelf and puts it next to him while he’s chopping the chicken.

“So, Ronnie’s nice,” he begins, and Iris laughs.

“Yeah, another person to add to our team of uber-nerds. Colin’s just helping her get back to normal after the explosion. Anyway,” she continues, adjusting her glasses, “writing anything interesting lately? Scott told me the whole escaped jellyfish story is growing legs. No pun intended.”

“Uh, yeah,” he says, avoiding her eyes. “Well, apparently it’s skulking around sewers and stuff, so I guess I have some investigating to do.”

“Okay. I mean, as long as you’re careful. If you’re worried, I’m sure Missy can give you another assignment.”

“Yeah, after she kills me with that death-glare of hers. What about you? I heard that Cobalt Blue attacked some more people.”

“Oh, you’re team Cobalt Blue?” Iris asks. “Chesca will be happy. Well, you know, just another day in Central. Plus there’s the blackouts at work – it’s really no fun trying to work in complete darkness.”

Barry misses this, just them hanging out and cooking together. Nora said she had no intention of watching them starve to death on Ramen and take-out when they went to college, so she usually made them take turns cooking each Sunday. Inevitably Iris would forget and then Barry would have to come in and help them before Nora got in from work. It is second-nature, then, for Barry to say things or gesture and Iris will know exactly what he means. They look up when the oven dings, meaning that the dinner rolls are ready. Iris gets them out – and immediately starts eating one. Barry throws his hands up in exasperation. “Are you serious?”

“I skipped lunch!”

“I don’t care – those are for the guests.”

“I live here, jackass.”

“And I’m the chef so you have to listen to me, sunshine.”

Iris gives him a playful shove and Barry nudges her back, which she doesn’t appreciate because he’s so much taller than she is. She sticks her tongue out at him and then her eyes wander to the door. “Hey, Patty. I didn’t see you there.”

Barry grins at his girlfriend in greeting. “Hey, you. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I was looking for you and Nora said you were here and here you are…Together.”

“Barry wanted my help,” Iris shrugs. “Apparently he can’t do anything himself. Hey, guess what?” She lifts the cake she brought for dessert. “Barry told me butter pecan is your favourite. Maybe it can make up for the fact that your boyfriend is a cashew-eating asshole.”

“Or,” Barry adds, “for the fact that your colleague is a cashew-eating _nerd_.”

Iris throws one at him and smiles at Patty as she walks out. Barry kisses her quickly. “Ignore her, she’s getting the burnt parts. How was your day?”

“Same old, same old,” she replies, sitting down. “Hey, my mom said she saw you at work today. And she wanted me to give you…this.”

Barry peers at the card in her hand. “ _You are cordially invited to the Wayne Industries fundraiser for victims of violent crime_ …Cool. Do I have to wear a suit?”

Patty swats him with it. “Yes, Barry. You have to wear a suit.”

***

_This is the last time I agree to visit Olivia Queen._

_This is the last time I agree to visit Olivia Queen._

_This is the last time I agree_ …

Oh, who is she kidding? Iris knows damn well she’s going to visit Olivia until one or both of them dies.

Hopefully, she won’t get shot this time.

“Chesca, you can’t pack a dozen DVDs,” she says into the phone in between packing up case files. She hears her friend sigh over the phone.

“Freddie and I have a marathon planned, and we want choice!”

“We’re going to help Olivia catch a criminal and ask about M.A.I.M.E.D.,” comes Colin’s sarcastic reply. “Not watch movies.”

“Shut up, Dr Frost.”

Iris just laughs as she zips around her lab trying to stuff things in her gym bag. This is what she gets for forgetting to pack until ten minutes before she has to leave. She’d been all set to have a simple weekend away where she asked Olivia whether the secret government agency is more likely to throw her in a bunker or kill her, but then Olivia called and left a monosyllabic message that essentially translated to ‘get over here and help me or I’ll run you through with a pole’.

“Guys, focus! Are you in the van? Olivia said she needed Captain Boomerang’s boomerang.”

“Yeah, it’s in here…somewhere. You want us to come by CCPD and get you?”

“No, I have a ride, so – Barry! You’re here!” She glances at her phone. “Guys, I’ll call you back. What’s up, Bar?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to see you before you left.” He watches her dart around the room, his eyes crinkled in amusement. “Busy day?”

“Yeah – um, no. I guess. Kind of, you know with Cobalt Blue and the-” the cuts herself off as the lights go out and there’s a chorus of cursing from downstairs. “blackouts. It’s been a long week.”

“Yeah, that happened to us too,” he says. The lights start back up again and Iris walks back to her desk.

“So, I wanted to know if you’ve given any more thought to, uh, talking to Wally.” Iris sighs and rubs her eyes. She has been thinking about it, of course, and she has finally discovered the source of her reluctance. She still remembers her father’s funeral, when no one would talk to her because they knew that she insisted on her mother’s innocence. After that, the offers to take her in stopped coming, and that was when she started living with Barry and Nora. And she’s not sure she can face the possibility of that rejection again. “Yeah, I’m not sure it’s a great idea…”

“Come on, Iris, just one meeting. He really wants to see you.”

Iris frowns slightly at him. “Why are you so desperate for me to meet him?”

“Because he’s your family.”

“ _You’re_ my family. You and Nora and my mom.”

He gives her a small smile. “I know that, Iris. But, I mean, if he wants to reconnect with you, then-”

“Town car for Iris West?”

Both of them turn towards the door, frowning. There’s a man in a uniform there, his face expectant and his hands behind his back. “Miss West? I have a town car to take you to the home of Olivia Queen.” She and Barry share a look.

“…I didn’t order a town car.”

“The car was ordered by Scott Evans,” he answers, looking at his phone, and Iris stares. Scott is covering the party that Olivia is throwing as cover for whatever shenanigans she’s roped Iris into, so when he heard that she was going up there for the weekend he suggested they just go up together. Of course, he doesn’t know that she may have to duck out of the party at some point, but still.

“Oh, I – Oh. Um, where is he?”

“He’s downstairs, waiting for you.”

Iris nods uncertainly. She kind of hoped that he’d come up here, but whatever. “Okay. I – I guess I’ll be ready in a minute.”

“I didn’t know you were going with Scott,” Barry says evenly, and Iris looks at him, running a hand through her hair, before putting the last of her things away.

“Yeah, it just kind of…happened. He’s covering some party Olivia is throwing, so I guess he wanted to go together or whatever. Should be fun, right?”

“Weekend away, that’s a big step.”

“Yeah, it-”

The driver clears his throat and Iris hefts her bag over her shoulders. Barry automatically goes to take it from her, but the driver takes it from her. “We should get going, Miss West,” he says. “We want to beat the evening rush.”

“Sure,” she says. She turns back to Barry, who has his hands in his pockets. Another wave of guilt washes over her, because this is another lie that he doesn’t understand, but she can tell that he’s doing his best to deal with it, like he’s been dealing with everything since she got out of the coma. She looks up at him, at the face that’s always trusted her, and decides something. “Listen, Barry, I’m back tomorrow, so can we meet and talk? It’s kind of important.”

“Okay,” he nods. “Whatever you want.”

“Great. See you tomorrow.”

“See you soon, sunshine.”

***

Joanna whistles as she sees Scott get driven off in his town car. “He’s even hotter in person.”

“That’s what everyone tells me.”

“So does this mean you’re over-”

“It means,” Iris interrupts, “that instead of hanging out with him before this party tomorrow, I’m here helping you and Olivia, this better be good.”

Joanna laughs and leads her into the nightclub, nodding at the cleaners and bartenders as they set everything up. They slip through the people and head downstairs, and Iris hears the tell-tale clang of Olivia practicing on her salmon ladder, rather aggressively hitting the bars. She raises her eyebrows at Joanna. “She usually only does that on Wednesdays.”

“She’s working out some frustration.”

“Ohhhhh. Malorie Merlyn?”

“Not quite.”

“Detective Lance?”

“Dinah’s not so bad.”

“Oh! Is it that Ray Palmer’s still dating Freddie?”

In the next second, a pole flies across the room towards them. Iris stops it with a hand just before it hits her and Olivia saunters over. Iris glares at her and she smirks.

“Iris. Glad you could make it.”

“I don’t know why I’m friends with you,” she says grumpily, setting her bag down. “Every time we meet, you try to kill me.”

“Not _every_ time.”

“You know, she’s got a point, Liv,” Joanna says. “There was the time before the explosion, with the hallucination, when you almost strangled her.”

“That was an accident.”

“You shot her before Christmas.”

“She was being reckless,” Olivia answers. “And unprofessional. And annoying.”

“Love you too, Liv (!).” Iris rolls her eyes. “Anyway, let’s get this over with so we can go home to your place and eat – the journey here almost killed me and your chef is amazing.”

“Is that why we’re friends? So you can abuse my status for food?”

“Olivia, I’m friends with you because I’m scared of what would happen if I wasn’t.”

Joanna laughs at both of them. “Well, Freddie’s on his way, but how about we explain things a little before he gets here? And then we can go eat.”

“Where are the others?” Olivia asks as she pulls her shirt over her sports bra. Iris settles into a chair and Olivia starts tapping at the computer.

“They’re driving here, which means that Chesca will be singing songs in Spanish and Colin will be about ready to murder her by the time they get here.”

Iris listens carefully as Olivia carefully explains the latest problem they’re having. According to her, the League of Assassins (one of the reasons she’s glad to live in Central City) is sending people in to spy on her. But instead of wanting her to find them so Olivia can kill them, she wants them captured so she can find the leader. Iris has fought with Olivia before, so she knows that underneath her workout clothes there are a network of scars that tell the story of her time on the island. She knows that if she moves suddenly towards her, she’ll find herself in a headlock before she can think. Olivia is another one whose mind Iris cannot read, but she does not need to in order to know who she is.

“Hey,” Iris says suddenly. “You’ve graduated from killing and torturing to capturing and interrogating! I’m proud of you, Liv.” Olivia rolls her eyes but laughs.

“I appreciate that, Iris.”

“Any time,” she says cheerily. She stares at a paperweight on the desk, making it fly through the air, until she catches Olivia’s look. She sets it down and folds her hands in her lap. “Um, anyway. What’s the plan?”

“Well, tomorrow I’m having that party for the fundraiser at the house, so I need you to read the minds of people we think could be working for the League and report back to me.”

“Is this going to be like the time the Suicide Squad turned up?” Iris asks. “What?” she demands at her incredulous look. “Unlike you, Freddie actually calls me. Does Harley Quinn really carry around a big baseball bat?”

“Freddie should learn to be more discreet,” she says tightly. Iris glances at Joanna.

_Ouch. That bad?_

_You have no idea_.

Before Iris can say anything else, Freddie himself walks in and smiles at them all. Then his eyes find Olivia, who has suddenly become very interested in her katana. Iris looks at Joanna again.

 _This is going to be a long weekend_.

Iris soon learns, especially after Chesca and Colin arrive and Colin stops threatening to shoot Chesca every few minutes because she keeps singing ‘ _La Tortura_ ’, how to work through awkward silences. She learns that there are several topics she’s not supposed to bring up, which are 1) Ra’s Al-Ghul 2) Ray Palmer 3) Freddie dating Ray Palmer 4) Ray Palmer buying Queen Consolidated. But she also gets the feeling that the entire team has secrets from one another, and it’s another thing that makes her certain that she’s going to have to tell Barry.

The party is a typical Queen affair, with Theo and Laurent Lance looking particularly handsome in bespoke suits. Even Dinah Lance looks kind of festive in a golden dress – though a quick sweep of her thoughts reveals that she has a gun in her purse. Everywhere they look, waiters in green swan about carrying champagne flutes and plates of finger food (which is why Iris bought to orders of Big Belly Burger before this party), while a string quartet plays on the stage. Iris looks back up at Scott, who is talking about the first time he met Bree Wayne as they dance. Scott also looks gorgeous in a black suit with a silver shirt and tie, and thanks to the fact that her hair is curled expertly over one ear, hasn’t realised that there’s an earpiece in that means she’s also listening to Colin and Chesca watch the Walking Dead.

“…and then I think she bought everyone drinks,” he finishes. Iris raises her eyebrows.

“You think?”

“Well, she bought the bar, I think drinks were included.”

Iris laughs, looking around the elaborate scene, and _feels_ rather than sees the violent, single-minded tone of someone’s thoughts. It belongs to a man who looks perfectly fine as he talks to Dinah and compliments her dress, but Iris can hear that she’s really looking for Olivia. Iris clears her throat. “Hey, I’m gonna get some shrimp, okay? I’ll be right back.”

Scott nods – he has no shortage of quotes to get for the paper – and she steals away to get some food. She reaches up, seeming to adjust her earrings, and starts to whisper.

“Guys?”

“ _THIS MOTHERFU_ -”

“Chesca!”

“Sorry, Iris, we’re here,” Colin says. “Things are getting a little heated in zombieland.”

“Whatever. Guy talking to Detective Lane, about six feet, dark hair, gold ring.”

“…okay, got it. Freddie’s face-recognition is on point,” Chesca says. “Hey, save us some shrimp.”

“Fat chance.”

Iris straightens up, about to find Freddie so they can gossip – and that’s when an arrow flies straight through the window and shatters a chandelier.

***

Barry rubs his eyes tiredly as he watches everyone pack up the precinct. Patty has to return something to evidence room, so he’s here typing until they can leave. His mother approaches and he shuts the laptop, grateful to be able to stop writing about venomous jellyfish. She sits in front of him and smiles ruefully.

“Hey, solider,” she says. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” he shrugs. “It’s just been a long week.”

“My sweet boy,” she murmurs, stroking his hair. “Enjoying the big world of work?”

“The whole ‘being able to make rent’ thing is all kinds of awesome.” Nora laughs.

“I’ll bet. Sorry about the waiting, we’re really swamped. Iris will have a bucketload of work when she gets back.”

“Iris always has a bucketload of work,” he points out. “It’s good that she got to go away for a weekend, enjoy herself.”

“She never liked to travel,” Nora says. “I think she was worried about leaving her mom.

Barry remembers that, at least. Nora had offered to send Iris to France for a semester during high school, but Iris was reluctant to be away for so long. They have gone on vacations, but they’ve always been together, and never for more than two weeks. Barry’s eyebrows knit together and Nora tips her head at him. “What’s up?”

“Dad used to…travel a lot, didn’t he?” he asks slowly. “For his job. I remember him going on all these business trips to different places when I was younger.”

“Yes, he did. Although I can’t imagine what fun an insurance salesman would have.”

“Still,” Barry shrugs. “Must have been interesting, going to all those different places.”

“What’s got you thinking about him all of a sudden?” his mother asks softly.

“I guess I was just wondering about family,” he answers, thinking of Wally. He’s so desperate to talk to Iris, to tell her that he believes her now, though Barry has told him that they’re not going to tell her that they’re investigating Calamity. “Comes in all different shapes and sizes, you know?”

Nora looks at him for a moment, and then gives him a small, sad smile. “Do I ever tell you you’re a really sweet kid?”

“Not enough.”

“Damn straight. Your head would get even bigger.”

They laugh and his mother squeezes his hand; they look around to see that most of the people have already gone home – there’s just a few officers and them, and Patty somewhere upstairs. Then, as they’re looking, all the lights in the precinct cut out. His mother gives a grunt of irritation. “That’s been happening all week. Don’t worry, it should be back on in a second.”

“Uh, mom?” Barry is looking out of the window, and the whole city is bathed in darkness. “I don’t think it’s coming on.”

Then the back-up lights come on, a sure sign that the city is in the middle of blackout. Everyone looks at each other uncertainly and Nora raises her hands. “Okay, everyone stay calm. This has happened before, so we should all know what to do.”

“No,” a calm, female voice says, “it hasn’t.”

Nora peers into the atrium – there’s a woman standing there with her head bowed, a baseball cap on her head. She gestures for Barry to stand behind her and her hand steals towards her gun. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to put your hands up for me.”

And then a spark of electricity crackles around her fists. She looks up, and Barry can see that there’s a mask over her face. “Alright.” She raises her hands and electricity streaks upward, bathing them all in sparks. “You can call me _Blackout_.”

***

The residents of Star City must be used to arrows interrupting all of their parties, Iris thinks, because everyone tries to hightail it out of there as quickly as possible. It’s easy to slip through the crowd and teleport back to the Foundry for her suit, Olivia grasping her hand, so she can get ready.

“Dig’s already on the archer guy,” Olivia says quickly as she straps her gear on. “I need you to find the guy we were looking at and bring him here.”

Iris nods, pulling her mask on, and turns to the others. “Location?” Freddie, who’s just arrived, leans over Chesca to tap on the computer terminal. “Lower car park. His satellite navigation says he’s heading for the Glades.”

“Keep me posted, you guys.”

Olivia swings out of the Foundry and Iris teleports, listening to the thundering sound above as people rush to get out. By contrast, this place is deathly quiet, but Iris knows that he’s just highly trained enough to conceal his footsteps and breathing. His thoughts are here, pulsing and live, even as he fights to keep himself calm.

She twists out of the way of a bullet just in the nick of time, and flashes out of the way of several more as the target finds her. She flits between cars, trying to avoid getting shot, until she comes face to face with him. Taken aback, he starts shooting again, but then Iris rips his gun away with a flick of her wrist. Unperturbed, he launches himself at her, and she thanks God for all the times Chesca agreed to go to the gym with her, because she fends off his first two attacks and then makes her eyes glow, blinding him.

And she’s just trying to figure out how to get a man twice her size to Olivia when there’s a dull thud and he slumps to the ground, unconscious.

Iris bends to pick up the object – and smiles when she recognises the tonfa. “Laurent.”

Laurent Lance steps out of the shadows, his blonde hair gleaming in the stark light. “I have no idea,” he laughs, “why all of you constantly underestimate the Black Canary.”

***

“Guns on the floor.”

Nobody moves. Blackout raises an arm and shoots a cop in the chest. Barry’s heart is in his throat, and his mother moves to stand directly in front of him. Blackout tips her head.

“Guns on the floor, _now_.”

They do as she says, and then sit obediently as she handcuffs them all on the floor. Outside, sirens are blaring and lights flash inside, but Barry knows they can’t come in or Blackout might start shooting. “Central City’s finest. You may have to change your name.”

“Who are you?” Nora asks. “Why are you doing this?”

“I believe I told you my name, Detective Allen,” she replies, and Barry narrows his eyes. “And I am doing this because all of _you_ have failed me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a _disgrace_. Do you know who did this to me? Do you know why I’m like this?” She breaks off and snarls, “Of course you do. Because you let her sit in that lab of hers, like she’s not some kind of criminal.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Nora continues. “You’re mad at Dr Wells?”

“She made me into _this_ ,” she snaps, and sends another blast towards the offices. Electricity arcs through the room, scorching all the surfaces, and bathing everything in sparks. But Barry is frowning, studying her because – no, she doesn’t mean this. She is saying the words, but her face is betraying something else. Something deeper. She doesn’t want to be here.

“You don’t want to do this,” he says carefully. He ignores the look his mother gives him and continues. “Listen, you know this is wrong. Just let us go, and maybe we can help-”

“Help?” she spits, and then turns away from them, facing the doors. Her voice is strangely broken when she speaks next. “I am…too far beyond help.”

Barry flexes his wrist inside the cuffs and curses. This would be a perfect time to contact Miss Miracle, but he can’t. The watch she gave him is in his front pocket, out of his reach – normally he would be wearing it, but the one that Iris got him for Christmas somehow means more to him, like he’s carrying around her belief with him wherever she goes. This is what he gets for being sentimental. Then he feels someone brush past him and looks up to see Patty, her gun pointed at Blackout as she slowly advances.

“Keep her talking,” she says out of the corner of her mouth. Barry swallows as he watches, but keeps going.

“What do you want? Dr Wells punished? Is that it?”

“Yes, actually. And you’re going to help me with that.”

“Don’t you think she’s suffered enough?”

Blackout scoffs, her eyes still trained on the officers outside, and Patty keeps moving. “You mean losing money? No more flashy TV interviews? Do you call that loss? Do-”

She breaks off with a gasp as Patty fires two rounds into her. “Got her,” she says triumphantly.

But then Blackout spins and shoots Patty once, and she goes down. “ _Patty_!” Barry’s vision constricts to just that, Patty bleeding and gasping on the floor. “Do you honestly think,” Blackout says, “that I’d take a police station hostage without wearing a bulletproof vest?” She snatches a walkie-talkie from Patty’s waist and puts it to her mouth. “An officer was just shot four seconds ago, so I would say now is a good time to take me seriously. But if you can’t…” She locks eyes with Barry. “You. Come with me.”

Nora makes a choked noise. “No, please-”

“You’re the mother,” she says, and Barry detects some sadness beneath the bitterness. “I see the resemblance, and I don’t care. Move, or you’ll end up like Princess Trigger Happy over here.”

“Mom, it’s okay,” he says shakily, even though he doesn’t believe it. She leads him down a corridor at the back, near the emergency exits. “Tell me why you’re doing this.”

“I told you, Dr Wells. She needs to suffer.”

“No, that’s not it.” Then his eyes widen. “Calamity. She took something from you, didn’t she?”

And Barry knows he’s right, because she pauses. “Shut up.”

“She took someone from you, and now you’re doing this for her.” He leans forward. “Where’s the brand?”

“…my – my back.”

“We can help, we’re investigating-” She cuts him off with another bitter laugh.

“You don’t know. You have _no idea_ what’s going on.”

“What’s going on?”

“Do you think I can tell you that?”

The memory block – of course. But she sighs, and trains the gun on him. He freezes in terror, his blood like ice.

“I’m sorry about this,” she says. “I really did like your blog.”

***

“ _My name is Olivia Queen_.”

The figure on the roof, bathed in Star City’s white moonlight, doesn’t move, so Iris continues as she walks forward into the calm night air.

“ _I used to be a hard-drinking party girl, but then I was washed up on an island after a terrible accident and forced to learn a billion different martial arts_.”

Still nothing.

“ _Now I have returned to right the wrongs of my city_.”

“Iris.”

“ _Some still know me as Olivia Queen_.”

“Please.”

“ _But to most, I am…Broody McBroodyblues_.”

Olivia sighs, defeated, and when she turns Iris can see she’s laughing a little. “Why are you up here? I thought you’d be resting.”

Iris shrugs. “I wanted to talk to you. And Dig said to tell you the guy you want interrogated should be awake soon. He’s all tied up and ready like a Christmas turkey.”

It was relatively simple after Laurent knocked him out – although Olivia did turn about with more people to interrogate. Iris has decided she’ll be asleep when that happens. Scott, she learns, is back at his hotel, and is well-assured that she’s safe and perfectly happy at Olivia’s house. Olivia nods.

“Thanks for your help, Iris,” she says sincerely. “I really appreciate it.”

“Duh, of course.”

“What did you want to talk…right. M.A.I.M.E.D.”

“I got scouted.” She adjusts her glasses. “Showed up to STAR Labs like a Godfather movie. Mind telling me what it’s about?” Olivia snorts.

“I’m not sure you want to know. They’re tougher, more secretive, and much more hard-core than A.R.G.U.S. agents – they’re like the elite. Their agents are trained from birth, and it lasts forever – they have you until you’re dead, and god forbid if you try to leave before that.”

Iris stares. “Wow. I – I mean, I had no idea.”

“And that’s not all. About twenty years or so, there was this big schism. All the agents split into two factions, and they massacred each other. It was an all-out bloodbath, a mess of secret identities and betrayals and kidnappings. It took Amadeus _years_ to clean up, and I hear they’re still looking for some of the bad guys.”

Well, Iris supposes she has her answer. She has no desire to work for people who could kill half their agents over a disagreement. She has already asked Freddie to look into ‘Eobard Thawne’ for her, but maybe when she rejects their offer the strange man will leave them alone.

And not go near Barry.

“Thanks, Liv,” Iris says finally. “That really helps.”

“Glad of it.” She pauses and then rolls her eyes, shoving her. “Okay, we can get shrimp.”

“It’s just _so good_.”

They laugh as they get down to the Foundry, but then Iris’ mood dissipates. She can feel the tone of the room, and it’s not a happy one. She can hear the voices as they float out of the room, mixed with the sound of the TV and police broadcasts.

“…can’t believe this would happen.”

“How many are in there?”

“Iris is going to _lose_ it.”

“Guys? Why am I losing it?”

Joanna, Freddie, Chesca and Colin are all gathered around a terminal and turn when she approaches. Freddie and Joanna share a worried look and Colin is the one to stand, his voice soothing as he talks to her. “Iris, you need-”

Iris raises an expectant, impatient eyebrow. “Colin.”

“Aaaaand the Bambi eyes are gone,” Chesca mutters. Colin sighs.

“It’s CCPD. There’s a woman in there with hostages – and Barry’s one of them.”

Iris is too late.

She knows that when she sees the ambulances outside the precinct, the news crews gathered outside – and Patty, being led away on a stretcher. The whole precinct is a mess of cops and paramedics and she sees Captain Singh talking to someone from the news, and that’s how she knows it’s bad because today is her day off. She waves weakly but then is told to lie down, and Iris feels herself be eaten alive with panic, because she can’t find Barry, and she doesn’t know what she’ll do if-

“ _Barry_!”

He’s there in the offices, a blanket draped around him and Nora on his other side, rubbing his shoulders. Iris barrels past everyone and launches herself at him, wrapping her arms around him. “What happened?”

“I’m okay, Iris.”

“I see that, you idiot,” she replies, her voice shaky with relief. “I meant _what happened_?”

“I was just telling everyone,” he says. “She – Blackout – took me, and I think she was going to shoot me, but then I guess she chickened out, and she just ran. She escaped. I’m sorry I couldn’t catch her-”

“That’s okay, honey,” his mother says soothingly. “You let us worry about that.”

“How’d you get here so fast? Barry asks.

“I bullied Olivia and she let me use her chopper. I should call everyone and tell them you’re okay – Scott was really freaked.”

He nods. “Yeah, we’re going to the hospital. I’ve called Patty’s mom, but someone should be there in the ambulance.”

Iris hugs him goodbye again, breathing in his cedar wood soap smell, and lets him go. This is another time that she’s almost been too late to save Barry, and it doubles her resolve to not let ‘Thawne’ anywhere near them.

It’s just a pity that, unbeknownst to her, it won’t work.

***

Wally – although everyone calls him Dr West, which makes Barry think of all the times Iris’ father patched him up after he’d persuaded Iris to do something dangerous with him – says that Patty will be fine, although the painkillers she’s been given mean that she’s very groggy.

“She should be back on her feet within the week,” he finishes, closing the chart. “Since we got the bullet out so quickly, and it didn’t hit anything. But I did want to talk to you about some of her previous injuries-”

But then a nurse calls him away before he can continue and he sighs. “Look, I’ll be back, alright?”

“Thanks,” Barry says, glancing at Patty as Wally leaves. She is still sleeping and her arm is in a sling, but at least now she can stop panicking. His mother rubs his back.

“You okay?” she asks. “I know that was…a lot. How are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. It’s just a little weird. But you seem to forget I’ve been kidnapped by a crazy metahuman before,” he adds, smiling. “And look – no sprained wrist this time.”

“That is all a mother can ask for, I suppose. I’m just grateful that she didn’t hurt you before she ran. And I still don’t know how she got out.”

“Neither do it,” Barry says. “She pushed me to the ground, and by the time I got up she was gone.”

“Well, I’m sure someone will catch her. It’s only a matter of time before – Iris. What are you doing here?”

Iris walks into the room and sets a large bunch of flowers by Patty’s bed. “I came to see how you were all doing. Captain Singh didn’t need me, so I thought I’d come here. How’s she doing?”

“Good, but knocked out,” Barry answers. “But at least it’s nothing serious. You want some coffee?”

They both decline so Barry heads outside alone. He knows this place well from all the times he visited Iris during the coma, and he’s just going for his usual when he feels the air around him change and a pair of glowing eyes. “Hey, you,” he laughs. “Long time no see.”

Miss Miracle steps forward slightly, her gold costume gleaming in the light from her eyes. “I saw the news,” she says. “Sorry I couldn’t be there – are you alright?”

“Point two for the skinny white guy with no superpowers,” he tells her. “You really should try to catch up, you know.”

She laughs, the sound distorted. “Sorry, I was helping out a friend. Won’t happen again.”

“What, I’m not your only boy anymore?” he jokes, remembering something she said to him before Christmas. She cocks her head to one side.

“No,” she admits. “But you’re still my favourite.”

Barry is still thinking about that, even though it’s ridiculous that he’s blushing about it, when he goes back to Patty’s room. Nora looks up from her conversation with Iris and frowns. “You okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, you forgot your coffee.”

Barry looks down at his hands, which indeed are empty of the coffee he wanted. He feels his face get hot again and Iris clears her throat. “Oh, before I forget, Nora, Captain Singh wants to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I guessed,” Nora sighs. “Dee’s gonna be so ticked off, today was supposed to be her day off.” She moves off the corner to make the call, and Iris turns to Barry. “So, I’ve been thinking.”

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Shut _up_!” she says, swatting him, and he motions for her to continue. “Anyway, I was thinking about what you said about – about Wally, and I realised that the only reason I didn’t want to talk to him was that I was afraid he’d eventually reject me, like his family. But then tonight happened, and I almost lost you and Nora-”

“We’re all fine, Iris.”

“I know that. But it made me realise that anything could happen to anyone at any time, so you should take the time with the people you love when you can get it.” She adjusts her glasses. “So, I’d like to meet with him. If he still wants to.”

“That’s great, Iris,” he grins at her. “I know he’ll definitely want to. Just, um…Well, do you want to meet him now?”

“Now?”

“He works here, so if you want…” Iris bites her lip and then nods.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

Barry presses the call button for the doctor and Wally arrives in the next minute. He stops when he sees Iris, who is staring at him. Barry steps forward. “Wally, this is Iris. Iris, this is Wally, but everyone here calls him Dr West.”

“H-Hi,” Iris breathes.

“Hi,” he says quietly. “It’s good to see you awake.”

Iris frowns and Barry laughs. “Yeah, you guys have a lot to talk about.”

“I’m on a break right now,” Wally says. “If you want to get some coffee or something.”

“That would be great.”

“Wait, Wally,” Barry says. “What did you want to tell me about Patty?”

“What? Oh, don’t worry about it. I ran into her mom and spoke to her, it’s nothing big.”

Barry nods and watches them leave, before going to sit next to Patty while his mother is still on the phone. He sits up when she stirs. “Patty? You okay, babe? Patty?”

“…don’t…” she groans in pain. “…don’t call me that…”

He frowns. “What?” But she’s already asleep again. Barry figures she must have been having a bad dream. He gets up – maybe he’ll get some more coffee again, but then Iris walks back into the room and hugs him without a word. He pats her back. “You okay, sunshine?”

“You’re not a cashew-eating asshole,” she says.

“Good to know.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Barry realises that this is one of the first times they’ve hugged each other in a while, and he savours the coconut oil smell of her hair in his nose. Then she lets him go, smiling radiantly up at him, before going back to talk to Wally. His mother hangs up the phone and stands next to him. “Did I know about that?”

“I’ll explain later. It’s more than a little complicated. I’m gonna get some coffee, again, you want some?”

“Barry, the only thing that I want to drink is dark brown and burns on the way down.”

Later, though, when he’s in his apartment, is when he goes over what happened. When he recalls each moment of his encounter with Blackout, the truth of it. And that he had let her go.

She had been about to shoot him, that much was clear, and Barry still has no idea what prompted him to start talking, but it saved his life. “Was it your husband? Or your brother, or sister?”

“Shut _up_.”

But then Barry remembered the bitterness when she’d mentioned that he and Nora looked alike. “Y-Your son? Did she take your son?”

Blackout had looked at him with the most devastating expression. “I have to do this. It’s what – it’s the only way I’ll get him back.”

“Take this place hostage?”

“Yes. But if I get captured, I’ll die. She doesn’t want anyone to know who I am or what she’s planning, and if I’m arrested I could jeopardise it.”

Barry had groaned – so much for asking her for her name. Then he’d had an idea. “Run.”

“What?”

“You said this was what you had to do, and you did it. If you run, nobody will know you, and your son won’t die.” He’d paused. “We’re investigating Calamity. We’re going to find her.”

She had looked dubious. “I forgot you worked with Miss Miracle.”

“That’s right. Just go, it’s your only option.”

Blackout had escaped – some tunnel that he doesn’t know about – and Barry had stumbled back into the atrium. He feels guilty for lying, but he knows that Calamity would killed Blackout if she was in custody. Now, he’s committed to finding her finding the people she’s kidnapped. He pulls an empty file out of his desk and writes ‘Blackout’ on the top. Tomorrow, he’ll start trying to find who she really is, and then he can give it to Miss Miracle.

No turning back now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...hope that was okay, thanks for reading, liking and commenting! sorry for how long it's been


	12. Miracle Gold and Cobalt Blue (I Think I've Given My Heart to You)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A disaster, a confession, and a reveal. Barry and Iris only get to keep two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for how long it's been. kind of complicated chapter that i think you'll enjoy!

 

Iris is alone in STAR Labs.

It’s strange, she knows – she’s usually there with Chesca, Colin or Dr Wells. She shouldn’t even be here, actually, she’s just gotten her hair done and she needs to go home and shower. Scott got invited to the fundraiser where Patty’s mother works, so she’s going as his date. But when she was leaving Anton’s hairdresser she felt herself walking here, and now she’s in the Cortex, running her hands over her suit. It’s as familiar to her as her own skin now, the gold leather with green trim, the ‘MM’ emblazoned on the chest, the black domino mask. She is here, alone in the Cortex, studying her costume because she does not know who she can trust.

It has been niggling her, this doubt about her friends, and now that Nora and Chesca have pointed it out she’s not so sure she can ignore it anymore. She still remembers when she first started working with Dr Wells and Nora was upset about it, worried that the woman who was caused all this damage would harm her. It also resulted in something that Iris still feels guilty about – telling Nora that she didn’t have any right to tell her what to do because she wasn’t her mother. Even then, Nora kept investigating her, and found out that the accident that killed Helena’s husband, Terrence, happened in the place that would later become STAR Labs. Nora hasn’t told her about it because the thought makes Iris stick to her stomach, but now she is starting to wonder whether she should listen to her.

Iris steps out of the alcove holding her suit and down to the computer terminal, where there’s the picture they took the night she caught the Royal Flush gang. Once she gets over the familiar guilt of seeing this picture without Barry in it, she traces her newly-polished (courtesy of Anton and his perfectly-trained minions) over the glass. The worst part of this whole thing, she is finding, is that even though a horrible part of her can see Dr Wells not being who she says she is, she can’t think of her friends that way. But then – Captain Cold. The whole reason that Lena Snart even had the cold gun in the first place was because Chesca built it. Not knowing how Iris would handle her metahuman powers, Chesca found a way that could stop Iris from endangering people, since the cold stops her from being able to teleport properly. Iris does not blame her – Miss Miracle can fly, teleport, read people’s thoughts and move things with her mind. In all honesty, who is to say that Iris wouldn’t have turned bad with her powers? And then there is Rainbow Raider: under her influence, Iris is fairly certain she would have killed Patty, even if it probably would have been an accident.

Chesca thinks that Dr Wells might be Calamity, or at least have something to do with it. She does not like it, but she’s suspicious. And it’s the complete opposite to Colin, who will never believe anything against Dr Wells. Iris knows that Colin has been a fan of hers since he was small, and he actually went to the facility that caused the accident. But since Dr Wells gave him this job and saved Ronnie, he won’t hear anything negative about her. Every time they try to discuss it, the two of them get into an argument, so much so that Iris has stopped them both from talking about it.

Iris fishes her cell out of her pocket when she feels it buzzing. It’s Scott – he’s letting her know that he’s already at the party and that she has to tell someone she’s his plus-one when she gets there. So she’ll go home to Nora (thank god for metahuman teleportation powers, because this press and curl was expensive), and then they’ll go together. Freddie has also hacked into the Wayne Industries website and gotten Chesca and Colin tickets, since they’re bored with Ronnie being in Pittsburgh with Martina. With Barry and Patty and Eleanor being there too, it’s going to make for an interesting night.

She sighs as she does the final checks – makes sure the metahumans are all doing okay, that the caretaker will be coming in soon, that everything’s locked up – and walks out of STAR Labs. With everything that’s been going on, she feels like she’s running late for something. Like there’s a fire she’s going to be too late to put out.

And she doesn’t know who’s going to get burned.

***

Barry yawns, closing his laptop, and puts his folder away. He is still doing the fact-checking for everyone, researching Missy’s articles, and writing about the escaped jellyfish – which everyone has now taken to calling the Woman of War, according to his sources. But in between all of that, he’s still researching metahumans and their connection to Calamity.

It’s proven more challenging than he thought it would, since he can’t tell anyone about it. Wally and Linda are still on hand to help him when he needs it, but he’s largely doing it by himself. The problem is, of course, that if Calamity finds out that anyone else is looking into metahumans, she’ll probably kill them, as proven by the people on the list who are either dead or still missing. Barry Allen, the person who writes about Miss Miracle and metahumans in general, isn’t a threat – as long as he keeps it a secret. It’s why he hasn’t told Patty or his mother, and why he certainly hasn’t told Iris about it. He is getting closer, though, he can feel it. He has figured out that Blackout might possibly be either Miriam Farooq or Hannah Bates, and now all he has to do is figure out how Calamity created them, and he can give all his research to Miss Miracle so she can stop Calamity. Now. He’s looking to find another metahuman, hopefully one with a brand, to round it all off.

Barry looks up from dozing on his desk when his phone starts playing _XO_ (somehow Iris managed to get a hold of his phone and reset his ringtone for her to Beyoncé) and answers the phone. “Hello?”

“…yeah, I’ll have it. I haven’t forgotten! It’s a work in progress, Nora-”

“Iris?” he tries.

“Oh, hey, Barry, what’s up?”

He chuckles. “You called me, sunshine.”

“Oh! Duh, of course I did. Listen, do you know whether we can change the dinner options we picked? Chesca says she’s not so sure about the foie gras thing anymore.”

He shrugs. “Sorry, I don’t. Uh, maybe you could ask Scott?”

“Yeah, I tried,” she sighs. “He’s busy, I guess. It’s no big deal, she’ll probably just eat whatever Colin has. So, looking forward to the party?”

“Yeah, got me a suit and everything, complete with a bowtie.”

“Really?” she exclaims. “I love bowties.”

“I know.”

“How does it look?”

“Like I’m about to get in a car with George Clooney and Brad Pitt and rob a casino.”

Iris laughs and then snorts, and Barry smiles to himself. _God, she’s adorable_.

“Barry?” she questions. “You still there?”

He shakes his head, trying to ignore his traitorous brain. “Yeah, I’m here. So Patty says the band at this thing’s supposed to be pretty good.”

“Oh my God,” Iris says. “That’s right! I should get Colin drunk again so he dances, it’ll be hilarious. He’s even worse than you.”

“Hey, I can dance!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not ‘uh-huh’,” he laughs, leaning back in his chair with an arm behind his head. “I can totally dance! Remember at that weird cotillion thing where you went with Brad and I went with-”

“Becky, right, and I had to teach you how to waltz, and you almost broke my toes.”

“Only because of your fancy dance lessons.”

“Which almost stopped, because my beanpole best friend almost broke my toes when I was teaching him how to waltz.”

“I am hanging up on you now,” he declares, “because you’re rewriting history.”

“Jackass,” she mutters.

“Nerd.”

“See you later, Barry.”

“Bye, sunshine.”

He hangs up the phone, still smiling to himself, and then runs a hand through his hair. He’s got that feeling again, the one that’s becoming more and more frequent in the last month or so, like he misses Iris. Which is ridiculous, of course, since they talk on the phone every day, morning and night, and they always have dinner on Sundays with his mom, but still. There’s a feeling that even though they’re pretty much back to normal, there’s something between them that has changed, and he has a feeling it has something to do with Scott.

And it’s not that he doesn’t like Scott. He’s a nice guy and he seems good for Iris. It’s just…well, anyone who knows Iris would know that she doesn’t like to get town cars anywhere – she’s not that showy and it might make her self-conscious. And last week she told him that Scott got her a vinyl she’d been looking for online. But everyone, _everyone_ , knows that Iris likes to go on long drives to tiny record stores and buy them there, like when her dad did when he was alive. Barry feels like he doesn’t know her well enough, but he feels like he can’t say that to her. But there’s something else as well. He keeps _noticing_ all these things about her, like the way she adjusts her glasses and scrunches up her nose and all this other stuff. She’s Iris and his best friend and he’s known her forever, but suddenly he has this ridiculous to scoop her up in his arms and pinch her nose and stroke her hair. It’s annoying and stupid, all this noticing. Noticing her stupid sexy her flip and her stupidly adorable glasses on top of her stupidly cute nose.

Barry shakes his head and gets up, heading for the shower. He has to get ready for this party thing, and then go get Patty and her mom. He pushes it out of his mind, all the weird Iris feelings. This is just a new equilibrium, that’s all, with Iris saying she loves him, and then saying she doesn’t (…which he is _totally_ okay with, as long as he doesn’t think about it too much), and then dating his colleague. This is just a new equilibrium, that’s all. Besides, he doesn’t remember being like this when he was dating Becky and she was dating Brad. It’s fine.

Everything’s fine.

***

“Okay, remind me again why we don’t do this more often?”

Iris has to agree about that. Chesca and Colin – her in a dark green dress and her mother’s pearls, him in a black suit – are arm in arm and trying to pretend like they’re only on their first glass of champagne. Iris is pretty grateful to Scott – as soon as they heard her name they were herded into a private room, away from all the flashing bulbs and reporters on the red carpet. He came over briefly to kiss her and tell her she looked great (damn straight, it’s cold and her dress is backless), and now he’s off doing more interviews. Nora found Captain Singh, and has gone to talk to her about Bobbi’s proposal.

“Because we can’t get Freddie to hack everything,” she answers. She takes a sip of her champagne and sighs inwardly. Colin, seeing her, unlinks his arm from Chesca’s and fishes in his pocket. “Okay, Miss Miracle, hand her over.”

“You snuck that in here?” Chesca demands, and Colin shrugs.

“Gotta take care of our girl. Besides, I have a medical license, I can argue that 250-proof alcohol is necessary for someone suffering from lightning psychosis.”

“Lightning psychosis?”

“Hey, works for me,” Iris says gratefully as Colin sneakily pours the mixture into her champagne glass. She downs it, delights in the buzz fizzing through her veins and… “…yeah, it’s gone. Thanks anyway.”

“I’ve got you tonight, Miss Miracle.”

Iris laughs as they bring around more champagne, and that’s when she looks at the entrance and sees Barry and Patty walking in with Eleanor. He says something and then Patty laughs and kisses her on the cheek, and even though she has an awesome boyfriend and she is Getting Over Barry, she can’t help it, her stomach tightens and she flashes back to the first time she saw Barry kissing Patty. And now he’s here and looking clean-shaven and beautiful and happy, and _God_ she’s trying to be happy as well, but it’s hard. She looks up when Chesca touches her arm, a sympathetic smile on her face, and holds her arm out for the flash. “Yeah. Thinking I’m going to need that tonight.”

The speeches, Iris thinks a little later once everyone is gathered in front of the stage, could be a lot more interesting, but at least there are some jokes. Honestly, Iris is just waiting for the food, and she’s trying to figure out how she can read someone’s mind and – ahem – _influence_ them into bring some appetisers out, when she feels a soft voice in her ear. “Don’t laugh at his jokes.”

“Why not? They’re funny.”

“Because,” Scott replies, adjusting his cufflinks, “I have it on good authority that an underpaid, undervalued, and dangerously close to quitting intern wrote those jokes.”

“Oh, yeah? And who told you that?”

“Luke, the underpaid, undervalued and dangerously close to quitting intern.”

“A moment of silence for Luke.”

They grin at each other and turn back to the stage, Scott slipping an arm around her. A moment later the speech finishes and he starts clapping. Iris raises an eyebrow at him. “Why are we clapping for him?”

“Oh, we’re not clapping for him, we’re clapping for Luke.”

Scott leads her over to their table to find the others, and is immediately called away to say hello to some reporters from the Star City Sentinel. “I will be right back,” he promises, kissing her briefly, and she shrugs.

“It’s cool, when your boyfriend’s on the news you have to share him. Just get here before we eat all the shrimp.”

“Noted.”

“Okay, _seriously_ ,” Chesca breathes, holding a small shrimp cocktail bowl in her hands. These aren’t even the starters – nope, there are just jumbo shrimp and chilli sauce _on the table_. “I could really get used to this.” Colin, mouth full, nods in agreement.

“I really think we made friends with the wrong billionaire.”

“Do you think if I tell Olivia that Bree Wayne throws better parties than her, she’ll shoot us?”

“You, yes,” Chesca answers. “Us, not so much.” When Iris swallows another shrimp, Chesca narrows her eyes at her. “I kind of hate you, you know. I have to leave room for the starter, and the main, and the dessert, and you eat like a pig and still have room for more!”

“You want the dangerous criminals and crazy metahumans that come alone with it.”

“Not particularly.”

“Then eat your free shrimp.”

“Okay,” Scott says breathlessly, coming back over. “And now I’m remembering why I don’t hang out with the Star City guys anymore. Are they always so gloomy?”

“You have no idea,” Iris mutters.

“Is everyone ready to eat?”

“If the food’s as good as the pre-starter starter?” Colin replies. “Absolutely. And I’m loving all this privacy we get.”

“Yeah, it was really weird. Usually I have to eat with a load of strangers.”

_Freddie Smoak, coming through once more._

_Someone should get that guy a medal_.

Chesca breaks off her telepathic conversation with Iris, glancing behind her. “Barry?”

“Hey, guys!” Barry is still grinning about something as he walks up to them. “You all look great. What’s up, Scott, Colin?”

“Thanks, you too,” Iris replies. “Have you seen your mom yet?”

“She’s around here somewhere. So,” he continues, his green eyes glinting mischievously. “Guess who I found?”

Iris narrows her eyes at him. “Who?”

Barry steps aside – and she lets out a gasp. “Linda! _Wally_!”

Her cousin and his girlfriend, very handsome in a white suit and a cream-coloured dress, smile at her. Iris practically leaps into Wally’s arms and then does the same to Linda. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I work here,” Linda shrugs, tucking a brown curl behind her ear, “so I thought I’d drag this one away from the hospital for the night.”

Iris’ smile is so wide she could swear it will break her face. She squeezes Wally’s hand. “It’s so good to see you!”

She makes the introductions – Chesca and Colin already know them both, but haven’t met them yet, and of course Scott is always charming. She also smiles at Barry, making a note to thank him later. Then Patty, Nora and Eleanor walk up, the latter’s face set in a surprised smile. “Wallace, Linda. I didn’t know you knew Iris.”

“Iris is my cousin,” he answers. “We recently…reconnected.”

“And it’s been great,” she adds. Eleanor looks pleased.

“Well, that’s wonderful. Family is always important.”

Right then one of the waiters strides up to them smartly, his expression expectant. “Ms Spivot, your table is ready, if your guests would like to sit down? Or perhaps,” he adds, seeing everyone talking, “you would like to join Mr Evans’ table? There is enough room.”

“That could be fun,” Barry says. “I mean, if you guys don’t mind.”

Iris looks up at Scott, who looks a little apprehensive. Truth be told, she still doesn’t know how he feels about the whole ‘I used to be in love with Barry’ thing – they’ve kind of just glossed over it. But they haven’t talked about it since, and he’s so charming she has no doubt he can navigate this situation. Almost as if he hears her, his face clears. “Sure. The more the merrier, right?”

(Chesca and Colin share a look that undoubtedly means they’ll be discussing this later).

“Wonderful,” Eleanor says, and she gives several instructions to the waiters so they can rearrange the meals to be delivered to the new table. Iris ends up in between Chesca and Scott and across from Barry, who’s in between Patty and his mother.

“So, Bartholomew, Scott,” Eleanor says as everyone begins their starters, “spill.”

The two men look at each other. “Excuse me?” Scott asks, swallowing.        

“Don’t give me that,” she scoffs. “This is the first time I’ve been to one of these things where I actually know the press people, and I want to know the real gossip before you water it down for the paper.”

Barry clears his throat. “Any and all news gained during private interviews will be for public consumption only, and any information coming for those interviews will not be available to anyone beforehand.”

“Nicely done,” Scott nods in approval as everyone groans.

“However,” Barry adds, “while I won’t be naming names, the people who working here might be interested to know that a certain someone in HR may or may not have been wearing hair plugs for the past five years.”

“Lipton!” Linda says immediately, putting down her fork. “It’s Lipton, I know it is.” Patty gasps.

“Is that why his hair is always such a weird shape? It’s like a ferret is living up there.”

Iris giggles and Scott gives him a fist bump. “Spoken like a true reporter.”

“Is there more?” Iris wants to know, but Barry gives a shrug.

“Sorry, but you’re only at liberty to know more once you’ve suffered under the wrath of Missy Bridge. There have to be some perks that come with this job.”

Iris mock-pouts and Scott nudges her lightly. “I’ll break the rules for you, since you’re so pretty.”

She blushes a little, glancing down at her food, before smiling back at him. When she looks back around the table, Barry is finding something in his soup very interesting and Eleanor is beaming at her. “Well, that dress is lovely, Iris. Red certainly is very becoming on you.”

Iris swallows and tries not to let it slip that she has an embarrassing habit of wearing red whenever Barry is going to be somewhere because it’s his favourite colour. “Thanks, but I have Chesca to thank for this, she helped me pick it. She’s got pretty awesome taste.”

“Maybe you’ll have to take me shopping some time,” Patty says admiringly. “That dress is gorgeous.” Colin snorts.

“Leave your gun at home, Patty, because I guarantee you’ll be overcome with the urge to shoot someone once Chesca is done shopping with you.” She glares at him.

“Don’t you dare blame your inability to be fashionable on me.”

“Chess, every time I picked out an outfit, you hit me.”

“I was marvelling at how one person could be in the biggest department store in Central City and still pick outfits that consist entirely of _different shades of brown_.”

“I was trying to maintain a professionalism fit for the workplace.”

“I don’t know how Ronnie puts up with you.”

“Guys,” Iris interjects. “Not in public.”

“How is Ronnie?” Nora asks, taking a sip of her wine. By now everyone knows that Ronnie is alive and well, and they are using the same excuse they are for Iris – that the lightning strike affected people in different ways, and Ronnie and Professor Stein have gone away to find out just how much it’s affected them.

“She’s fine, thank you,” he replies pleasantly. “Just happy to be in the right frame of mind again, I suppose.”

“Are you calling her?” Chesca wants to know. “Last time she was here, Dr Wells said she was still running at a really high temperature, even though Professor Stein wasn’t.”

“No, Chesca, I do not call the fiancée that I lost nine months ago and only regained because of a miracle, I leave her alone to suffer (!).”

“It was just a question!”

“See?” Iris says. “This is why I can’t take you guys anywhere.”

“Well, I think it’s sweet,” Linda says. “Wally argues with his sister Dani like that all the time, and it’s adorable to watch.”

“It’s not adorable when you’re trying to study for a pancreatic tumour removal,” he mutters, and Iris makes a face.

“Dude, we’re eating.”

“This coming from the girl who spends all of our coffee dates talking about blood spatter. And Iris,” he adds when she opens her mouth, “if you mention that there’s a pattern in blood spatter one more time, I’m gonna lose my mind.”

“There _is_ ,” she says quietly to herself, and everyone laughs. Wally rolls his eyes.

“Whatever. Anyway, the point is I live like a hermit in that hospital and I want to know what’s been going on in the real world. What have you guys been writing about?”

“Well, you’ll all be glad to know that if we’re not attacked by Cobalt Blue,” Scott says, “we’re all going to be killed by a venomous, man-eating jellyfish.”

“Just another Tuesday in Central City,” Barry adds. “And half of my blog is in a civil war over his name, too.”

“Yes, Patricia was telling me about that,” Eleanor says, chewing her salad. “Apparently he has some sort of gun that induces memory loss?”

“Yeah, and he attacked the mall last week,” Linda adds. “My friend Jesse was there – he said it was chaos.”

Iris swallows – Cobalt Blue had indeed been there last week, and she’d missed him again by a few minutes. She doesn’t know whether his powers work on her, but that isn’t even the problem. The problem is that he moves too fast for her to catch, or even track his thoughts to predict where he’s going next. Plus, his attacks are getting worse. Still, Dr Wells, Chesca and Colin are on the case, and she knows for a fact that they are working on a way for her to attack without losing. She just hopes that she can do it before he causes too much damage – or worse.

“I’m sure we’ll catch him eventually,” she says absently, and Nora clears her throat. Almost too late, she realises that she’s not supposed to be the one doing any of the catching. “And by that,” she adds, laughing nervously, “I mean Patty and Nora. You know, because they’re the detectives, not me, I’m just a CSI, I sit in a lab talking about… blood spatter all day.”

“Right,” Barry agrees, frowning slightly. “Although I do have to say that the jellyfish story is getting more interesting.”

Iris pauses in the act of drinking her wine. “It is?”

“Yeah. I found out all this stuff about where it came from, and I actually think it’ll be cool to write about. Have you guys ever heard of General Wanda Eiling?”

Iris notices that Chesca and Colin are concentrating very hard on their food. Nora is trying not to glare at her, but Iris can feel the shape of her thoughts, and it’s not pretty. “No, I can’t say that I have.”

“Me neither,” Scott adds. “What did you find, Barry?”

“Well, apparently she was trying to find a way to make a Portuguese man o’war more venomous and able to reproduce. They were trying to create a superweapon that could be controlled by humans.”

“I did not know that,” Iris says pointedly, looking at her friends. “Isn’t it great what you can learn on the news?”

_THE ARMY WANTS TO CREATE A SUPER POWERFUL VENOMOUS JELLYFISH WEAPON?_

_Iris, quit yelling-_

_I WILL NOT STOP YELLING, BARRY COULD GET HURT!_

_Colin is so lucky you can’t read his mind._

“Reproduce?” Wally asks, unaware that Iris is mentally scalping her friend over what’s left of their clam chowder. “Portuguese man o’wars are asexual.” Barry nods.

“Right, but apparently they were trying to put a uterus in it. They were calling it the Woman of War.”

“Okay, you know what?” Linda asks. “You know I love you, Barry, but ‘uterus’ is like one step away from ‘pancreas’, so I’m calling a moratorium on more jellyfish talk.”

“I second that,” Colin agrees, trying to shy away from Iris’ glare. “Anything else interesting going on in CCPD?”

“Well, the only thing we’re at liberty to tell you about is the ongoing case about Calamity, and that’s…well, you know.”

“Ongoing,” Nora says gravely. She sighs. “Half of the people kidnapped are still missing, but honestly, they’re probably going to be reported dead. And until we catch her, we can’t do anything about it.”

Iris looks down at her food, feeling a lump in her throat. She, of course, had gone straight to Captain Singh about Calamity, saying that this was the thing that made her mother kill her father, but until they have proof that Calamity had ordered Francine to do it, which will only come in the form of a confession, something highly unlikely, there is nothing they can do about it. She swallows and notices that Barry is looking at her, his familiar concern for her at this topic making his eyes soft. She smiles back, just a little, to let him know that she’s fine, and he nods slightly before looking away from her.

“I still can’t believe everything that happened that night,” Patty says, shaking her head. “All those bodies…it was like something out of a nightmare. People were so scared, it took ages for us to get a new DA in.”

“Well, I’m sure Miss Miracle will take of it soon,” Barry says confidently. “She knows how much it means to people that Calamity is caught,”

“What makes you say that?” Scott asks, and Barry blinks.

“I think Barry means,” Wally says quickly, “that she knows how scared people are. And as a hero, she’s probably doing her best.”

“Right,” Barry agrees, and Iris isn’t sure, but she thinks that he shoots her cousin a grateful look. And then she notices that Linda, who’s usually always so chatty and bubbly, has paled a little during their Calamity talk, and is avoiding eye contact with anyone.

“I think Barry’s a little biased,” Patty laughs. “He might have a tiny crush on Miss Miracle.”

Iris is grateful that her brown skin and the dim lighting hide her blush – and tries not to dwell on the irony of Barry having a crush on her alter-ego. As far as she knows, Miss Miracle is still at the top of his three list, which is so ridiculous she can’t think about it for too long without wanting to tear her hair out. But Barry just shrugs, smiling at his girlfriend. “What can I say? I’m weak for woman in uniform.”

“Well, I’m sure the police will be just as helpful in catching Calamity,” Chesca adds helpfully. “I mean, they help Miss Miracle all the time.”

“I have to say, I agree with Francesca,” Eleanor says, and she squeezes her daughter’s hand. “I’ve seen the best of them in action – and I pity anyone who comes up against my daughter in a fight.”

Patty blushes and says ‘oh, mother’ while both Eleanor and Barry smile proudly at her, but there is something that seems off to Iris. One of the things she misses about having her own mother around is that she never gets to see Iris’ achievements. She got furlough for her graduation and when she completed training at the police academy, but for the smaller things, like her science fair awards and cheerleading tournaments, she had to make do with Barry and Nora. And she’s grateful because she loves them, but she still would have given anything for Francine to be the one squeezing her hand at the table and telling everyone how wonderful Iris is. So when Iris catches the shape of her thoughts, that instead of happiness there is a kind of nervousness and maybe a little worry, she finds it very odd indeed. (She doesn’t press, though, or dig deeper, because the last time she did that she got a flashback to what Patty and Barry did the night before and – well, it was very hard not to spill coffee on Patty at work the next day).

“Does anyone know where the bathroom is?” Barry asks, interrupting her thoughts. Scott nods.

“Ask one of the waiters, they’ll follow you.”

“Follow him?” Wally asks, alarmed. “Why?”

“Ms Wayne is averse to non-approved personnel wandering around her establishments,” Eleanor answers evenly. “Believe me.”

“What, is she hiding something?” Linda asks. Colin shrugs.

“I don’t know what she _could_ be hiding. A woman who runs off with the Gotham City Rogues on a yacht doesn’t strike me as a woman who cares what people think about her.”

“Well, we all have secrets,” the older woman says simply. Barry goes off to the bathroom and everyone devolves into smaller conversations – Scott catching Patty’s mother to ask her about what it’s been like working for Wayne Industries all these years – and Iris pins her friends with a look.

“A venomous, man-eating jellyfish,” Iris says in clipped tones. “For real?”

“Iris, we didn’t want to worry you,” Colin says. “With everything that’s going on-”

“We didn’t think that a ten-foot jellyfish was something that you should be worrying about.” Iris stares at them both.

“Ten _feet_?” Colin puts his head in his hands and Chesca laughs nervously.

“We didn’t tell you about the size, did we?”

“No,” Iris practically growls, “you didn’t. And if Barry gets hurt, so help me god-”

“Iris,” Colin interrupts, grabbing her hand, “nothing will happen to Barry, alright? I promise. What are the chances he finds a man-eating jellyfish and _not_ call Miss Miracle?”

Iris worries her lip. He’s right, of course he’s right. Barry always calls Miss Miracle when he’s in danger. He still keeps that promise. “Okay, okay. Thanks, I – Colin, your hands are _freezing_.”

“Sorry,” he says quickly, taking his hand away. He avoids her eyes. “Bad circulation.”

“Really? Dude, they felt like ice.”

“They’ve always been like that,” Chesca adds. “I don’t know why he doesn’t go to a doctor.”

“Because I _am_ a doctor.”

“And I think you should get a second opinion.”

Iris gestures for them to stop when the waiters arrive with their next courses, and Scott comes back to sit next to her. One of them taps Eleanor on the shoulder. “Ms Spivot, we are very sorry, but I’m afraid we have run out of the vanilla cheesecake. I believe one of your guests ordered it?”

“Barry?” Patty realises. “He wasn’t there when they were placing the orders – I got it for him.”

“There are other options,” he continues, and Patty frowns slightly as he lists them. Nora, however, just laughs.

“Just get him whatever has the most chocolate in it. It’s his favourite.”

“Oh yeah,” Iris agrees, as the waiter nods and walks back to the kitchen. “Barry _loves_ chocolate. It’s a little scary.”

“And embarrassing.” Nora turns to Eleanor. “When Barry and Iris were fourteen, I took them to Rome for a couple of weeks, and we went to the biggest ice-cream parlour in the city. There was pistachio, cookies and cream, dozens of different kinds of gelato, you name it, all of which Iris and I tried. Barry took one bite of one flavour and went, ‘whatever, I want chocolate’.”

“Right in front of the chef,” Iris adds, laughing. “I thought they were going to kick us out! He did say it was better than American chocolate ice-cream, though.”

“No matter what happens, Barry always goes back to chocolate,” Nora sighs. Chesca, right in the middle of her wine, starts coughing. Iris frowns at her.

“You okay, Chess?”

“Fine, fine,” she says quickly. “Just drank my wine a little too fast. Look, Barry’s back.”

“Babe, they ran out of vanilla cheesecake,” Patty tells him as he sits back down. “Your dessert’s going to have chocolate in it, whatever it is.”

“Great, I love chocolate,” Barry grins. Iris pushes her glasses up her nose.

“Vanilla cheesecake is pretty great, though.”

Barry wrinkles his nose. “I hate vanilla, it’s boring.” Chesca snorts again and Iris stares at her.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Sorry, just thinking about something my friend Hailey said. She hates vanilla too.”

When Colin lets out a snort that quickly turns into a cough, Iris glares at them. “I swear to god, the two of you are the _worst_.”

“Sorry, got a little tickle.”

“Sorry, Eleanor,” Iris says, turning back to her. “I promise they’ll be better behaved next time.”

“That’s quite alright,” she laughs. “Francesca and Colin are just having fun.”

 _Does she always do the full name thing?_ Chesca asks as they start their mains.

 _All the time. I’m afraid to tell her my middle name is ‘Ann’_.

Iris and Chesca grin conspiratorially at each other and turn back to their food. The band is playing a little louder now, a nice addition to the atmosphere as everyone settles into the evening. Wally looks over at his cousin. “Iris, did we invite you to Linda’s birthday party?”

“No,” Iris replies, “when is it?”

“A couple of weeks. It’s no big deal, just some pizza at Vapiano’s with some friends, probably.”

“You guys can come too, if you want,” Linda adds, gesturing to Barry, Patty, Chesca and Colin. “Although we can’t have a repeat of what happened at the last pizza party you guys went to together.”

“Oh, God,” Nora breathes, her hands over her mouth. “I completely forgot about that!”

Barry frowns. “What? Forgot about what?”

“Chuck E. Cheese,” Iris adds, snapping her fingers. “Are we still banned from that place?”

“We never got banned,” Wally tells her, “we just got a strongly-worded talking to.”

“What?” Barry demands. “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Wally asks. “Jeez, everyone in my family remembers that story, we laugh about it all the time.”

“Still?” Iris laughs.

“What happened at the pizza party?”

“Oh, uh…Well, so we were eight, and it was my birthday, and Iris came and she brought you. And it was really cool cause most of my family are girls, and I still thought girls were icky-”

“Apart from me,” Linda asks winningly.

“Apart from Linda,” Wally agrees, “and we were playing, and stuff. But then we got in an argument and you kind of…hit me.”

“I _hit_ you?” Barry repeats, alarmed. “I don’t remember that, why did I hit you?”

“Well, I guess Iris got these new glasses, and she was a little self-conscious about them, and I kept making fun of them and then so did some of the other kids, and then Iris started crying, so you hit me. Punched me right in the nose.”

“Wow, Wally,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I am so sorry, I can’t believe I hit you-”

“Relax, Barry,” he laughs. “It was like a million years ago. Besides, I was kind of a little shit. Sorry,” he adds quickly to the table.

“True though,” Iris and Linda say together, and Scott clears his throat.

“So, I hope you grew out of that,” he jokes.

“Grew out of what?”

“Hitting everyone who makes Iris cry.”

“Excuse me,” Iris interjects. “I don’t need Barry to hit people who make me cry, thank you very much. I can look after myself.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chesca agrees. “Patty introduced us to kickboxing, it’s really cool.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty good,” she says, twirling spaghetti on her fork. “I don’t think she needs you to hit people anymore, Barry.”

“Besides,” Colin continues, “if you’re getting your eyes fixed like you want, you won’t have to worry about that.”

Barry stares at her. “You’re getting your eyes fixed?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she admits. It’s something that she talked to her optician about last week, when she broke her third pair of glasses this year by having someone step on them. “I’m still thinking about it.”

“But why? You can see fine with your glasses.”

“Yeah, but I always break them, or lose them, or they fall off,” she points out. “Lightning may have given me abs, but it didn’t fix my eyes. I mean, it’s not a done deal – it’s not like working for CCPD covers flashy laser-eye surgery-”

“Got that right,” Patty mutters. “For what it’s worth, iris, I happen to think you’ll look great without glasses.”

“Thanks, Patty,” she smiles in surprise. Barry, though, still looks strangely subdued as he eats his pasta. Nora clears her throat.

“I forgot you guys did that, the kickboxing. How’s it going?”

“Pretty well,” Chesca admits. “We’re not as good as Patty, though. You should see her, she’s as good as the instructor. She’s not even in our class, she’s in the advanced class.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Scott says, “where did you train?”

“Just around where I grew up,” she shrugs, looking at her food. “Pass the time, you know? Plus, it’s always good knowing how to kick someone’s ass.”

Iris zones out then, because she hears a very familiar saxophone riff from the band as they start a new song, and then the rest of the band joins in, and suddenly she isn’t in the event room in Wayne Industries, she is ten years old and in her father’s car on a Sunday during one of his rare days off, listening to his smooth voice as he sings to her and her mother after they’ve bought a new record for his player. It’s a little ridiculous, that this song can reduce her to near tears whenever she hears it, but it’s been the same since she was eleven and all she had to remember him by was a stack of records and an old vinyl player. The words come to her, unexpected, almost as clear as if he is singing them right to her.

_I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day_

_When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May_

_I guess you’ll say, what could make me feel this way?_

_My girl, my girl, my girl_

_Talkin’ bout my girl_

_My girl_

And even though it was corny and ridiculous and she and her mother used to do it so much that they knew what the answer would be, they’d always say, “Who’s your girl?”

“See, that’s where I lucked out. I get _two_ girls.”

Meaning her and her mother, of course, which is still the corniest thing she’s ever heard, and he’s been dead for fourteen years. She looks up when Scott taps her on the arm, and realises that everyone is staring at her. “Sorry, what?”

“Eleanor just asked you how you found police academy training,” Colin tells her. She blinks, shaking her head.

“Sorry, Eleanor, I was, just…”

“Iris,” Nora says softly, “are you alright?”

“It’s nothing,” she says quietly, shrugging. She takes her glasses off to clean them, mostly just to give her something to do so she won’t start crying. “Just, my dad used to sing this song to me, you know, so it just, um, made me think of him. But I’m fine, it’s…fine.”

“You know, I still remember Uncle Joe’s voice,” Wally says, before the pause stretches on for too long. “Mom was always jealous that he could sing like that.”

“Yeah, he’s the one who taught me. Well,” Barry adds, “he taught me how to breathe properly and open the diaphragm, and I guess it worked.”

“Well, let’s drink to Joe West then,” Patty says. “Because Barry’s voice is amazing.”

“Spoken like a woman,” Nora says, “who did not witness the Great Discovery of 2005.”

“Whoa, what’s that?” Scott wants to know, worried. “The last time we ran a headline like that, General Zod tried to destroy the earth.”

“No, nothing that bad,” Iris laughs. “So, that summer was the summer I broke my arm, right? Because we-”

“Stole my car and wrapped it around a tree,” Nora informs them, making Barry and Iris squirm in their seats.

“Yeah. And I was bummed because I couldn’t take dance lessons until my arm was healed, and I couldn’t do yoga, or be a cheerleader-”

“You were a cheerleader?” Chesca wants to know. “But you’re a nerd!”

“Don’t worry,” Iris says dryly as everyone laughs, “they just wanted someone short and flexible to be on top of the pyramid. Anyway, Barry thought a good way to entertain ourselves would be to find a new music genre and spend summer listening to vinyls. And 2005…”

“…was the summer that Barry discovered musicals,” Nora finishes. “Every week, there were two different new musicals, and Barry sang _all_ the songs. It was like living with Liza Minnelli.”

“Is that why we have so many copies of the _In the Heights_ soundtrack?” Patty asks her boyfriend, who’s pouting (rather adorably, Iris thinks) at having everyone talk about his love for musicals like this.

“Lin-Manuel Miranda is a _genius_ ,” he says. “He’s going to win a Tony one day, watch. And musicals are very therapeutic. I’ll have you know my entire dissertation soundtrack is one-third musicals.”

“Well, maybe that explains why it was so good,” Colin says, and Barry frowns a little at him as the waiters take away their mains and bring out their desserts.

“You read my dissertation?”

“Yeah, Iris made us,” Chesca says, before Iris can telepathically warn her not to. Everyone’s eyes swivel to her and she tries to laugh it off.

“Well, it was well-written. And as someone who helped with the fact-checking, rewriting, and referencing that thing, I have to say I was very proud.”

“What was it about?” Eleanor asks, taking the heat off her as everyone turns back to Barry.

“The complexities of sociopathy and psychopathy,” he answers.

“There’s a difference?”

“Yeah. Basically, a psychopathy is more prone to violence and impulsivity stemming from something in their childhood. They’re also easy to recognise. A sociopath is harder, because they’re good at faking emotion and they’re very good liars. They’re also good at manipulating people to get what they want.”

“Is that how Colin always ends up making me pay for takeout?” Chesca asks.

They all laugh at that, and Iris is grateful that Chesca and Colin choose that moment to start bickering over what exactly constitutes the best fruit salad and whether ice cream on the side detracts from the meal as a dessert. Because if they weren’t doing that, they’d be talking about Iris harped on about how ingenious and unique and ambitious Barry’s dissertation is, that she has her own bound copy in her apartment, and that even Dr Wells has read it. Scott asks her about work and wants to know about her being a cheerleader (and she’s grateful that Barry is talking to Eleanor about _Chicago_ , because that means he doesn’t have to hear her talk about Becky Cooper, Head Cheerleader and Evil Ex), so she tells him. And it’s good. She really feels like, if she can forget about the fact that Patty is across from her stroking Barry’s hair, that she can be crazy about Scott.

She can.

The meal goes pleasantly after that, and Iris is once again grateful that Barry (re)introduced her to Wally, because he gets along well with all of her friends and Linda is like a really cool older sister. Who builds guns for a living and knows the composition of a bullet practically on sight, but still. She’s _great_ at contouring.

They have to get up so that Eleanor can give a speech, and then Nora goes off to talk to Captain Singh while Colin and Chesca want to see whether they can get more free food. She goes to the bathroom to fix her hair – leaving Barry explaining exactly why _Hamilton_ , Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical coming out in the summer, will change the world – and hurries back so that the speeches start. Unfortunately, when she’s only a few feet away from Scott and the others, someone chooses that moment to slam straight into a waiter, causing him to knock into several people and spill what he’s carrying. One of them is Iris, and it knocks her glasses right off her face. Obviously, everyone’s more concerned with the people covered in lime sorbet to notice that Iris’ world has gone blurry and she’s apprehensively waiting for the sickening crunch that means someone’s stepped on her glasses again, but that’s when she feels a familiar hand on her arm.

“I’ve got it, Iris,” Barry says, leading her away from the commotion. She sighs gratefully. He’s standing close enough that she can see him without said glasses, so she can see that he’s already reaching into his pocket for the cloth he keeps there to clean them. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” she shrugs, watching him carefully and expertly clean the lenses. “Although I wouldn’t have this problem if I fixed my eyes.”

“Yeah, but if you fixed your eyes, you wouldn’t look like _you_.” He tilts her chin up with a finger and gently slides them back on her face, his face breaking into a grin. “See? _There’s_ my sunshine.”

And it’s there, again, that moment where she thinks that it’s impossible that Barry isn’t feeling the same way she is, not when he’s looking at her like that. Like when she went on that date with Scott a few weeks ago and he kept looking at her funny. But that doesn’t make any sense. Because she told him about her feelings at Christmas and he’s still with Patty, so this doesn’t mean anything, does it? She blinks up at him, a little breathless because her heart is beating so fast, and smiles. “Just admit you don’t like change, _Care Bear_.”

“You promised you wouldn’t call me that anymore.”

“And you promised you’d stop singing the _Wicked_ soundtrack once the Tony’s were over,” she quips as they walk back to the others so they can hear the speeches. Patty has her arms folded and Scott looks a little pissed, but Iris has no idea why. She’s about to ask them what’s going on when several pagers go off. Patty grabs her bag from the table and looks. “Cobalt Blue, spotted at Central City High.”

“They’re holding a track tournament tonight,” Scott says, his eyes widening, “my sister and her friends are there.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Iris says soothingly. Right then, Captain Singh and Nora march down from the stage, already in police mode. All around them, their colleagues are doing the same as news of the threat spreads through the crowd. “Spivot, West,” the captain says, “sorry to cut your nights short, but duty calls.”

“Patty, you’re with me,” Nora continues. “Change of clothes?”

“In the car.”

“Good. Iris.” Nora turns to her and gives her a meaningful look. “Iris, you’d better get to your lab, we’ll probably need you soon.”

Iris nods. “Right, my lab. I-”

“I’ll drive you,” Chesca says quickly. “We’ll get there faster.”

“Thanks, she says, and Colin and the others walk off to the car. She kisses Scott quickly. “I’m sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

The minute they are outside and away from everyone else, Iris grabs their hands and teleports them back to STAR Labs, where Dr Wells is already waiting. “I came as soon as I heard, Iris, are you ready?”

She doesn’t answer for a moment because she’s wondering how Dr Wells heard so quickly, but nods. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Chesca helps her into her suit while Colin pulls up a live feed of the high school stadium. She closes her eyes and in is there in moments, screams of panic splitting the air. The tracks have largely been abandoned as people are trying to get out of the stadium, but then she sees a flash of blue and silver running around a herd of people stuck in the middle. Every so often, Cobalt Blue stops, fires a beam at them, and keeps going.

Iris grits her teeth and launches herself at him – and then she’s thrown back as she collides with his figure. She grunts, rolling on the floor, until she comes to a stop. She stands again and tries to teleport in the middle, but then she’s thrown out of the circle again. She groans in pain as she collides with the floor, clutching her head. “Oh, for real?” she groans.

“Iris, what’s wrong?” Chesca asks.

“He’s too fast,” she says, picking herself up. “He won’t let me save them!”

As she watches, he fires another beam into the crowd. Her stomach twists when she sees someone faint. She knows that the police are still miles away and won’t be able to help until she at least subdues him a little. “Guys! Any ideas?”

“I don’t know,” Colin says. “He’s obviously too fast for you to catch with your hands. Could you hold him with your mind?”

“My mind can’t move that fast!”

She stares at him, her mind racing with panic, until Dr Wells’ cool voice sounds in her ears. “Iris, can you get up high?”

She looks around and then nods. “Yeah, I can get up to the rafters. Why?”

“Teleport yourself up to a better vantage point, so you can see the people he has trapped.”

“You think I can move them from here?”

“I think you can distract him long enough that you can get him away from those people.”

Iris nods and teleports up to the roof of the stadium, where she can see a group of people huddled in the middle of Cobalt Blue running around them in a circle. She flexes her fingers and holds her hands out, and the people in the crowd gasp as they’re slowly lifted out of the circle. As Dr Wells predicted, Cobalt Blue stops and locks eyes with her. Even from this distance, she can see that mask. In seconds he is in front of her, gun raised and moonlight glinting of that metal mask, making the blue of his eyes shine, and she remembers at the last second to turn on her glowing eyes. He grunts in pain and she takes the opportunity to thrust her hands out, slamming him into the ground.

“Now, Iris!” Dr Wells tells her. “Get them out while he’s still distracted; the police are on their way.”

“Got it, Dr Wells!”

Iris flashes over to the group of people, who are more than a little shocked at being picked up, and then dumped, and now Miss Miracle is facing them. “It’s okay,” she assures them, her voice distorted, “I’m here to help, okay? All of you hold hands, I’ll try to get you out.”

Thankfully, people know what to do when Miss Miracle wants to rescue them (and Barry’s placed a very helpful set of instructions on what happens when she’s around), so they all link arms and she transports them to the ambulances and police cars already waiting outside. “They’re out.”

“Great,” Chesca says. “Because he’s getting up and-”

Her words are lost as something slams into her, throwing her into the air, and she realises that Cobalt Blue is just attacking her now. She lands on the ground, winded, and he hits her again, throwing her off to the side. Iris teleports away when he tries it again, and he glances around angrily, reaching for that gun again. She sees now that his costume is dark blue with white accents and a weird white symbol on his chest, but she still can’t see his face. She wipes blood away from her mouth, dizzy, and barely has enough time to register that there’s something about the figure that she recognises when she hears two shots being fired. Cobalt Blue stumbles, grunts, and turns around. Iris sees Nora with her gun raised, face set in determination, and screams in horror when he speeds up next to her, gun already pointed.

“ _No_!” she shouts, scrambling to her feet. “STOP!”

Something weird happens then. It’s almost like – like her mind has reached out and _clenched_ his mind, even though she shouldn’t be able to read his mind with that mask. A weird buzzing feeling is in her brain, and she feels a little light-headed. Cobalt Blue, though, is the strangest – he falters and then stops. For a minute, they are all three of them frozen: Nora looking at him, him looking back, and Iris staring at them both. Then more cops start to file in and he shakes his head, before glancing at them briefly and flashing away, leaving them all in shock.

Without a second though, Iris teleports to Nora. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she says quietly, though she’s shaking. “You’d better un-Miss Miracle yourself, hon. Singh will be here in a sec.”

Iris checks her over once more and nods, before teleporting back to STAR Labs, where the others fall all over her because all the teleporting has tired her out and she can barely stand. Chesca gets her out of her suit and into some sweats, while Colin leads her to a med bay and starts examining all her injuries.

“Sorry,” he says quietly when she winces. She’s bruised and a little scratched, but it’ll be healed by tomorrow morning. “Are you okay?”

“What happened?” Chesca adds, handing her some water. She gulps it down gratefully and tries to force some air back into her lungs.

“He’s… _fast_ ,” she says finally, after she’s explained the gist of his attack. “Faster than we thought, I can’t even see him when he moves. And he was using that gun again.”

“Well, at least you figured out a way to stop him this time,” Colin says, continuing to get the blood off her cuts. Iris bites her lip.

“Yeah, but I can’t keep doing that each time, he’s bound to catch on. I need to find another way to stop him, especially because he looked mad as hell when I left.”

“Well, for now I think it would be best that you get back to the scene – as a CSI this time – and then go home and get a good night’s rest, Iris,” Dr Wells says evenly. “We’re not going to think of anything tonight.”

“I’ll go file your medical report,” Colin says. He always keeps track of her injuries and stuff, for research reasons and to track her progress. Chesca, meanwhile, is packing up the suit.

“Have to clean this,” she explains. “Takes some work to get the blood out.”

“Sorry.”

“Forget it, _mama_. Just glad you’re safe.”

Iris watches Dr Wells wheel around the Cortex after her friends leave, before steeling herself. “Dr Wells?”

“Yes?”

“Something happened while I was fighting Cobalt Blue.”

She turns back around, electric blue eyes curious. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” she says, twisting her fingers. “He was about to shoot Nora, and I asked him to stop, and he did.”

“Well, Iris, that may have just been shock-”

“No, you don’t understand. It was like my mind was _telling_ him to stop, like it was forcing him to listen.”

Dr Wells freezes. Just for a second before she goes back to normal, but it’s enough to make her think. Iris wishes, for the millionth time, that she could read Dr Wells’ mind, to know what was going on in that brain. She’s a little like Eleanor in that way. Dr Wells clasps her hands together. “Well, Iris, like I’ve continued to say, your powers may develop in extraordinary ways as time goes on. But I still think we should focus on one problem at a time. I wouldn’t want you to bite off more than you can chew.”

“No,” she says quietly, “I wouldn’t want that.”

Iris goes back to the scene but can’t present until the following afternoon, when all the detectives are gathered in Singh’s office. She points to the picture she took and the measurements she noted. “I was able to lift these shoeprints from the scene and I’ll be running them for matches today, but I couldn’t find any DNA samples.”

“That’s certainly promising,” the captain says. “Since his powers are getting stronger.”

Iris pauses in the act of removing her gloves. “They are?”

“Yeah,” Patty says. “One of the kids she interviewed? Said she couldn’t remember anything from the last eight hours.”

Iris swallows and shares a look with Nora. “Wow.”

“Exactly, and now he knows the cop who put two bullets in him. Nora, you are to keep yourself safe at all times. Do not go into any situation without backup, understand?”

“What do you think I am, Deidre, a rookie?”

“I have been working with you for years, Nora. Be safe. The rest of you, get on this. We already have one crazy metahuman loose, we don’t need another.”

She dismisses them and they walk back into the main offices. Iris lets out a whistle. “Tuesdays getting a little more dangerous, huh?”

“Right,” Patty says shortly. “Guess we’ll have to go out and do the saving thing.”

Iris frowns briefly. Barry’s girlfriend has been weird and standoffish with her all day and she has no idea why. She hasn’t forgotten a report, as far as she knows. But before she can ask her about it she spots Barry striding in, a cheerful smile on his face. Nora pulls them both close. “Now, I know you’ve both been a victim of what happens when Barry is worried, so if you want to make sure he isn’t hovering over you to make sure you don’t hurt yourself, we keep this between us.”

Both women nod just as Barry gets to them, grinning. “Hey. Anyone know where I can get some news?”

“Try Perez,” Patty says curtly, before walking over to her desk. Barry frowns – evidently he’s just as confused by this as she is. “Would you guys give me a minute?”

“Sure,” Iris answers. “Nora and I have to go out canvassing anyway.”

“`We…do,” she nods, seeing the expression on Iris; face. “Right. Bye, honey.”

Nora waits until Iris has gathered her words. “I’ve been thinking about Dr Wells.”

“You have,” she nods.

“And maybe I don’t trust her as much as I thought I did.”

“I see.”

“So I need you to tell me your suspicions about her.”

“Ah.” Nora leads Iris to her car. “For that, we’ll need lunch.”

***

Barry frowns at Patty as she moves around her desk. She’s avoiding his eyes and looks seriously pissed off, but he can’t think why. “Patty?”

“Yes, Barry?” she answers, still not looking at him. He stares at her. He thought she was tired from the night before when she didn’t wake him up when she got home, but then she left before he got up and hasn’t called him all day.

“Are you okay? You’ve barely said anything to me since yesterday.”

She sighs, putting down her stuff. “I don’t like the way I felt last night, watching you and Iris at the party.”

Barry resists the urge to groan, because this was old when it started. “Patty, Iris is my-”

“Best friend, yes, I know. And I know you guys have been tight for a long time. But I shouldn’t have to feel left out when we’re out together.”

“Patty, Iris has always been a part of my life, and she always will be. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“I know that, Barry, but I’m not dating you just to date you. I actually want a future with you, and I don’t think we can have one if you’re walking around calling another woman ‘my sunshine’.”

He sighs, because okay, that’s not great, but… “That’s just a nickname, I’ve called her that since we were kids.”

“And you’ve never told me why.”

Barry decides that maybe this isn’t the best time to say it comes from pulling Iris into his arms and singing _You Are My Sunshine_ to her to get her to go to sleep after a nightmare when they were kids. It’s normal for them, sure, but he gets the feeling Patty won’t like it. When he doesn’t answer, she sighs and straightens her clothes, ready to head out. “Look, Barry, I’m not asking you to pick between us. I just don’t like feeling that I’m always going to come second to your best friend. And I’m not going to wait around forever wondering whether I’m your second choice.”

***

“So,” Nora asks, once they have finished their lunch. “What do you want to know?”

Iris scrunches up her burger wrapper and tosses it in the trash as they leave. She shrugs lightly, giving up. “Everything, I guess. Why did you start investigating her?”

“Because she put one of my kids in hospital,” she replies simply. “She ripped my life apart, my son almost lost his best friend…not to mention the hole she put in the city.”

They turn down a quiet residential street as they talk. Iris wanted to be away from noise while she thought about this. “But you said you stopped when you found out about her husband,” she points out.

“I did. And then I looked into _how_ she lost your husband. You remember when you hit your head last year, and Colin mentioned that he’d been with Dr Wells since the beginning?”

Iris nods. It is one of the few times Barry has been in the Cortex while she’s been awake, and she remembers him telling them the story of how he had to go there for a class trip, and after that he went as often as he was allowed. “Yeah, he said he went there all the time before the accident. Why?”

“Because when Dr Wells told me that her husband died in an accident that she caused, I left it alone. I’ve lost a husband too.” She pauses briefly, still walking. “But then I looked into the accident – specifically, what caused it, and what I found was pretty interesting. Or actually, what I didn’t find.”

Iris frowns as Nora pulls out her iPad and clicks for a little, before handing it to Iris. “That report says that the Medical Innovation and Neurological Division – or M.I.N.D. – the precursor to what we have right now, was destroyed because of a malfunction in something she was creating. It essentially short-circuited the system and blew up the building.”

“What was she making?” Iris asks.

“Good question.” Iris frowns.

“What do you mean?”

“Iris, absolutely nowhere in that report does it say what Helena Wells was doing, why she was doing it, and how that machine malfunctioned. Everything important is redacted for the purposes of protecting the victims. But there was only one victim.”

“Terrence Chambers,” she says. “Dr Wells’ husband.”

“Exactly,” she nods. “So who were they protecting? And who was doing the protecting? So,” she sighs, taking her iPad back, “I looked into it a little more, using my police resources. And then last week, I got a lovely little letter from the Mobilisation, Assembly or Internment of Metahumans Directive asking me to stop.”

Iris stops and stares at her. “M.A.I.M.E.D.? They contacted you?”

“Apparently that’s how she ran in with them all those years ago,” Nora shrugs. Iris runs a hand through her hair and Nora puts a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, Iris. I know you’re grateful for everything she’s done for you – believe me, I am too. But I think it’s time we seriously started thinking that Dr Wells is Calamity.”

She bites her lip, willing the tears working their way up her throat to stay down. Then she nods, making a decision, and turns her collar up against the wind that’s picked up “Fine. That’s what I asked for, and you’re right. But let’s concentrate on one thing at a time, okay? I already have enough to worry about.”

Nora raises an eyebrow. “Cobalt Blue?”

“No, it’s um…guy stuff.”

“My favourite kind of stuff. Trouble with Scott?”

Iris blinks. “Oh, no, it’s Barry. After I told him how I felt about him, things were weird for a while, but then I thought we went back to normal.”

Nora frown briefly, pulling her jacket tighter around her. “You guys seemed normal enough to me last night.”

“Right. But then sometimes it’s like…the way he’s looking me, I keep thinking he feels the same way I do. But that’s crazy, right? He’s with Patty.”

“He is with Patty,” she agrees. “Iris, I know it was hard telling him how you felt about him, but you have to remember that Barry is dealing with it in his own way too. You went from his best friend to someone who’s in love with him, but you’ve always been so close. But as long as he has a girlfriend, he’s still unavailable.”

“Right,” she sighs. “Maybe it’s in my head, anyway.”

“Maybe,” she says, after a second too long, and Iris senses there’s something she’s not telling her. “And maybe you’ll have to…get a bigger coat because this wind is really picking up. Was there a weather warning?”

“Nora, it’s the middle of spring.”

It doesn’t look it, though. Iris’ heart speeds up as the wind becomes more violent, shaking trees and rattling cars – it’s like their own personal hurricane. Nora pulls out her gun and Iris flexes her fingers, ready to attack. And then she sees the flashes of blue light, racing around them in a circle. “It’s him. It’s Cobalt Blue. Nora, _run_ -”

Iris’ words are ripped from her throat in the next second and she finds herself face down on concrete. When she looks up, he’s got the gun pointed at her. She grits her teeth and springs up, not even thinking as she teleports Nora away from him. They’re at the other end of the street, but he doesn’t move. Instead, he points the gun straight towards a wheezing Iris, before disappearing in a flash of blue light.

And it scares the hell out of her.

Captain Singh, however, isn’t scared. No, when Iris and Nora make it back to the precinct, she’s so furious Iris could swear there’s smoke coming out of her ears. “What did I tell you, Nora?”

“You told me not to go out alone,” she points out. “And I didn’t. I was with Iris.”

“She’s a CSI!” the captain snaps. Iris shrugs and keeps drinking her coffee. “You know good and damn well that Cobalt Blue could be after you, are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“I’m trying to do my job.”

“Well, here’s your job. “You’re on desk duty until he’s caught. No,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean it, Nora. This is the second time in less than twelve hours he’s attacked you, and I don’t need to lose another detective this year.”

Nora marches out of her office and Iris looks at the captain. “Make sure she stays put, alright?”

“She has a gun.”

“Use your Bambi eyes.”

“I knew I should have let Chesca talk to you guys. Nora!” she calls, trying to catch up with her. Her green eyes are blazing with irritation. “Come on, Nora-”

“Not ‘come on’. She’s treating me like a child.”

“Nora, my ribs are still bruised from the last time he kicked my ass, and I heal in minutes,” she says. “Look, Chesca just texted me – apparently they’ve found a way of possibly stopping him from attacking. I’m going to go over there and so they can show me how to use it, _promise_ me you’re going to stay here until we figure out what to do?”

Nora stares at her, and then her face falls. “Quit using your Bambi eyes on me, I’ll stay here.”

“Good to know my metahuman powers are being put to good use.”

Chesca and Colin are decidedly optimistic when she gets to STAR Labs, and she’s more than a little relieved to see that Dr Wells isn’t there. “What d’you got for us, guys?”

“A little bit of genius, if I do say so myself,” Chesca answers. She leads them to her workbench. “You remember how we figured out that cold stops you from teleporting?”

“Because my cells can’t move, right.”

“Well, Chesca found the prototype of the cold gun, and we figured out from the video that Cobalt Blue that his speed powers work the same way,” Colin continues. “So, she made some modifications, and created a weapon just like it to immobilise him.”

“Huh,” Iris nods, impressed. It’s a little smaller than what Lena Snart totes around, but as long as it gets the job done. Chesca lifts it reverently and presents it to her. “I give you…the Blue Blaster.”

Colin frowns. “The Blue Blaster?”

“The Blue Blaster.”

“Why is it called that?”

“Because that’s what I named it.”

“But it’s a cold gun.”

“It’s the _Blue Blaster_ ,” she says forcefully. “The cold gun is for Captain _Cold_ , the Blue Blaster is for Cobalt _Blue_.”

“They’re the same thing! And it’s not even blue!”

Chesca lets out a frustrated groan and looks around her workbench, before picking something up. She fiddles a little, and then holds up the gun. Iris stifles a laugh when she sees that she’s stuck a blue star to it. “There, now it’s blue. Happy, Dr Frost?”

He rolls his eyes and Chesca continues. “You just point and shoot. Couldn’t be simpler.”

“Thanks.”

“So…Everything okay with Scott?”

Iris frowns as she feels her phone vibrate. “Yeah, why?”

“Oh,” Colin says innocently, “no reason.”

“Okay, well, that’s Barry – he wants to meet for coffee. I’m going to drop this off at the precinct.”

“Hey, how’s the good captain?”

“Stop talking to my boss.”

***

Barry frowns as he types, trying to meet his deadline before Missy comes over to scalp him. Just as he sees her getting up to come and talk to him, he’s sending back her research. “Hi, Missy. Work all done for you.”

“Thanks, Harry,” she says, waving a hand. “I appreciate it. You’ve been doing a great job this week.”

“…any particular reason you’re being nice to me?”

“I’m always nice.”

“Not to me.”

She shrugs. “You’re right, that was painful. I want to show you something…You’re still working on the links between the missing people and the metahumans, right?”

“In between writing about venomous jellyfish, that’s right.”

Missy puts several pictures on his desk, and he’s surprised to see that they’re of Dr Wells wheeling in and out of places. “What am I looking at?”

“All of these pictures were taken in or around the places the people on your list, approximately around the time people went missing.”

Barry stares at her and then the pictures. “Holy…how did you get these?”

She shrugs. “Well, she blew a crater in the city, so I follow her around from time to time, ease my boredom a little. You know Dr Wells, right?”

“A little, I guess,” he replies, still studying them. “She saved Iris’ life. You think she could have something to do with the people disappearing?”

“I think that she’s been through lawsuits, a public fall from grace, and has been basically kicked out of the scientific community…and we still don’t know anything about her. And that’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“Well, aren’t you the person who knows someone over at STAR Labs? Besides, this would be a great way to get yourself on the front page.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You think I’d investigate my friends to get on the front page?”

She snorts. “No, that’s what _I_ would do. _You’re_ going to do it because you’re curious and you really want to know.”

Barry can’t lie about that. He’d be lying if he said that he never thought that Dr Wells is about a ten different shades of mysterious. But for her to be Calamity? The woman who killed Iris’ dad and then terrorised the city? He checks the time and then messages Iris to meet him later, so they can talk about it, and ignores the churning in his stomach. He’s been thinking about Patty’s words all morning, but it’s insane. He’s always treated Iris like that, and the only reason it feels different now is because he’s stopped avoiding being normal around her since she confessed to him. But she doesn’t love him anymore (does she? He doesn’t actually know), and besides, Patty is his girlfriend. She has nothing to worry about.

He heads over to the coffee machine, still reading, and almost walks into Scott. “Oh. Hey.”

“Barry,” Scott says evenly. He rubs the back of his neck.

“So, I’m sorry if we hijacked your evening. It’s just – you know Wally and Iris are bonding, and I thought it would be fun but, uh, I shouldn’t have pushed. I’m sorry.”

Scott doesn’t say anything for a second. “You know, Barry, when you said that Iris was in love with someone and I figured out it was you, I didn’t think you were malicious, and I also didn’t think you returned those feelings.”

Barry’s stomach dives. “Scott, no, I – I mean, I have a g-girlfriend-”

“I know that. But I also know what I saw last night, and I think maybe you should think about the reason you told me Iris was in love with someone in the first place.”

***

Barry is perfectly on time and carrying his messenger bag when he arrives, and he gratefully picks up the coffee she ordered him. He also looks a little preoccupied. “You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah, fine,” he says, shaking her head. “Just – thinking. So, did Scott have a nice time last night?”

“He says he did.”

“And you don’t think we were too…you know.”

Iris frowns. Apart from Barry looking at her oddly, there’s nothing about last night that wasn’t totally normal for them. She shrugs. “Nope.”

“Great. So, you know how I’m working with Missy?”

“Congratulations on Harry, Scott told me that’s basically a promotion.”

“Thanks. The thing is, Missy showed me something that got me thinking…” He pulls out the pictures. “These are the places where all the people on the missing person’s list were last seen, and the timestamp puts Dr Wells where each of these people were right before they went missing.”

Iris bites her lip, because Barry is getting dangerously close to something she doesn’t even understand fully herself yet. “You think she made all those people go missing?”

“I mean, I don’t really know her. And I know she’s in a wheelchair, but…”

“I know what you mean,” she says quietly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past year, it’s to question everything. But thanks for this, Barry.” She flips her hair out of her face, before adjusting her glasses and rubbing her nose. “I’ll ask the others…what? Do I have something on my face?”

Because Barry is doing it again – looking at her like he’s never seen her before. He frowns slightly. “Do you – do you still-”

“Do I still what?”

“Do you still…have our copy of _My Best Friend’s Wedding_?” he finishes, avoiding her eyes for some reason. “Patty, uh, wants to watch it.”

“Oh,” she says in surprise. “Sure, I’ll bring it by this weekend.”

“Great.”

Barry’s cheeks have gone red and he still won’t look at her. “Barry, you – crap, this is work. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

Iris is still thinking about his weird demeanour when she finally gets to CCPD (which takes her an age, since the day is crowded and she has to contend with traffic instead of teleporting). Everyone is gathered in the offices around Perez, who looks like she’s just seen a ghost. Nora waves her over. “What happened?”

“What do you think? He attacked again, and this time it’s worse.”

“Worse?”

“It’s getting more powerful,” someone says. There’s a doctor examining Perez, who appears fine, but then she starts talking. “Rose? Rose, what day is it?”

“M-March 16th, 2015,” she stammers, and everyone gasps.

“That was yesterday,” Iris realises. “The last thing she remembers is _yesterday_?”

“That’s it,” the captain declares. “I want everyone looking for this guy. Get the riot gear and start canvassing. Nora, I really think we should get Barry to call Miss Miracle-”

“Dee, I’m not involving Barry in this,” Nora snaps, and she sighs.

“Fine, but I’m calling the mayor – we may need another curfew.”

Iris watches helplessly as everyone disperses – and Nora heads right out the door again. “Wherever you’re going, I’m coming too.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Singh said you need another cop with you.”

“You’re a CSI.”

“ _Really_ tired of having that thrown in my face.”

“Iris-”

“Nora,” she interrupts, grabbing her arm. They come to a stop on the precinct steps. “Please, just let me come with you, he’s dangerous-”

“Yes,” she agrees. “And you know what happened when he attacked? He pointed the gun at you. How long before he goes after Barry? You need to find him and not let him out of your sight.”

“But-”

“Keeping yourselves safe will be your only priority!” she snaps at her, and that’s when Iris can tell she’s terrified. She sighs.

“Yes, ma’am. Nora,” she adds. “If you need me…”

“I’ll call you. Just…keep safe, please.”

By the time Iris makes it back across town, she’s certain she worked off all that shrimp. She spots the scowling figure currently walking around with coffee and taps her on the shoulder. “Ms Bridge?”

“Who’s asking – oh, I know you. You’re Harry’s sister, the lightning girl.”

“Iris,” she replies, irritated. “And I’m not Barry’s sister, I’m his best friend.”

“How adorable. Well, you just missed him. I think he went off to meet his vanilla girlfriend – Hattie? Maddie?”

“Patty,” she corrects, and Missy shrugs.

“I really don’t care. Hey, you hang out at STAR Labs, don’t you? Did Barry tell you about how you’re all working with a sociopathic kidnapper?”

Iris blinks. “He said she might be a little more mysterious than we thought.”

“That’s just like Harry to leave out the fun parts. Anyway, good luck finding him.”

***

Barry’s hopefulness turns to a weird kind of apprehension when he sees it’s Iris opening the door. He’d wanted to see his mother, but she isn’t answering her phone or pager. And Iris is here with her hair and her glasses and her nose, and that churning won’t go away.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she says, taking off her jacket. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to mom. Do you know where she is?”

“No idea.”

“Great,” he sighs. Then he swallows, sitting on the coffee table. “So, how are things with you and… _Scott_?”

Iris frowns. “Why is everyone asking me that? And why are you saying his name like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you used to say _Brad_.”

“Are you referring to that pretty-boy, blue-eye Backstreet Boy clone-”

“He wasn’t a Backstreet Boy clone!”

“- _Backstreet Boy clone_ ,” he continues, “with the perfect hair and the perfect face and the perfect everything?”

“Barry,” she laughs. “Brad was your friend, remember?”

He was, and he got really annoying after he started dating Iris, for some reason. “I know, so I’m an expert on his Backstreet Boy clone level.”

“So you’re saying Scott is a Backstreet Boy clone?” Iris asks. “Because they stopped being hot a while ago.”

“No,” he admits. “But I do think he’s overly perfect. You really want to date someone without any flaws?”

He wants Iris to laugh and tell him he’s being ridiculous, mostly so he can dismiss the idea that everything about them since the explosion has been wrong, but she doesn’t. She stares at him a little, brow furrowed. “What?”

She twists her fingers together. “I mean, if I should only date guys who are good enough for me, but not the ones who are too perfect…then who should I be dating, Barry?”

It nails him, that question, nails him right in the chest, because of course she should be dating _him_ , because that’s what would have happened if it weren’t for that damn explosion, isn’t it? There’d be no Patty and no Scott, it would be just them, like it’s always been, and he wouldn’t have to feel like he’s losing her, like she’ll never be _his_ Iris again. He’s pinned by her look, as well, those brown eyes behind those glasses, and she’s expecting an answer, but he can’t give one because there’s something sitting on his chest. Thankfully, he’s saved by her phone. She turns away from him to answer it. “Iris West? Yeah…no, I’m not. What? _What_? Fine, of course, we’ll be there in a minute.”

He stands and walks over to her as she hangs up. “Iris? What is it?”

She lets out a breath. “We have to get to the station.”

“Why?”

But she won’t tell him, she doesn’t want to worry him, and that’s how he knows it’s bad. There are cops swarming all over the precinct, and as they walk in to stand near the back everyone’s watching a screen. It’s a picture of Central City Bridge, with a blue flash racing up and down it as people try to evacuate the scene. Barry’s eyes widen. “Is that-”

“Cobalt Blue,” she says, and Singh clears her throat.

“He has attacked several civilians on this bridge, and is currently holding several of our own hostage. We have a plan to combat him, but…”

Captain Singh’s voice trails off, because Barry has seen a flash of red hair on the screen, and his heart leaps out of his throat. “M-Mom,” he breathes. He grips the railing. “Iris, that’s my mom, she’s there-”

“I know, Barry, it’s okay-”

“No it’s not, she could get hurt, I-”

“Barry, look at me.” Iris grabs his chin and makes him face her. “Focus on my face. Your mom will be fine, okay? You and I are going to leave here, and I will find her, and I will bring her back to you. I will not let anything happen to her, and I will not let anything happen to you. Okay?”

He has no idea why he believes her, but he does. It’s probably because she’s Iris and she’s always been so steady for him, and she makes everything better. He nods. “’Kay.”

She lets go and turns back to Singh, waiting patiently until she finishes, before taking his hand and leading him through the crowd towards the elevator. He’s vaguely aware of Patty talking to someone, but his mother is in danger. “Didn’t Singh say none of the cops should leave without instructions?”

“Ah, well,” she says, pressing the button to close the doors, “I’m not a cop, Barry. I’m a CSI.”

They drive towards the bridge even as everyone in the city is driving away from it, and she squeezes his hand and gives him a reassuring smile while she drives. She doesn’t let go when they get out of the car at the bridge, either, and he doesn’t want her to. There are barricades, but they are useless against Cobalt Blue. He’s running up and down the bridge at lightning speed, and the ground is shaking every time he does a lap. He comes frighteningly close to them, and Barry instinctively grabs Iris to pull her behind him. “What the hell is he doing?”

“He’s using his speed to destabilise the bridge,” she replies, adjusting her glasses. “If he keeps it up, he’ll wear it down, and all these people will die.” She takes a deep breath. “Barry, listen, you have to get as far away from here as possible – get in the car, go back to-”

“ _What_? Iris, no way!”

“Barry, _please_ -”

“No, Iris, listen to me,” he says desperately. She’s looking behind him and also trying to shove him back to the car, and he’s vaguely aware of Patty in the back of his mind, but if he doesn’t tell her this now, while it’s bursting to get out of his chest, he’ll never get the chance. He puts her hands on her shoulders “After you told me how you felt at Christmas, I…I started noticing all these things about you. I don’t know what it was, but I finally started paying attention to what was right in front of me – you. Iris, you’ve always been the first thing I’ve noticed and the only thing I’ll ever want to pay attention to. And – and I think I’ve always been that way.”

He stops, breathing hard, and then she smiles and it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “It’s always been you, Barry.”

The relief he feels at that is almost enough to stop him from noticing that this bridge is still shaking, and then she grabs his shirt lapels and pulls him down to kiss her. It’s like fireworks going off, that kiss, and he slides his hands down to her waist and pulls her into him, because this feels like waking up and coming home and flying, all at once. He’s pretty sure he would have stayed like that forever, but there are people rushing past them, trying to escape in what little space they have. He breaks away, brushing her nose, and when his eyelids flutter open all he can do is smile helplessly, because how has he never realised that he’s always had the most precious thing in the world right in front of him?

But then Iris looks away from him, up the bridge, and lets go. “There’s not enough time for everyone to get off this bridge before he destroys it – it’s too packed.”

More people rush between them and he loses sight of her for a second. “What do we do?”

Iris looks down at the ground, and then back at him, taking his hands in hers. “Barry?”

“Iris.”

“Please don’t hate me,” she says quietly. He stares at her in confusion, until another throng of people pulse between them and he can’t see her. “Iris? Iris!”

Then there’s a flash of green and gold and Miss Miracle is the one in front of him. But her eyes are normal and it’s light outside and she’s right in front of him so he can that Miss Miracle…

It’s Iris.

“Run, Barry,” she says, rising into the air above the panicked crowd. “ _Run_.”

And then she flies off, toward the deranged metahuman, and Barry watches. Watching her go is like watching a piece of his heart go, and he’s helpless as he watches the bridge become a blur of miracle gold and cobalt blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooooooooooooooooooh...let me know what you think!


	13. Woman of War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The women and their wars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehehe. this isn't edited at all, so i may catch mistakes tomorrow. hope you like it!

Barry can’t make himself move.

Everyone is racing away from the bridge as fast as they can, abandoning their cars and motorcycles and vans as they run, the bridge is shaking with the force of Cobalt Blue’s running, and the whole thing is lit up in flashes of blue and gold, but Barry can’t make himself move. Because not only is he pretty sure that he’s been in love with Iris his whole life and it’s taken him this long to realise it, the girl that he loves is a superhero and she’s going up against one of the most dangerous metahumans he’s ever seen. Because Iris is Miss Miracle and this is what she does.

 _Iris is Miss Miracle_.

And she’s doing a good job of it, too – Central City Bridge is busy at this time of day because of rush hour so there are hundreds of people trying to run, but because there are so many people Iris has to grab random people and deposit them on either side of the bridge. He hears a cracking noise and looks down at the ground, his panic rising when he realises that the bridge is crumbling. If she doesn’t catch Cobalt Blue soon, this whole thing will collapse.

She told him to run. But he can’t.

He can only stand there helplessly, too consumed with goddamn panic to move. He sees Iris grab several police and move them as far away from the bridge as possible, and he feels relief when he sees that his mother is one of them. Iris probably thinks that he’s gotten himself to safety, but he cannot see Miss Miracle doing her job, his sees is best friend Iris – with glasses and her walking into doors and her forgetfulness – against a metahuman that has the entire police department in panic mode. Anyway, he can’t leave her – he’s never been able to leave her. He didn’t when she broke her arm at sixteen, he didn’t leave her during the coma, and he is not leaving her now.

Everyone is out and Cobalt Blue stops, brandishing that gun. Iris appears in front of him and he zips away, and they continue like this, him running up and down and up the sides of the bridge. After a second he notices that Iris has something in her hand as well, something small and silver, and it’s firing out what looks like ice blasts. But what would that do to stop him?

Suddenly the blast of ice seems to hit Cobalt Blue, because he stops and Iris slams him into the side of the bridge. Then Barry can move, can breathe, because it looks like Iris is safe. He walks towards them slowly, not caring that the bridge could collapse at any moment, and he can see that Cobalt Blue’s legs are encased in ice and Iris is saying something to him, trying to get through to him through that Iron Mask. Then she frowns and he turns his head, looking in Barry’s direction. And he cannot who’s in the mask, but there is something about the look he gives him that gives Barry chills.

Cobalt Blue is fast, which explains what happens next.

He looks at Barry and then back at Iris, before clenching a fist and punching her in the face. She’s caught off guard and collapses, and then Cobalt Blue speeds up to face him. Now Barry really can’t move, and he isn’t fast enough to do anything except watch as Iris sits up, wiping blood from her nose, and sees him raise the gun. Then there is nothing but blue light, and Iris screaming his name, and then he knows no more.

***

 _She told him to run_.

Honest to God, Iris had been a little pissed off that Cobalt Blue had chosen that exact moment to try and destroy a bridge with dozens of people on it as they made their way home from work. Because she had been waiting for this moment her entire like, for Barry to look at her like she was the only person in the world, for him to tell her that she was the only person he’ll ever want, and for him to kiss her like he wanted to prove it. But she’s Miss Miracle, and she’s a superhero, so she had to leave. So she took a deep breath and asked Barry not to hate her, and flashed back to the Cortex to grab her outfit and change. She couldn’t decipher the look on his face other than the naked shock, and then she told him to run away from the bridge. And she thought that he had.

 _Damn it, she’d told him to run_.

Getting the people off the bridge wasn’t the hard part, it was like the boat and the plane, so she’d had practice before. It was the fact that Cobalt Blue was apparently doing his damndest to destroy this bridge, and she had to calm them down while she saved them. When she was finished she got to the police and found Nora. They were hiding behind cars and were incredibly relieved to see her. She grabbed them in groups and flashed them to the precinct, all of which stared at her in wonder when she showed up with half of their officers. She flashed up to the top deck and looked down at them all, her face obscured by shadow. “Where is it?” she demanded, her voice distorted.

“Where’s what?” Patty asks.

“The weapon given to you by STAR Labs to defeat Cobalt Blue, where is it?”

“Miss Miracle!” someone calls. Iris sees that someone is holding up the Blue Blaster, so she snaps her fingers and it shoots into her hand. Then, before she leaves, she notices Nora looking at her.

_Barry?_

_He’s safe – I told him to run_.

When she gets back to the bridge Cobalt Blue is still running but this time she follows him, trying to predict his moves. “I just point and shoot, right?”

“That’s right, iris,” Dr Wells says. “The cold should immobilise him so that he won’t be able to move, and then you can bring it in.”

“Just don’t get hit by that gun thing,” Colin adds.

“And make sure he doesn’t vibrate the ice and get out.”

“Got it,” she says confidently. She narrows her eyes, watching Cobalt Blue, studying his movements. He didn’t appear to have any destination – he just wanted to cause as much destruction as possible as quickly as possible. But that meant, at least, that she can predict where he’s going next. Pretty soon she’s catching up to him, teleporting to where he will appear next, rattling him as she figured out his pattern. She grist her teeth together, feeling her muscles burn and skin sweat, and seizes her opportunity when he isn’t paying attention. She points the gun and presses the button, smiling grimly when a blast of ice shoots out and hits his legs. She pushes him against the wall and faces him, trying to see something behind that iron mask.

“Who…Who are you?” she pants. “Why are you doing this?”

But he doesn’t answer, and she gets the chance to study the mask. It’s intricate and heavy, and doesn’t seem very easy to remove. She shakes her head. “Whatever. You’ve caused a lot of trouble, asshole.”

He doesn’t answer, instead turning to the side. Iris turns with him – and her heart almost bursts out of her chest. Barry is still there, looking at them, his face alight with worry, and Cobalt Blue has spotted him. And Iris is fast but he is much, much faster, so she barely even sees it when he punches her and then races away from her and blasts Barry with the gun. He stumbles and then faints, slumping to the ground.

“ _BARRY_!”

She thinks it’s when Barry hits the ground, or maybe when Cobalt Blue looks at her, or maybe it’s always been in her. Something inside Iris _snaps_ and she feels ice coating her veins. She stands up, wiping the blood from her mouth, and faces him.

“ _Stop_.”

He stops. Iris stares at him in shock, her throat dry. That icy, buzzing feeling is still sparking through her, and she doesn’t know what it means. Her mouth works, a few times, and she tries again.

“ _Turn around_.”

Cobalt Blue turns, and even though she can’t see his face, she can feel the shock pouring off him in waves. Iris swallows. It’s the same feeling she had the day before, when she told Cobalt Blue to stop and he did. And now he is here, staring at her through that mask. Her eyes flicker to Barry and she races to him, kneeling next to his prone body. He looks like he could be asleep, and with her freezing fingers and shaky hands she finally manages to find a pulse. She doesn’t realise that she’s crying, though, until one of her tears falls on his face.

“Damn it, _damn it_ , Barry, I told you to _run_ ,” she sobs, her fingers clutching his shirt. “Why didn’t you run, you _idiot_?”

“Iris?” Chesca demands, worried. “What is it? What happened?”

“Barry, he-” Iris chokes. “I told him to run, and he didn’t, and Cobalt Blue hit him with the gun-”

“Iris,” Dr Wells says calmly. “Bring them both here immediately. Barry will be fine, I promise.”

Iris hates herself for it, because she does not trust this woman, but she is immediately calmed by the way she talks, her promises and assurances. But Barry is hurt and she doesn’t have a choice, so she nods. “O-Okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”

It takes some effort, but she finally manages to knock out Cobalt Blue (using a trick that Colin taught her about pressure points, not her first instinct, which is to knock him out with the butt of his own gun), and then she teleports them both to STAR Labs. Cobalt Blue gets thrown in the Pipeline rather unceremoniously, and Colin is already wheeling Barry into the Cortex to check on him. Iris rips off her mask and holds out her hand for her glasses, before shoving them roughly on her face. “Is he okay? Is he breathing? There’s nothing broken, is there?”

Colin is shining lights in Barry’s eyes and checking his vitals. He shakes his head. “Iris, he’s fine, he’s just sleeping. I’ll monitor him, but according to what we’ve seen, he’ll be awake very soon.”

Iris feels a large weight leave her chest, though Barry’s still asleep. She’s never done well with him in pain. When his appendix burst Nora found her at the hospital demanding to know why she couldn’t be with Barry while he was waiting to have it removed, when Becky Cooper did the Thing she had to restrain herself from punching her in the mouth (though she did get her comeuppance), and on the anniversary of Malina’s death it’s all she can do not to hold him and protect him from all that pain. She sighs and rubs her face tiredly, and Dr Wells gives her a careful look. “What…happened out there today, Iris?”

“Cobalt Blue is a psychopathic asshole who decided to kill everyone?”

“You know what I mean, Iris.”

Iris stares at her for just a moment and then shakes her head, unzipping herself out of the top part of her suit and tying it around her waist. “I-I don’t know. It was exactly like what happened yesterday, but it was more intense, and everything felt…cold.”

“Like the time you were hit with the cold gun?” she frowns.

“No, not really. The cold was inside me, like it was coming from my bones. And the order…it was like it was coming from somewhere here-” she presses her temples “-and I felt it all over. Do you think it could be-”

“Mind control?” she interrupts. “Yes, Iris. I think that’s exactly what it is.”

“But that’s the thing, I can’t do it again. I’ve been trying to get that feeling back, and it won’t.”

“Well, Iris, we both know that your powers are not latent within you – they’re affected by mood, adrenaline, emotional state…What happened on the bridge?”

“You mean apart from Cobalt Blue attacking Barry?”

“That would do it, yes,” she admits. “But mind control isn’t like mind reading or even flying, Iris. It’s a deliberate, powerful ability. Are you sure there was nothing else?”

Iris hesitates. Of course there’s something else. Her adrenaline has been off the carts the entire time since Barry had said that she’s the first thing he notices, and then kissed her like he meant it. “Well, um. Barry and I – we were there to save Nora, because she was on the bridge, and I told him to leave so I could do the whole Miss Miracle thing, but then he started talking. He said – well, he didn’t say it, but he pretty much implied it – that he loved me. And then we kissed and then I went to defeat Cobalt Blue.”

She’s never been able to read Dr Wells’ mind, but years of reading Barry’s criminal psychology reports and training in the police academy means that she’s actually pretty good at reading expressions. And since she thinks Dr Wells might be Calamity, she would think that the older woman would be happy at this news, since it’s something to do with Iris’ powers, but she doesn’t seem it at all. “Anyway,” she continues, not wanting to thinking about it just yet, “he’s in the Pipeline now, and Barry and I are safe.”

“Yes. You and Mr Allen are safe.”

Iris doesn’t think she’s imagining the implied ‘for now’ in that statement.

***

Barry is awake, and he isn’t.

He knows that he must be asleep, or at least in that weird part between sleeping and waking, because he’s only aware of some things. He can’t move or open his eyes, but he can hear, kind of, and he knows he’s lying down in a cold room somewhere. Which is odd, because his room in his apartment isn’t cold. So where is he? He keeps trying to wake up, but it’s like trying to swim to the surface when your limbs are heavy.

“I just want to see him.” Iris.

“He’s fine, he’ll be awake soon.” That is Dr Wells.

“How do you know that?”

“Iris,” Colin sighs. “You know you’re bleeding, right? You’re bleeding and you’re dirty, so unless you want to heal with an infection inside you…”

They keep arguing and Barry tried to wake up again. Iris is bleeding, iris shouldn’t be bleeding. He has a sudden horrible flashback to the day she broke her arm, when the paramedics had to cut her out of the car. He kept saying that he’d pressed the brakes but they didn’t work, and he hated seeing her covered in so much blood, even when she kept reassuring him that she was fun.

“Have you told Nora?” Chesca’s voice, warm and sunny and friendly, like always.

“The station’s busy. I don’t know what happened, I think maybe something attacked them?”

The station. His mother and Patty and Iris. Maybe it’s Cobalt Blue, maybe that’s what’s attacking them. Barry swims to the surface again, and gets closer, but sinks back down.

“Do you know who it is?”

“He won’t let us get the mask off,” Chesca answers. “I think maybe your mind control thingie wore off, because the minute I went near him he tried to hit me.”

 _That_ wakes Barry up. “Iris?”

He blinks rapidly as he realises that he’s in the Cortex, with Colin cleaning blood off Iris and Chesca at the terminal. He has no idea how he got here or why everyone’s looking at him like he’s a bomb about to go off. But that isn’t the weirdest part. Because Iris is leaping off her examination table and bounding towards him, but she’s dressed in Miss Miracle’s golden suit. The mask is off, replaced by her glasses, but he can recognise the emblem and gold and green costume anywhere. “Iris? What are you wearing?”

She stares at him. “What am I – this is my outfit, Barry.”

“No, that’s Miss Miracle’s outfit,” he corrects her. There’s a weird disconnect, like he’s watching something he shouldn’t. Iris shouldn’t be wearing this, Miss Miracle should be. “Why are you wearing it?”

“Fuck,” Chesca says suddenly. “The _gun_. Barry, what day is it? What’s the last thing you remember?”

“It’s Tuesday. We went to that fundraiser and then Cobalt Blue attacked, so Iris, Patty and my mom had to…What? Why are you all looking at me like that?”

Iris looks like she’s just been punched in the gut, and Colin and Chesca share bewildered looks. “He doesn’t – You don’t remember,” Colin breathes. Dr Wells takes off her glasses. “Mr Allen-”

“Iris,” he interrupts, his eyes never leaving her face. “Are you Miss Miracle?”

“I…” she swallows. “Yes, yeah, I am. Barry-”

“And the three of you know.”

“Yeah, but-” Chesca stammers, but he cuts her off too, turning back to Iris.

“And you never told me.”

She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. “ _Barry_ , I-”

“Colin, Chesca,” Dr Wells says. “I think it would be best if we afford Mr Allen and Miss West some privacy.”

***

It’s not how she thought it would be.

Because it’s worse.

Barry is pinning her with a look as the others file out of the room. When the door shuts, she turns back to him and almost takes a step back, because she’s never seen that expression on his face before. It is devoid of warmth, devoid of humour, of anything and everything that makes him the Barry that she always wants to see. “Barry, I can’t imagine how angry you are-”

“No,” he says quietly, “you can’t.”

Iris swallows. “You really don’t remember? You don’t remember _anything_?”

“What am I supposed to remember? That you’re Miss Miracle? Because I sure as hell would have remembered that if you ever bothered to tell me. Who else knows?”

“I – what?”

“Who else knows you’re Miss Miracle, Iris?”

“Barry-”

His expression can freeze lava. “Tell me.”

She sighs. “Your mom, Olivia Queen, Freddie Smoak, Joanna Diggle, Laurent Lance, Charles and Martina Stein, and Ronnie Raymond.”

The naked shock on his face, mixed with the obvious hurt and anger, make her want to crawl into a hole. “All of them? They all know?”

“Yes.” When he turns away from her she starts towards him. “Barry, there were so many times I wanted to tell you – you were the _first person_ I wanted to tell…But then everything started getting insane, and Chloe Mardon died, and then so did Danielle Black, and I thought maybe Nora was right-”

Barry holds his hands out to her, palms out, willing her not to come near him. “You mean my mom knew, and she _told you not to tell me_?!”

“She was trying to protect you,” she says sadly. “We both were.”

“By keeping everything from me? By lying to me every time you opened your mouth?” he snaps, livid. “Iris, this whole city is in danger every day, what makes you think _not_ telling me my best friend is a mind-reading metahuman would keep me safe? How many times did you read my mind?”

“ _What_? Barry, I-”

“Did you like me writing about you?” he interrupts, truly angry now. “Is that why you wouldn’t tell me? So I would keep talking about you and defend you to everyone? And God, Iris, the flirting, what the hell was up with that? Did you enjoy that, too?”

He glares at her, green eyes blazing, and Iris blanches. Okay, he’s angry, fine, she deserves it, but does he have to be like this? So…cruel?

“That’s – I’m not _proud_ of that, Barry, if that’s what you mean, but I was in a different place with…you, and-”

“See?” He runs a hand through his hair. “You keep things from me and you avoid telling me things and _you keep changing the rules_!”

She blinks. “What rules?”

“ _Everything_! You’re Iris, but then you’re Iris who’s in love with me, but then you’re not, and now you’re Miss Miracle, I mean – what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

“You’re not supposed to do anything Barry,” she snaps back. “You already made it pretty clear where you stand, and _I told you_ , I don’t have those feelings for you anymore.”

Iris thinks he pales a little at her lie, at _I don’t have those feelings for you anymore_ , but then he moves on. “Okay. Okay, I can understand that you wanted to protect me, but telling everyone else first? You told _Olivia Queen_ before you told me, and you only met her once! You were supposed to be my best friend, Iris!”

“I am your best friend!”

“How can you say that when the things you’re supposed to share, you kept from me, but told absolutely everyone else? Unless you’re saying that Chesca and Colin have been better friends to you?”

“Barry, they’re the reason I’m standing here today so they’re basically like family-”

“ _I’m your family_! You – Iris, do you know how many times your heart stopped last year?” When she doesn’t answer, he takes a step towards her. “Sixty-seven. Sixty-seven times, Iris, I watched you die, and this whole time you could have died and I would have had no idea. Is that fair? Is that supposed to protect me?”

Iris bites her lip, guilt swallowing her up.

“I thought I was being selfish,” he laughs bitterly. “When you’d say you had something to do, or always hanging out at STAR Labs, or whatever. I thought, she was in a coma, she’s been through a lot, she’s still getting used to things so she can’t hang out with you all the time. And it wasn’t hard for you at all, you were Miss Miracle and it was easy-”

“Easy.”

Barry closes his mouth, because he’s never been this angry with her, that’s true, but the look on her face, if it matches the switch that was flipped inside her when he said ‘easy’, could temper glass. She takes a step towards him. “ _You think this has been easy_?”

“Don’t you dare, Iris,” he warns. “Don’t you dare start telling me how hard it was for you to lie to me, because I don’t want to hear it! You could have told me whenever you wanted, no matter what my mom said!”

“Fine!” she practically snarls. “Let’s talk about that, huh? Maybe I should have told you when I heard the voices in my head when I woke up and I thought I was losing my mind. Or when I had to watch Danielle Black die because she was so goddamn miserable, or watch Benedict Sans Souci get blown up by the army after they cut him open and put a bomb in him!”

“Iris-”

“Oh, I know!” she claps her hands together. “How about the time that the whole goddamn precinct tried to get me arrested, because your girlfriend told them all it would be a good idea to put me in jail! Or the time she tried to kill me, I _really_ loved that part – it was like going on vacation.”

“That’s not the same-”

“No,” she interrupts, “wait. I’ve got it. How about during the two months of radio fucking silence when you’d barely look at me, or talk to me, or _anything_ , because I told you how I felt about you? Which came right after-” but she cuts herself off, because she’s pretty sure she can never tell Barry the details of the horrors of that night. “After Calamity, so you can imagine how _easy_ that was!”

“ _You still should have fucking told me_!”

And this is horrible, the worst fight they’ve ever had, because they’re never this mad at each other, and they never, ever curse at each other either. It’s just not something they do. But Iris has lied to him for months and Barry’s anger is making him cruel, and she doesn’t even blame him. They’re staring at each other, their anger filling the room, and then Iris deflates. “You mean you really don’t…you really don’t remember?”

“ _What_ am I supposed to remember?”

“You were hit by Cobalt Blue’s gun and you forgot everything that happened,” she explains quietly. “You’re going to be fine, but the last thing you remember is the party, which was last night.”

He stares at her. “Okay, so what did I forget?”

 _What did I forget_?

How about the best thing that’s ever happened to her? But he still looks so angry and disappointed in her that she can’t bring herself to say it. Not yet. “Well, Nora was in danger and we went to Central City Bridge, and I told you I was Miss Miracle because I had to save her.”

“So the only reason you told me is because my mom was going to die?” He shakes his head. “Is she okay?”

Iris nods. “Yeah, she’s fine, I took them all back to the station.”

Barry doesn’t reply, only grabs his jacket and heads out. “Where are you going?” Iris asks.

“You’re not the only one who’s lied to me,” he replies, not looking at her. “And I can’t…I can’t be around you. Not right now.”

Iris watches, helpless, as he leaves STAR Labs. A few seconds later Chesca and Colin step in tentatively. “Iris?”

“Not now, guys,” she says tiredly. “Just…not now.”

***

Barry’s mother knows as soon as she sees him.

He’s still shaking with it, the anger and the hurt, when he gets to the precinct. It’s chaos, unsurprisingly, if what Iris told him was true. No, not Iris, Miss Miracle. The metahuman he’s been writing about for months is his best friend, and apparently he’s the last one to know about it. There was a small part of him that felt bad about it, for the way he was yelling at her, but then he remembers how much she tried to tell him he was crazy, even though she hated it that people did that to her, and then walked out on him because of it, and lied to him, over and over. For _months_.

He’s going over everything that’s gone on between them, and suddenly it all makes sense. Why she was always telling him to stop writing – until she gave him the watch so he was safe. He remembers now that his mother _and_ Iris stopped trying to convince him to stop writing his blog. And then with the metahuman that made her crazy and she attacked him and Patty – she didn’t come to dinner, and when Barry called she’d been in tears. Because about an hour earlier Barry had said he never wanted to see her again. Jesus Christ, of course she couldn’t face them. And – he swallows – Calamity. She’d grabbed Iris by the throat and done… _something_ to her. Between the time he saw the news and the time Iris turned up at the precinct, it had to be at least four hours. Barry swallows, pausing on the steps of the precinct. He remembers, now, that she’d had a cut on her face and she was wearing a turtleneck. Probably to hide the bruises.

But still. _Still_. There has never been a single thing that Barry’s hidden from Iris, and she hid this from him for months. All the while running off to Star City to tell everyone there, and her new friends, and people like Professor Stein, who she met on a train once. She can’t push him away and then blame him for being alone. It’s the worst kind of betrayal.

“Barry!”

He looks up in surprise – he expected to walk in unannounced and then find his mother, but Patty calls his name and then has him enveloped in a hug in the next minute, her blue eyes wild with panic. “What happened to you, are you okay?”

“I-I’m fine,” he says, surprised. Honestly, with the argument with Iris, Patty was the last thing on his mind, which he feels a little guilty about. Everyone is looking at them and he clears his throat. “Uh, what did I miss?”

“Your mother almost having a nervous breakdown,” the captain answers. “She’s out right now looking for you and Iris – we’ve been calling you for hours. She should be back any minute.”

“No, she’s back right now.”

Barry turns around to see his mother storm into the precinct, and he’s certain that she can’t decide between being mad and being relieved. After she hugs him she frowns. “Where’s Iris?”

“She’s fine,” he says coolly. “She’s at STAR Labs.”

And Barry’s mother knows, as soon as she sees the expression on his face, she knows.

“Okay, everyone, good job with evacuating everyone today,” the captain continues to the rest of the room, unaware that Nora has paled and is wearing an expression of apprehension. “Now, I’ve had some word of something in the sewers…”

As everyone follows the captain into the main offices, Nora gestures for Barry to follow her into a quiet office and closes the door behind them. He just looks at her and she runs a hand through her hair. “Barry, I know you must be so angry right now-”

“You know, that’s exactly what Iris said,” he says icily. “Funny how you both knew I’d be mad, and yet none of you bothered to tell me anyway.”

Nora doesn’t even protest at his tone, so he knows she feels guilty, but he’s not sure he cares. “How…did you find out?”

“Apparently Iris and I went to the bridge to rescue you, but I was hit with the gun and I woke up at STAR Labs. Iris was there in her Miss Miracle costume.”

Her eyes widen. “You were hit by the gun?”

Barry waves a dismissive hand. “I’m fine, Iris gave me the highlights. What I want to know is why the two people I love most in the world, the two people I trust _more than I trust myself_ , would lie to me.”

“We were trying to keep you safe. No, Barry,” she adds, when he rolls his eyes. “We’ve had to deal with some pretty scary stuff this year, what with Prism making Iris crazy, the nuclear explosion, Dr Wells attacking Iris-”

“ _Dr Wells attacked Iris_?”

“We think she’s Calamity,” she clarifies. “Well, I’ve thought that for a long time, but-”

“And Dr Wells already knows what we are to each other,” he interrupts pointedly. “She already knows that we’re best friends, and besides, I got hurt today because I was with Iris, not Miss Miracle. Do you not think that looping me in would keep me safe? That if I knew what was going on, I could prepare for it?”

“I didn’t _want_ you to prepare for it, Barry, I didn’t want you anywhere near this!” she tells him. “It’s bad enough that Iris could die every damn day she puts on that suit, I didn’t want anything to happen to you too. I know I should have told you about Iris being Miss Miracle-”

“Mom, it’s not just about that – you keep things from me all the time!” he snaps, frustrated. “You knew how Iris felt about me for god knows how long, and you didn’t tell me that either!”

Nora pauses. “That wasn’t my secret to tell, Barry. And anyway, what does that have to do with anything?”

Barry blinks, breathing hard. That’s the second time today he’s mentioned Iris’ feelings for him, and he’s a little blindsided by it. He doesn’t know why he keeps bringing it up – he certainly doesn’t mean to, but maybe it’s bothering him more than he thought. And it shouldn’t. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter, she doesn’t feel that way about me anymore.”

“I see.”

“But it is one of the things you were keeping from me, and it didn’t do anything except put me in danger,” he continues. “And if you-”

He’s interrupted by a knock on the door. “Um, Barry?” Officer Brody sticks her head around the corner, looking apprehensively between them.

“Sorry, you guys are busy. I’ll see you at home,” he mutters to his mother, but Brody stops him.

“Actually, Barry, we kind of need you.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t happen to be writing about an escaped jellyfish, would you?”

***

Iris huffs as she lifts the weights with her mind. She’s been trying to get her stamina up for months, since it’ll help her sustain her powers for longer. She’s been lifting for about half an hour, because she’s trying to get Barry’s face out of her head. He has never looked at her like that before, and the image makes her want to throw up and cry and hide, all at once. But she keeps hearing his voice in his head, and not even the yelling – it’s the way he looked at her when she told him that everyone else knew and he didn’t. Yeah, he was looking at her like he’d never seen her before, alright, and it was because he couldn’t recognise his best friend.

And that’s the worst part. It’s some kind of twisted irony, she supposes. Only two hours ago Barry was telling her that he loved her, and she figured that part would mitigate the whole ‘I lied to you for months’ thing. But now he’s forgotten everything since last night, and she has no idea what happened today that led him to confess those things to her, but he obviously has no memory of them. And with the way he was looking at her before he left, he’s not going to remember them any time soon.

Iris sighs and puts down the weights. Colin and Chesca are hovering in the Cortex, watching her, and she might as well face them now, since she hasn’t been sure about facing them. “Are you guys going to hover there forever?”

They look at each other as she sits up, and Colin clears his throat. “So, um, are you okay?”

Iris gives a helpless shrug. “Not really.”

“I’m so sorry, _mama_ , that sounded awful,” Chesca says sympathetically. Colin gives her a look and she blinks. “Uh, not that we – not that we were _listening_ or anything-”

“It’s okay,” she smiles sadly. “We were pretty loud.”

“So he knows everything, huh?”

“Yeah. Everything’s so messed up, I can’t – Barry hates me, and-”

“Iris,” Colin interrupts. “Come on, Barry could never hate you.”

“You didn’t see him. It was _awful_. He couldn’t even look at me before he left.” She folds her arms and her next words come out in a whisper. “He’s never been this mad at me before. It’s like he doesn’t care.”

“But he doesn’t _hate_ you,” Chesca says desperately, seeing the despondent look on his face. “It’s because he cares so much that he’s mad at you. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be this mad.”

Iris worries her lip. It’s hard to think of a Barry that cares from the way he was looking at her. “You think so?”

“Duh. You’re Barry and Iris. You’ll get over this, no problem.”

“I hope so,” she says quietly. She shakes her head. “Anyway, take my mind off it. Have you guys figured out Cobalt Blue yet?”

“No,” Colin admits, sitting down. “I don’t know what it is with that mask, but it won’t come off. Plus, he really doesn’t _want_ it come off.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your mind control thing must have worn off, because every time we go near him to take it off, he attacks us.”

“Maybe you could try talking to him again?” Chesca suggests, and Iris laughs bitterly.

“Yeah, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, considering I kind of want to beat his face in with his own gun. Maybe we-”

Iris frowns as the computer starts beeping in tandem with the emblem on her suit lighting up. Chesca clicks a few times and then swallows. “Uh, it’s Barry. He’s at the precinct.”

She stands immediately and Colin gives her a reassuring smile. “See? He wants to talk to you.”

“No,” she disagrees, pointing at the mask, “he wants Miss Miracle.”

The last thing she’s expecting when she teleports to the precinct, however messed up her relationship with Barry is right now, is everyone gathered around a picture of a giant jellyfish. She’s appeared near the back of the precinct, completely in shadow, and despite this being a regular thing that she does on the news, everyone is shocked to see her. She sees Barry, stood between his mother and Patty, and he looks at her for about a second before looking at the floor. Captain Singh takes a tentative step forward. “Miss Miracle. Thank you for coming. And thank you for your help on the bridge.”

“My pleasure, captain,” she says. “What do you need?”

“It would seem that when it rains, it pours,” she sighs. “Are you aware that Barry here has been writing about a jellyfish that is supposed to have escaped from a scientific facility?”

“I am,” she says quietly. “Is there a problem?”

“It seems that the jellyfish has grown in size and power, because I’ve gotten reports from sewer workers that attacked them. They’re fine,” she adds quickly, “but I thought it might be best to ask for your help on this matter. It’s kind of out of our league.”

“I’m sorry for calling you so quickly after the bridge,” Barry says quietly. “I know you must be dealing with…other stuff.”

“I’m always happy to help,” she tells him, nodding. Honestly, she’s going to kill Colin and Chesca, because this whole jellyfish thing can’t come at a worse time. “What do you know so far?”

“It’s venomous,” Barry says, stepping forward. He hesitates a little, no doubt because it’s weird talking to each other like they don’t know exactly who the other one is. “It’s tentacles, that is, and it can shoot them like darts – some were found in the sewers.”

“Do you have a sample of it?” Iris asks, once she’s gotten over her shock of a jellyfish that can shoot tentacles out of its body. “I’ll need my team to analyse it.”

“We were able to collect one,” Brody calls. She walks forward, holding a box with a withered, bluish-purple tentacle in it, the veins threading dark blue through it. It’s also the size of a human arm, and she tries to hide her apprehension.

“Thank you. Anything else?”

“It likes the sewers,” Barry continues. “It’s been crawling around them for weeks. But it also ventures into the bay, occasionally, explaining the reports of dead fish. It can move on land and sea, and prefers damp areas.”

Iris thinks for a moment, her head bowed, and the precinct waits in silence. The priority, of course, is to keep everyone safe while she goes after this thing, though of course she’ll need the help of both the precinct and STAR Labs. “How does it get into the bay?”

“According to the sewer workers,” Brody answers, “through one of the sewer exits.”

“Okay,” Iris nods. “We need to lead it there, because I don’t like my chances against something like this in close quarters. Do you think you can shut off some of the exits so that it can’t do anything _but_ go to the bay?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Leading it somewhere I can fight it,” she answers. “Evacuate the bay and put several guards there, but don’t get too close to the beach. I’ll find a way to subdue it and remove it from the area.”

And as much as she hates it, she’s going to have to call A.R.G.U.S.

***

Needless to say, everyone is shocked when Iris turns up demanding help on how to capture a venomous jellyfish. But they’re not actually shocked about the fact that one exists.

“What, seriously?” Iris demands, taking off her mask and putting her glasses back on. “I thought I was supposed to be the weirdest thing that’s happened to this city.”

Chesca looks at Dr Wells. “You want to take this one, Dr W?”

“Yes, it would appear that I have to,” she sighs. “A few years ago, General Eiling came to me with an…experiment of sorts, wanting to create a new kind of weapon. I was wary, given that I was merely using the man o’war for research purposes, but our government has ways to persuading us to do things when we don’t want them. But when I found out the extent of what she was doing – altering it’s genetic makeup, forcing it to take growth hormones, implanting it with venomous stingers – I put a stop to everything. Unfortunately, with the Particle Accelerator explosion, it escaped and hasn’t been seen until now.”

“Is that why she hates us so much?” Iris asks. “Because you stopped her experiment.”

“Perhaps. I don’t particularly care.”

“She’s a pretty powerful enemy.”

“Who was responsible for some deplorable acts,” she says harshly. “Keeping a living being against their will, torturing them in that way, is the worst thing you can possibly do to another creature.”

Iris bites back a retort, given who’s speaking, and Colin clears his throat. “Well, that’s all water under the bridge. Isn’t that right, Dr Wells?”

“Yes, Dr Snow. That’s right.”

Iris notices that they’re doing the ring-twisting thing again, and she almost says something about it, but then her phone buzzes. _Tunnels sealed, will let you know when we find it_.

So Barry is still mad at her. She rubs her eyes. “Well, now it’s free and could start attacking people. So I need you to analyse this-” she proffers the box with the tentacle in it “-and I need a way to capture it before A.R.G.U.S. gets here to take it away.”

Chesca stares at her. “You called them?”

“Not yet,” she admits. “Believe me, I don’t want to get them involved either, but they’ve dealt with Eiling before, so I think they’re the only ones who can clean this up without raising suspicion.”

“Why not just call them to do it now?”

“Because we put it there,” Dr Wells points out. “And people are already in danger. Chesca, Colin, go downstairs and analyse that. Iris, I think I may have some way to help.”

They leave, Chesca wrinkling her nose and complaining about seafood, and she follows Dr Wells to the room where Chesca builds her weapons. “Of course, when Eiling was doing all of this, she needed a way to stop the Woman of War in case she needed to. So she developed a very powerful sedative that caters to its…extra capabilities.”

Iris watches as the doctor gets out a large container of black liquid, vicious and evil-looking. “A few rounds of this in a syringe will take care of it. And…” she fishes in the weapons box and brings out a heavy net made of rope.

“That’s a net.”

“Indeed.”

“You want me to catch a venomous jellyfish with a net.”

“It’s an all-purpose net,” she jokes lightly. “It’s just to hold it until the authorities get here. Now, we should attach them to guns, they’ll be easier for you to carry.”

They work diligently, Iris keeping an eye on her phone. She hates this, not knowing how Barry’s feeling. About her, about this, about anything. It’s almost as bad as not knowing her own mind. “Dr Wells?”

“Yes?”

“What do you think of Barry’s memory?” she asks tentatively. “About the…things he said to me.”

“Ah,” she says quietly. “You mean his confession?” Iris nods. “Well, Iris, from what you tell me, Barry was just as affected by the impending threat of Cobalt Blue as you. It seems the threat of losing his mother and you is what it took to jar those feelings to the surface.”

“But…he still has them?” she asks quietly. “Right?”

“I cannot say for certain. But,” she adds, “I can say that he was here everyday while you were in the coma. He yelled at me, he yelled at your old doctors. I think his feelings are latent. Whether he’ll discover them again is entirely up to chance.”

Iris studies her then, this mysterious woman who could be her father’s killer, but who saved her life. Sometimes she’s inexplicably sad, sometimes coldly brilliant, sometimes surprisingly nurturing. And all the time, she is a complete mystery. Iris thinks she sees something in those blue eyes, but then Chesca and Colin call them back upstairs.

“Okay, this is gross,” she says, once Iris and Dr Wells are back. “Like, fifty levels of gross. _The Thing_ gross. Alien attacking Sigourney Weaver gross.”

“What Chesca means,” Colin says, “is that this is worse than we thought.”

“Oh, goody (!)” Iris says.

“What did you find?” Dr Wells wants to know.

“It’s definitely grown. The length of the tentacle shows that it has to be at least sixteen feet in diameter, and the tensile strength of enormous, judging by the size of the muscles we found. And the venom…”

“God, it’s like something out of a horror movie,” Chesca interjects. “The venom is a toxin and a hallucinogen, and the amount in this arm should kill an elephant.”

“I love being a superhero,” Iris says sardonically. “Anyone else want to try it with me?”

“You’ll be fine, Iris,” Dr Wells says confidently. “You have, after all, survived worse.”

“Yes,” she says coolly. “I have.”

Then they wait for the call, Iris strapping the large syringe on her back together with the gun that holds the net. She’s also talking to Barry, but as Miss Miracle, because the general public want to know whether she’s still alive. It hurts, this talking to him but not talking to him, but she supposes she deserves it. She’s also ridiculously restless, pacing up and down so much that Chesca throws a wrench at her, which she only very narrowly catches with her mind. They also call Olivia to put A.R.G.U.S. on standby, ready to collect the jellyfish once Iris’ has apprehended it. Finally, they get an alert.

It’s in the bay. Everyone’s already there.

“We’ll be here with you, Iris,” Colin assures her. “Just let us know if you need anything.”

“They’ll need their best shooter to fire from a safe distance,” Dr Wells explains, “so we don’t alarm it. That way, when it’s distracted, you can fire the net at it.”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Chesca adds, walking up to her. She’s holding something in her hand. “Bigger mask to cover your face. I figure it’ll help with dealing with the people at the precinct.”

It covers her nose and chin, so at least she can face everyone when she’s talking. “Thanks, Chess.”

“Of course, _mama_. Go kick ass.”

Iris nods, once, and then closes her eyes. When she opens them the salty smell of the bay is in her nose and the light wind is caressing her face. Right in front of her, the precinct has set up a perimeter around the bay, the whole thing illuminated by searchlights, since it’s almost dark. She finds the captain talking to Nora, a map spread out on one of the patrol cars. Nora starts when she sees her, probably because of the two devices strapped to her back. “Captain?”

“Miss Miracle,” she sighs in relief. “I see Barry told you about the Woman of War?”

“He did. Where is he?”

“He’s in a watchtower with Detective Spivot,” she answers, pointing to a large concrete structure overlooking the bay. The lifeguard’s tower. “It’s the closest we can get for a good vantage point while still being safe. Besides, he’s the only one who knows about the jellyfish, and he was very willing to help.”

_He got stubborn, didn’t he?_

_Don’t get me started. You okay?_

_I will be. Maybe._

Out loud, Iris says, “I have a plan to take it in. Do you have an exact location or an approximate one?”

“Approximate,” Nora admits. “We know it’s swimming near this part, but we don’t want to get too close, obviously.”

“Of course. Who’s your best shooter?”

“Spivot.”

 _Of course she is_. “Alright. Come with me, I’ll need to brief her.”

Patty is surprised when Iris tells her what she needs to do, but takes it in stride even as she frowns at the very large gun in her hands. “So I just point and shoot?”

“When I give the signal,” she adds. “And you’ll need someone up there watching with you-”

Barry, who hasn’t said anything so far, chooses that moment to speak. “I can do it. I’ll be up there with her anyway.”

“Barry, it’s too dangerous,” Nora says, but Iris shakes her head.

“I can stop it from reaching them – besides, the tower is too far for it to reach. And he does know a lot about her.”

_Are you sure?_

_Yes, I’m sure_.

“Okay,” Nora says finally. Iris gives instructions for everyone else – stay well back, stay ready but don’t shoot unless necessary – before following Barry and Patty back to the tower. She climbs it and Iris makes to go to the bay, but Barry stops her. “Iris?”

“Did you need me to explain again?” she asks quietly. He blinks at her.

“I – No. I just…Are you sure you can do this? That thing is twice your size.”

Iris shrugs helplessly, shifting the gun on her back. “Most things are.”

Barry purses his lips and she flicks her eyes upwards. “Be safe, okay? I’ll be back soon.”

She rises up into the air and flies out over the bay, scanning for anything out of the ordinary. “You guys got anything yet?” she says into her headset.

“Not yet,” Chesca mutters. “Nothing…Wait, there! A few feet east, just coming up to the surface.”

Iris shifts and sees it, a blue-purple thing that pulses to the surface of the water and breaks through. She sees Barry with binoculars and Patty with the gun trained at the beach, and gives the signal to let them know it’s been spotted. Then she waits while it teases them, first getting closer to the beach, then swimming back, before meandering onto the sand.

 _Just a little closer_ …

Iris cannot risk it going back into the sea and especially can’t risk missing – who knows what could happen? But then it shifts in good distance of the gun and she nods to herself, flexing her fingers as she holds the gun. She looks at Patty, raises her right fist, and watches the other woman fire three rounds into the Woman of War. It writhes and shakes as the sedative arcs through it, but Iris has already aimed the gun and fired, bracing herself for the kickback as the net explodes out of the barrel and lands squarely on top of it, the metal balls on the net preventing it from moving. Then it’s movements slow, become sluggish, until it seems to stop.

Iris breathes a sigh of relief and floats down just as Barry and Patty are reaching the captain and Nora, Barry holding the syringe in his hand. “Thank you for your help,” she says evenly. “You can send most of the officers home now, someone will be here soon to take care of this.”

“Thank you, Miss Miracle,” the captain says gratefully. Iris nods, holding her hand out for the gun. “Of course.”

Everything happens very quickly after that.

Maybe it wasn’t strong enough, or the Woman of War grew. Iris doesn’t know, but she knows that right then it starts to move, a large tentacle rises from the sand, and then Patty is screaming as one juts out and fires straight for Barry, probably noticing that he has the gun. But Iris has learned from this afternoon on the bridge, so she leaps in front of Barry, barely hearing the gun drop, barely feeling the stinging pain in her left arm, before everything goes black.

***

Barry awakes for the second time in STAR Labs with his head pounding. He doesn’t know what happened – one minute he’s on a beach with everyone, and then Iris is grabbing him. And now she’s teleporting him here, the force of which threw him to the ground so he’s facing the steel floor.

“Barry?” comes Iris’ voice from behind him, a little strained. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he groans, getting up. “Fine. You?”

She’s standing by the elevators, one arm behind her back, a pained expression on her face. “F-fine. I’m…fine.”

“Iris?...Iris!”

She sways, her arms flailing, and that’s when he sees it. There are two gashes in her side, already staining her outfit red, and a bluish-purple tentacle has wrapped around her arm, pulsing and poisonous. Barry barrels towards her just as she staggers, catching her before she hits the ground, the arm with the tentacle hanging limply.

“I’m fine, it’s fine,” she gasps painfully, blinking. “Really, it only hurts a…little.”

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” he tells her, even though he’s shaking because she is tiny and there shouldn’t be this much blood. “You’re going to be fine, okay?” He fumbles for his phone with his free hand and texts Colin.  _Help, cortex_. He feels her blood soaking into his jeans and hopes that they hurry.

She bites her lip and nods. “Am I…Am I bleeding a lot?”

“No. No, it’s only a little, I promise.”

“Because it feels like a lot.”

“It’s not,” he says reassuringly.

“If you say so.”

“I say so.”

Barry looks around, panicked, trying to find a way to get the others. They should be here, goddamnit, shouldn’t they? Isn’t this their job? He wants to get up and move her somewhere, but there's so much blood he doesn't know if that will hurt or help. Iris shivers a little.

“Barry?” she whispers, swallowing.

“Yes?”

“I think I’m hallucinating.”

“Why?”

“Because your eyebrows aren’t made of cotton candy and I’m not in Disneyland. Am I?”

“No, we’re not.”

“But we went before, right?”

“Yeah,” he laughs softly. “A long time ago.”

“I’m so tired, Care Bear,” she whispers, her eyes fluttering shut, and he taps her face.

“No, Iris, you stay with me, okay? You open your eyes and you _stay with me_ , do you understand?”

“Okay.” Then she laughs softly. “God, Barry, you’re such a worrier.”

“Because you’re always worrying me.”

“Oh.” She bites her lip. “Sorry.”

“S’ok.”

“S’not.”

“You said ‘snot’.”

“Cashew-eating asshole. Besides, I’m not going anywhere, Barry. I’m in my happy place.”

“Where’s that?”

She smiles up at him. “Wherever you are."

Barry smiles helplessly back, but then she goes limp in his arms and her eyes shut. “No. No, Iris, wake up! _Wake up_ , please, I – COLIN! CHESCA! Iris, come on, don’t leave, not again…COLIN, HELP!”

They must hear him, or maybe they were on their way down, because they come out of the elevator in that exact moment. “Her intercom just cut out,” Colin is saying, not seeing them, but then Chesca sees them and screams.

“ _Oh my God_!” she gasps, her hands flying to her mouth. Tears are in her eyes. “Iris?”

“She was fine,” Barry says as Colin crouches next to them. “She was talking and then she just stopped-”

“Bring her upstairs,” he says quickly. “Hurry, Barry. Chesca – Chess, you can’t fall apart right now. She’s going to be fine. Tell Dr Wells I need four hundred ccs of the sedative we used on Iris during Rainbow Raider and meet me upstairs.”

Chesca leaves and Colin motions for Barry to follow him in the elevator. “What is it?” he asks, Iris’ still form in his arms. “What’s happening?”

“The adrenaline from the attack and the sting,” he explains. “It’s preventing Iris from feeling too much pain, and her healing ability is helping. But it’s trying to heal with stingers in it, and once the adrenaline wears off…” Colin doesn’t need to finish that sentence.

They reach the Cortex and Iris moans, shifting, and Colin curses. “We need to get that thing off her while she’s still unconscious.”

“Why?”

“Her powers. It’s going to hurt to get off and if her body thinks I’m causing it pain, she’ll throw me across the room with her mind.”

Barry puts Iris down and Colin begins to stick electrodes to her, before putting her arm in a restraint. She moans in pain again as the heart monitor starts up, and Colin sets out his medical instruments. Just as he starts to cut, Iris opens her eyes. “W-What happened? I – ow, OW! Colin, stop!”

“Iris, I’m trying to help-”

“ _Stop it_!” she begs, her voice ragged. “It _hurts_ , stop it, please!”

“Honey, come on, you have to let me help.”

Iris turns her head, tears leaking from her eyes. “B-Barry?”

“I’m here,” he promises. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

Her face crumples. “Barry, I’m really sorry, I’m sorry I lied, okay, just make it stop, make it stop, _please_!”

Iris’ voice breaks into a sob on the last word and she screams again, straining against the straps as Colin cuts, and Barry rubs his temples as he watches helplessly. “You can’t make it stop hurting her?” he demands.

“No, only the sedative can – shit.” Her heart monitor is beeping. “She’s overexerting herself, she needs to calm down.”

“Why?”

“Otherwise the venom will get to her heart faster. Iris, honey, _please_ -”

Barry grabs her hand and makes her face him, tears streaming down her face. “Barry, p-please make it stop.”

“I'm so sorry, Iris, I can’t do that. But – But you’re going to be brave for me, okay? Can you do that?”

She looks at him through her tears. “I can try. I can try for you.” Barry nods, opens his mouth, and starts to sing.

“ _You are my sunshine, m_ _y only sunshine_.

_You make me happy, when skies are grey."_

“It’s working,” Colin says as Iris keeps her eyes on him. “Keep going.”

_"You never know, dear, how much I love you_

_Please don’t take my sunshine away_.”

Iris stares at him for just a second, the ghost of a smile on her face, before she gasps, arching her back, and then closes her eyes again. Barry looks up in alarm, but then sees Chesca. “It’s okay, we sedated her,” she assures him. He nods, suddenly exhausted, and then stands.

“I’m gonna go find my mom,” he says. “But call me when she’s awake, okay?”

Barry leaves, because Iris covered in blood isn’t something he can handle.

He texts Patty to tell her that she’s fine, that Miss Miracle dropped him off at a hospital and he’ll meet her at their apartment, and is trying to figure out how to get to the precinct when he sees his mother leaping out of her car and racing towards him. “Barry, thank God!” she crushes him in a hug, and honestly he’s too tired to do anything but hug her fiercely back. “What happened?”

Barry explains quietly what happened. “She’s fine – or, I think she will be. But I couldn’t watch.”

His mother nods. “Barry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Iris, I really am. I was just trying to keep one of you safe. The two of you have always followed the other one into danger without hesitation, and was scared that’s what would happen here. But I forget what a brilliant, resource man you’re becoming, and I guess I just wanted to keep you my little boy forever.”

Barry smiles sadly. “Mom, I get that. But you’re going to have to trust me to make my own decisions. Otherwise something worse than tonight could happen. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Then he hugged her again. Just because he could.

***

“So there was a _tentacle_ around my _arm_?”

Chesca and Colin have explained this four times, and it makes just as much sense. All she remembers is something attacking Barry, candy floss, Disneyland, and then a lot of pain (they didn’t know how to tell her about the singing, so she doesn’t know). Now she has a bandage wrapped around her arm.

“Yes. But you’re good now.”

“Whatever you say. Is Barry okay?”

“He’s fine, he’s with his mom,” Chesca answers.

“And Dr Wells?”

“Talking to Waller upstairs,” Colin says. “They’re taking it away to their secret underground bunker we’re not supposed to know about.” He pauses. “Guys? Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I know you don’t trust Dr Wells. And I know you’re going to be investigating her. I just – she did a lot for me, and I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it, so-”

“We’ll keep you out of it,” Iris promises. She gets up to hug them both. “I think we deserve a few days off, huh?”

“Oh, definitely.”

But Iris can’t go home yet. She isn’t surprised to find Barry on the roof of Jitters, looking out onto the city. He turns when he hears her. “How did you find me here?”

“Call it intuition. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m supposed to be getting dinner, but I guess I needed time to think.” He pauses, looking at her bandage. “How’s your arm?”

“It’ll be okay in a few days. Sorry if I scared you, by the way. Colin said I was hallucinating; I hope I didn’t say anything freaky.”

“Uh, no, nothing,” he says. Iris thinks he may be hiding something, but lets it go. She has one main reason for this. “Barry, the mind-reading…I didn’t – I would never-”

“I know, Iris,” he interrupts, ashamed. “I felt awful after I said that. I’m sorry I yelled.”

“Sorry I lied.”

“Why?” he asks. “Why did you lie?”

Iris looks away from him briefly. “Being Miss Miracle is…hard. Everyone expects you to save everyone, be everything, do everything. But then when I was with you, I was just Iris, your best friend, and there was no pressure. I didn’t want to ruin that. And you’re the reason I can do this. You believing in me, and writing about me…you’re the reason all the miracles happen.”

He looks at the ground briefly and sighs. “I’m still mad at you.”

“I know,” she says simply.

“I don’t want to be.”

“It’s okay.”

“I won’t be forever. But you lied to me, over and over, and I need time to process.”

“You can have time,” she says. “All the time you need.”

“Thanks. And I’m glad you’re okay, Iris.”

She nods and turns to leave, before stopping, not looking at him. “Just don’t take too long, cause I miss you already.”

And she’s not expecting much, but when she’s on her way home, her phone buzzes.

I won’t

And it’s probably the first real smile she's had in ages.

***

Almost dying is apparently great in the girlfriend department, because Patty doesn’t even complain when there are jalapeños all over their pizza. Barry does his best to reassure her that he’s fine, really, though he may take a day off tomorrow. He still has the conversation with Iris in his head – especially the stuff he left out.

_I can’t keep thinking about you, it’s not fair._

_I can’t treat you like you’re my everything._

_You’re not allowed to be my everything_.

Because it’s true, it’s not fair to Patty or to Iris. He’s not allowed to be jealous of Scott or think about her dancing with him of her hair flip. It isn’t fair. So he smiles at Patty and reassures her and tells her he loves her, but he’s still distracted. So distracted that he doesn’t notice her slip out while he’s sleeping. Her mother’s house isn’t far and Eleanor is awake, reading by the fire when Patty walks in. “Mother.”

“How is he?”

“Well. Shaken, but fine.”

“Good. It would be shame if anything happened to him.” She takes a sip of her wine and turns a page. “Patricia?”

“Yes, mother?”

“Good shooting today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't be too mad at barry! (or me) let me know what you think!


	14. Rogue Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry and Iris nail down their wandering hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for being patient, people ;)

Barry huffs as he runs, his lungs burning with exertion, and then turns off the treadmill. He runs every day, a leftover habit from high school and college days, and it’s a good way to help him think. He’ll shower and then go back to work, ready to work on more stories. Last week’s paper stares at him from the coffee table when he gets back home, still not quite able to believe the front page.

_Two Miracles for the Price of One – Central City’s Golden Grace Never Rests_

He doesn’t know who took the pictures, but they did a brilliant job. One if of Miss Miracle in the middle of a fight with Cobalt Blue, green, gold and blue shining all over the bridge, and another is of her high in the air as she points a gun at the Woman of War. It’s a summary of what went on, as well as how the Woman of War came to be (as much information as he was allowed to print without getting his friends in trouble, anyway), and that Cobalt Blue is in custody. And even though he knows who it is, the costume and the mask and the glowing eyes still don’t give any indication that it’s Iris.

 _Iris is Miss Miracle_.

They haven’t spoken much about it since that night the Woman of War attacked, though he thinks about it all the time. He remembers that Chesca left some STAR Labs clothes out for him because his were covered in Iris’ blood, and that he couldn’t watch while they cut into the tentacle wrapped around her arm. And then their conversation on the roof, when he said that he was still mad at her, and she said she understood and that she’d give him space. But then she’d asked him, in that small, guilty voice of hers with her big brown eyes wide behind her glasses, not to take too long, because she already missed him. Which he hadn’t considered.

Barry’s still mad at her, of course, especially when he thinks of everyone who knew before him, and telling him to stop with his blog, and making him think he was crazy. But still, there is a little part of him that understands what she was saying. He always comes to her with his problems, but she never came to him with hers. She couldn’t talk about Calamity or being hunted by the police or anything, and he knows she was still in the wrong, but she’s Iris and he’s Barry, and even when they’re upset with each other they don’t like the idea of the other one hurting.

And it’s not the raging kind of mad, anyway, not like when he was yelling at her. It just makes him not want to see her all the time simply because he’s still processing everything. They spoke a couple of days ago, when he needed a quote from her about some villain that she’d caught. She had been working on something, obviously late, and was facing away from him when he knocked.

“Rose, I’ll have this done for you in five minutes,” she’d said, holding a picture up to the light. “Ten, tops, so…Oh. Um. Hey.”

“Hey,” he’d said quietly. Iris had put the picture down and adjusted her glasses.

“Patty’s out with your mom, so-”

“No, I came to see you,” he’d told her. “Just, I needed to say something about how Miss Miracle helped the Green Arrow last week, and since you know, it’s you…”

“Okay.” She’d sat down and gestured for him to do the same. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, I know the basics, that you helped get rid of a criminal called Double Down that started in Central and then moved to Star City.”

“Right. Uh…Just say that she was responsible for the supposed knife attacks that happened here last month – the police know which ones – and that she’s safe in custody. We know her civilian identity but obviously-”

“Of course, you can’t say,” he’d said. Iris had nodded and his eyes fell on her arm, still bandaged from the jellyfish attack. Nobody suspects anything about it and she’s passing it off as a harmless injury (‘This? Oh, it’s just a burn. It’s fine, though, I checked it out.’), but he knows that the injury must still be visible if she’s still wearing it. “Could you tell me what happened?”

He’d noted down everything she’d said as she spoke, still not quite coming to terms with the fact that the amazing woman he’d been writing about for the past six months was his best friend. He’d stood when he was finished, saying he’d see her later, but he accidentally knocked a mug off her table. Without even thinking about it, her index finger had pointed at it and it floated gently back to the table. “Uh, sorry,” she’d laughed nervously. “Habit. Anyway, I should let you get back to work, Patty says you guys are swamped.”

“Well, she’s right,” he’d shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve seen our apartment in the daytime in days.”

Iris had laughed and then he’d talked about the fact that they were giving him more responsibility at the paper since he made the front page. Right then, though, he’d looked behind her and spotted the picture frame with his article in it hung underneath some of her pictures of her and him and his mom and Francine. And it’s so ridiculously and heart-warmingly _Iris_ , to do that for him, that for a second he hadn’t known what to say.

“I never thanked you,” he’d said.

“For what?”

“Saving my life,” he’d pointed out. “Twice.”

“Barry,” Iris had said. “Of course I saved your life, you don’t have to thank me. Besides,” she joked, “I’m a superhero. It was easy.”

But then of course things had turned awkward, because they both remembered their argument and how bad it had gotten after Barry said being Miss Miracle was easy. Iris is never cautious around him, but with all of this between them she is. Like now, at the end of the day in Jitters. He’s sitting with his laptop noodling around with a story, and she walks in and orders coffee before she spots him when she’s looking for a place to sit down. She looks like a deer caught in headlights and he’s kind of annoyed at her for this as well, because it’s not like he’s about to start yelling at her again. Just because she’s giving him space doesn’t mean he hates her. “I was just – I can get my order to go-”

“Iris, come on,” he interrupts. “I’m not going to make you leave. I mean, you can stay, if – if you want…” he sighs. “Do you…wanna hang out, maybe? If you’re not busy.”

She blinks and then smiles, nodding. “Sure, I’d like that. So… who pissed you off?”

“How do you know anyone pissed me off?”

“I can tell by your face. Was it Missy? I bet it was Missy.”

“It was Missy.”

“Did she make you research the origin of the coffee bean again because you handed something in late?”

“Not quite. I thought I’d gotten in her good books with the front page because she started calling me ‘Barry’, but then I mentioned that I liked the writing from CalCo and she threw a donut at me,” he explains. “Now she’s back to calling me ‘Bart’.”

“Why does she hate CalCo so much?”

“Apparently it’s the home of her arch nemesis, Cal Grant, and we’re not allowed to talk about him. I thought people didn’t have those in real life.”

“Oh, believe it,” Iris tells him, thanking the waitress who brings her coffee. “Chesca is currently locked in a vicious battle with the guy that delivers our Chinese takeout. He’s always late and he never remembers her spring rolls, but she has a plan to get the upper hand.”

“Oh yeah,” he laughs, “what is it?”

“Something to do with measly tips, annoying delivery instructions and bad reviews on Yelp,” she answers. “The wrath of Francesca Ramon, ladies and gentlemen.”

They laugh and Iris snorts, which makes them both laugh even harder so that half the people in Jitters are looking at them like they’re idiots. So then Iris tells him about _her_ day, which involves a crime scene where someone stole tonnes of wrapping paper and ribbons from a party store (‘I swear to god, just when I think this city can’t get any weirder’), and they both discuss what they’re going to get Captain Singh and her girlfriend as an engagement present.

“How about a blender?” she suggests. “That’s a nice, safe gift.”

“It’s a terrible gift!” he says. “We’ve known her since we were kids, we should get her something more exciting than a blender.”

“Barry, do you remember the last time we tried to get her something ‘exciting’?” she asks dryly. “When she got that promotion to detective when we were teenagers? Do you remember the chocolate fountain?”

“I maintain that those instructions were wrong.”

“There was chocolate on the ceiling of the precinct for a month.”

“It was not my fault, those things are hot!”

“It _was_ your fault, I wanted to get her a cheese fondue set!”

“Oh what,” Barry counters, raising his eyebrows, “so the precinct could smell like cheese for a month instead?”

“The only reason we opened that thing early to test it was because of your obsession with chocolate.”

“Like you don’t feel the same way about cheese. Don’t think I don’t know you sit around eating handfuls of grated mozzarella all the time.”

“Whatever – oh!” she says suddenly, remembering. “I’m an idiot.”

Barry sips his coffee. “What is it?”

“You’re with Patty now, you can get the captain a present with her. I can get a separate one.”

“No, it’s cool,” he shrugs. “The Barry and Iris Disaster Present is practically a tradition at this point, right? I can get one with her and one with you.”

“Okay, cool,” she says, and Barry regards her for a second. That’s something else they haven’t talked about, mostly because Iris mentioned she can’t remember what she’d said when she was hallucinating from the jellyfish venom. She doesn’t remember that she called him her happy place. She’s still with Scott, since he left CCPN to pick her up for a date the day before, and there’s nothing weird between them. Except that when she was lying in his arms and the life was bleeding out of her he felt like he had during the coma when the hospital said they were going to turn her off – like his entire world was about to shatter into a million pieces. Like he was about to lose everything. _His_ everything.

Barry knows now that he’s probably felt _something_ for Iris all these years, he just doesn’t know what it is. But if he let it, if he doesn’t shut down all these ambiguous feelings that keep cropping up, he could mess up all his relationships. It’s not fair to Patty _or_ to Iris, to keep thinking about her like that. He does want to figure out how she’s feeling, though.

“A cocktail maker,” he says out loud. “That can’t go wrong, right?”

“Great idea,” she agrees. “Who doesn’t love cocktails?”

(Barry and Iris will later be banned from getting Captain Singh presents until her wedding)

“So if look online we – sorry,” Iris says, looking at her phone. Her face falls and she looks back up at him hesitantly. “Barry, I’m sorry, I have to go. I have a…thing-”

“Iris, I know, remember?” he laughs. “You can go off and be Miss Miracle, we can talk tomorrow.”

“Thanks, I promise I’ll call you tomorrow.” She gets up and starts to pack up her stuff before pausing. “Unless – I mean, do you want to come with?” At his raised eyebrows, she says, “You wouldn’t be out in the field with me, I’d be alone, but you can hang out with Colin and Chesca in the Cortex. And Dr Wells, if she’s there.”

Barry pauses. “Are you sure I wouldn’t be in the way?”

“Of course you wouldn’t be in the way. But if you’re busy…”

“No, it sounds like fun.” Patty is working late and at least he’ll finally be able to see what Iris has been up to for the past year. She leads them outside and looks around. “I don’t have my car…Oh, I forgot.”

Iris was holding her hands out to him and he takes them, shutting his eyes. When he opens them they’re under the bright lights of the Cortex, Chesca and Colin staring at the terminals. Iris lets go and marches towards the alcove that stores her outfit. “What’ve we got?”

“Copycats,” Chesca answers, staring at the screen before looking up. “Apparently the Royal Flush gang had some admirers, because…Barry! Come to check out the inner workings of the Miracle Workers?”

“We don’t call ourselves that,” Colin says. “But it’s good to see you, Barry.”

“Chess?” Iris asks, all business. As if they’ve done this a million times, she gets up and walks quickly to the alcove to help her get in her suit. Colin gestures for Barry to avert his eyes, showing him to a place to sit and then typing a few commands into the computer. “Who are the Royal Flush gang?”

“Group of bank robbers that gave us hell a couple of months ago,” he explains. As he types more commands, Chesca wheels out two large computer screens from the side while Iris switches her glasses for her mask. “These guys, however, seem to be a big fan of gold and silver.”

“Where?”

“Four, two heading down Seventh, one on Spring Street, and one on Tenth.”

“Okay, Seventh and Tenth I remember, but Spring…” Iris rubs her temples. “Could you guys-”

“Done,” Chesca says, while Barry stares at them.

“Four of them? You’re going to catch four at once?”

“No, she’s going to catch _two_ at once, then head off the other two into a corner and dump them somewhere the police can catch them,” Chesca corrects him. “And then she’s going to get me Krispy Kreme donuts.”

“No, she’s not,” Colin admonishes her as she sits back down. Iris turns to the monitors, which are now showing images of the city, and Barry looks around at everything. “How does this all work? Is it just you guys on headphones?”

“No. See, over the past year, Iris has seen pretty much every area of Central City, so she can teleport to it without thinking about it,” Colin explains. “But on nights like this, she has to have a clear picture in her mind so she doesn’t end up teleporting to the wrong place.”

“Plus, _we_ need to be able to see what’s up so we can direct her,” Chesca adds. “You good with that microphone?”

Barry blinks. “Me? You want me to help?”

“Of course. You’re part of the team now, right?”

Barry looks at Iris, who gives him a hopeful smile from underneath the mask. “I mean, if you’re sure…”

“Guys, they’re getting away,” Colin warns, and Iris nods, facing the monitors. Then she disappears, green sparks dancing on the floor. As Barry watches, an image of Iris appears on one of the monitors, and an icon with ‘MM’ on it appears on a grid map of the city.

“Freddie hooked us up to the security cameras around the city,” Chesca explains. “That way we can figure out where she’s going.”

“Iris, we’ve got the pair trying to turn onto Ninth.”

“That’s too far – I’m going for the one on Tenth and then head the other single off at Baker.”

“Careful, they’ve got-”

They hear Iris gasp and grunt as they head gunshots echo through the intercom. “Guns? Yeah, I figured.”

“There are civilians out there, Iris!”

“Noted!”

There are a series of bangs and shouts, and suddenly Barry can see Iris flitting between traffic and dodging the bullets the criminal is firing, until she flicks the gun away and lands on their back, teleporting them away from the street. “That’s one,” Iris says triumphantly, and Chesca grins.

“Okay, next one’s still on Baker.”

“On it.”

Iris doesn’t teleport away this time, instead flying behind the rider because she’s too far behind. They see her twist around more bullets, and Barry thinks that they’re going to get away when they see the motorcycle slowly start to rise from the ground, the wheels still spinning, and the driver looks around in confusion. Colin and Barry both laugh and Chesca whoops.

“God, you’re such a show-off,” Barry says, and Iris giggles.

“Like you wouldn’t do the same if you had superpowers.”

“Whatever, Miss Miracle,” Chesca says. “Quit fooling around.”

“You should see this guy’s face, he looks like he’s about to hurl.”

“Okay, fun’s over,” Colin says. “Put on your grown-up boots, Miss Miracle.”

“What? I’m letting him fly, that’s basically a public service. Look, the bike’s upside down!”

“ _Iris_!” everyone says.

“Okay, sorry. Look, I dropped him off at the precinct. Where are the last two?”

“Last I heard they were on Ninth and…shit.”

“What? What is it?”

“They’ve spilt – one’s heading to Tenth, and the other one’s heading downtown.”

“What’s wrong with downtown?” Barry mutters. Chesca bites her lip.

“A lot of those businesses and restaurants don’t have the newer security cameras because Mayor Bellows cut the development budget last year.”

Barry nods – they’d done a piece at the paper about that, about how it’s still affecting businesses even though they’re trying to sort things out for themselves. Colin shakes his head. “He’s gone off the grid, we can’t see him.”

Iris groans in frustration. “I’ve got the other girl, the one on the Vespa, but she didn’t have anything – I think that other guy’s got the gold bars.”

“That guy must be the leader.”

“I can’t catch him if I don’t know where he is!”

They all watch helplessly as their one remaining target flies down some side streets, the monitors blank because there are no cameras – the only thing they can see is the street names, but Iris doesn’t know them by sight. Then Barry spots something and leans forward. “Iris, remember the bowling alley we used to go to?”

“The one that moved up to Park Avenue? Yeah, why?”

“In about ten seconds, he’ll be turning the corner of that place.”

“Eight,” Chesca says, staring. “I think he’s trying to get out to the highway to head to Coast City.”

“They’re gaining speed,” Barry says. “Get ready, Iris.”

“Got it.”

There’s silence for a little while, before a crash and some punches. Everyone holds their breath, and then suddenly Iris is back in the Cortex, grinning as she pulls her mask off. “Guess they’re not even as good as the Royal Flush gang.”

“Nicely done, Iris,” Colin says, and Chesca nudges Barry.

“Couldn’t have done it without the newest member of the Miracle Workers.”

“Chesca!” Iris says. She holds her hand out for her glasses, which fly into her palm. “For the last time, we do not call ourselves that.”

“I don’t know why you won’t let this team be great, you know.”

“I’m not sure about that, that whole thing was pretty impressive,” Barry admits, and Iris blushes slightly. “Do you guys do this every day?”

“Most days,” Colin answers. “When we’re not busy or Iris isn’t too tired. Speaking of, it’s time for me to check that arm.”

As Barry watches, Iris zips down the jacket of her suit to reveal a black tee and the bandage wrapped neatly around the lower half of her left arm. “Does it still hurt?”

“Only a little,” she says. They all step closer and Barry swallows when he sees that there are still deep, tentacle-shaped welts from where it was wrapped around her arm. “Are you sure?”

“It’s a little tender, but only when I poke it, and only really in certain areas. Like, here, where it’s more red.”

“Because of where the stingers were,” Colin says, studying it. He pulls out a fresh bandage and changes the old one. “I still want you to wear it, at least until the welts disappear. Anything else you’re worried about?”

“Not really,” she shrugs, and Chesca grins.

“Great! And now since we have an extra member of the unnamed team, we actually get to go out and have lives.”

“Chess,” Iris says. “You can’t just expect Barry to stop everything he’s doing to help us all the time. He’s busy.”

“No, it’s cool,” he says. “I’ll help out when I can, if that’s okay. It’ll be nice to actually know what I’m talking about when I write about Miss Miracle saving people.”

“See? He wants to help.”

“In that case,” Colin says idly as he removes his gloves and pins Iris’ bandage, “maybe you can go to your sister’s birthday dinner tomorrow.”

Iris laughs – “Well played” – and Chesca curses. “You’re a pain in my ass, Snow.”

“Only because I’m right.”

Chesca and Colin start bickering and Iris walks over to Barry. “I’m probably going to hang out here for a while, you want some dinner?”

He raises his eyebrows and she shrugs. “Dr Wells covers it, but you really don’t want to see our food bill.”

They sit at the computer terminal and Barry stares as Iris adds more and more to their order. “Iris, you know I don’t like any of that stuff.”

“Um. I know. This is all for me.”

“What? But you’re tiny!”

“Yeah, and she eats like she’s never seen food before,” Colin interjects. “It’s kind of fascinating to watch someone so small eat so much.”

Iris scowls at him and flicks a wrench at him with her mind, which he narrowly misses, and Barry laughs at them both. “Just for that, you’re not getting any.”

“I don’t want any – I’m going back home to get our apartment ready. Ronnie’s coming back tomorrow.”

“Ronnie’s back?” Chesca exclaimed. “Cool! I’ve missed your better half. Is Professor Stein coming back too?”

“Why would Professor Stein be coming back with Ronnie?”

Iris, Chesca and Colin look at each other. “It’s a long story,” she says slowly. “You remember that time I came to work and my hair smelled like smoke?”

“Ronnie did that?”

“She’s a metahuman too.”

“Who sets things on fire?”

“Only sometimes,” Colin says. “Yes, Stein is coming back, but you’re still going to that dinner if I have to drag you there myself.”

“Why don’t you want to go to your sister’s birthday dinner?” Barry asks. “Come on, it’s free food, right?”

“Free food, repressed childhood rage, inferiority complex,” Chesca lists. “And all of that is _before_ the sangria. Because it’s _Danita’s_ special day.”

“Do we not like Danita?” Barry mutters.

“We’re not the biggest fans,” Iris mutters back. Then she clears her throat. “It’s just one dinner, Chess. Think of it as your good deed for the year. Besides, I’m sure your sister will be happy to see you.”

“Yeah, and maybe if I had your Bambi eyes I’d make them believe I didn’t want to drown myself in the wine.”

“Well, that’s one way to enjoy yourself,” she says swiftly as they boys start laughing. “Why don’t you go home and pick out an outfit, and you can send me pictures so we can decide which ones will make everyone jealous?”

“And,” Colin says helpfully, “I’ll go with you to the dinner and not-so-subtly talk you up and…what is it you guys call it? Throw shade?”

“You are so _white_ ,” the girls say together, and Barry just laughs. Chesca folds her arms and sighs.

“Fine. But I’m not getting her a card.”

“You’re getting her a card.”

She grabs her coat and walks out, Colin following. “And I’m having two pieces of cake.”

“As long as you get her a gift.”

“I have to get her a _gift_?”

Iris shakes her head as they both leave and turns back to Barry. “I’d apologise and say they’re usually better behaved, but we both know that they’re not. So…that’s what I do on my days off. And weekends. And when I’m supposed to be working.”

“That was amazing, Iris. Where’d you learn to do all that?”

“Practice,” she admits. “Believe me, it wasn’t this easy in the beginning. The first time I teleported, I kept leaving my clothes in places. You remember that time I kept blowing you off when you wanted to write your article for Simone Stagg?”

He nods. She had been distant and more forgetful than usual. “Yeah, well, we hadn’t figured out it took a lot of concentration to keep my clothes on. And let’s not forget this was the beginning of winter.”

“Okay, understanding a little more why you were so spacey.” They both laugh and then Barry looks down at his hands. He’s wanted to know this for days, but he’s had no idea how to ask. “What was it like? The first time you figured out you had powers – what was it like when you woke up?”

“Oh,” she says, leaning against a table. She takes her glasses off and cleans them, remembering. “Well, I felt like I could kind of already hear people – up here, that is – before I woke up. Being in a coma is weird, Barry, I don’t think there’s anything like it. Like, I think I remember Nora and my mom telling me about her visit and…you really hated your coffee machine, didn’t you?”

Barry laughs and Iris puts her glasses back on. “So when I woke up I didn’t think anything was different. So I go home and then I pick out a nice dress because – um, because all I had was the STAR Labs shirt. And then right after I saw you my mind sort of…You know when someone throws like a tennis ball to you, and you figure out the exact moment you can catch it? Well, that’s what it’s like for me, all the time now.”

He regards her, the memories of that day coming back. He was so happy to see her back he hadn’t really noticed anything different. “And then we got to the precinct and there was this girl, I think she was there for robbery, and I heard her think about grabbing Rose’s gun and shooting it, so I…moved it.” She shakes her head. “After that it got really loud, because I could hear everyone’s thoughts all at once and I couldn’t make it stop, and I felt like I was juggling a load of stuff even though it was all nailed down.”

Barry looks up at her. “That must have been scary.”

“It was,” she replies quietly. “So I came back here and told them – Colin didn’t believe me, of course, but they took me out to this airfield and made me use my power then. Which was okay, I guess, but then I kind of flashed back to the night my dad died, and I couldn’t – I just stopped. And I spent that whole day wanting to tell you and Nora, I swear, but I was still figuring it out, and then Chloe Mardon attacked-”

“She shouldn’t have told you not to tell me,” he interrupts. He’s realising it now, that it was unfair for his mother to ask that of Iris. He’s still mad at her about it, but it wasn’t fair because his mother knows that Iris would do anything to keep him safe. But she’s shaking her head.

“It doesn’t matter, Barry. I’m your best friend, I should have told you at the beginning.”

“Right, but at least I know how dangerous things can be. Like with that Cobalt Blue guy.”

Iris almost never gets mad – the Bambi eyes thing may be a joke, but it’s also true in that it takes a lot for that expression to disappear. The last time he remembers her truly, viciously angry (and not controlled by a crazy metahuman) was when all the stuff with Becky Cooper had happened, when they found out that she was using him to make an ex jealous. He doesn’t know what happened and his mother still won’t tell him, but Iris left the house with a steely look in her brown eyes, and for the rest of high school not only did Becky not say anything bad about him, but she also paled and jumped about a foot in the air every time Iris went near her. That look is in her eye now, and he actually feels kind of bad for the metahumans that have to face her.

“Have you figured out what’s up with him yet?”

“Not yet. He’s got this mask on that’s really hard to remove, but he won’t let us. We can’t use force because then we could hurt him, and Colin says we can’t put him under sedation because it could stop him from being able to breathe properly. It’s bad enough that we keep them all down there, even though I kind of hate the guy.”

He frowns. “Why?”

Iris raises an eyebrow. “Well, there’s the part where he attacked my best friend with a memory-wiping gun.”

“Ah,” Barry laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Right. But, I mean, it’s not like I remember being attacked, right? The hospital and Dr Wells said I’d be fine, and that everything important would probably come back on its own.”

Everyone has been very patient explaining everything he missed, when they can. It seemed like it had been a pretty normal day, until Cobalt Blue attacked the bridge. Apparently he went to the precinct for news, like he always did, then back to work, then went home to find his mother, and then ended up with Iris at the bridge. There’s also something that Missy shared with him, according to Scott, but he has no idea what it is since she’s been out of town and only got back today, which is when she threw the donut.

“Uh-huh,” Iris says, glancing at the ground, and Barry peers at her. She had explained to him some of the things that he missed, but every time he mentions it she gets evasive. Maybe she still feels guilty about not being able to save him. “Barry, about that day…”

“Yeah?”

“You, um, told me something. Something important. It – Apparently Missy gave you-”

But then the alarm for a guest goes off, and Iris leaves to get the takeout. When she gets back Barry’s so shocked by the fact that eight of the ten takeout boxes belong to Iris that all talk of Missy is forgotten, and they spend the rest of the night talking about her eating habits before they go home. Luckily for them, however, they’ll have a rather stark reminder of it the next day.

***

“I can’t believe we’re here this early.”

“It’s not that early, Chess.”

“Whose fault is this? This is your fault, isn’t it, Iris?”

“What, because I have a job to get to in an hour?”

Chesca rolls her eyes and waits for Professor Stein to finish her notes. They’ve come in early so that Professor Stein can talk to them. After looking at the weapon that Cobalt Blue used, they realised that the professor, as a leading expert in theoretical physics _and_ neuroscience (‘Does she _sleep_?’ Chesca had demanded), was the best person to figure out where it comes from and how it works. They had sent it to her while she was in Pittsburgh so that she could discuss it with colleagues she had there, too. And honestly, Iris needs something to cheer her up, because she started this morning failing to stop a car being stolen. And, well, she saw something weird while she was there – someone had iced over the locks and melted the safe. But Captain Cold and Heatwave are both in prison.

Aren’t they?

At least she’s having dinner with Scott later, that’ll make her feel better. Anyway, Colin is out helping Dr Wells with physical therapy, like he always does, so they’ll tell them about what she’s said later. They perk up as the professor removes her goggles and steps out into the Cortex. “Tachyons.”

“Tachyons?” Chesca repeats.

“Tachyons,” she confirms. Iris frowns.

“But those are theoretical – not a lot of people believe in them. I mean, I do but…”

“As do I, Miss West,” she continues. “And as for the theoretical, I have just returned from a month-long excursion during which I learned how to control fire powers after I was saved by a woman who is able to teleport from location to location.”

“Point taken. So you think tachyons is how Cobalt Blue created this by using a tachyon generator?”

“Indeed. Tachyons are theoretical because they are described as particles that move faster than the speed of light.”

“But nothing moves faster than the speed of light,” Chesca says, and the professor nods.

“Exactly, which is why many physicists do not believe in them. But the particles that make up this ray indeed move faster than the speed of light, but with the right kind of manipulation, they can also be used on the mind. Precisely what the limits are I do not know, but you can use the particles to create a beam that can erase memories. And since thoughts move at an inexplicable speed – how many of our reactions are involuntary, how many of our thoughts? – it’s power extends over the whole mind.”

“That’s insane,” Iris breathes, and the professor regards her for a moment before sighing.

“Miss West…Iris. I have read what I can on your father’s death, and Calamity’s powers, and of course talked to you, and from what I have gathered from my studies, I can see that tachyon particles can be manipulated and weaponised to mimic your powers.”

Iris just stares at her. “You think Calamity uses tachyon particles?”

“I think it’s certainly a possibility. Of course she could simply be like you, your own powers seem limitless, powered by something inside of you. But even if she is, she could use these particles to enhance her power. After some experimentation we saw that it could mimic a great deal of powers – telepathy, telekinesis, mind control, speed…the possibilities are endless.”

Iris and Chesca share a look. _Should we tell her?_

_No, I don’t think so – she just came back from an ordeal and the less people know, the better. But we should still keep her around._

_This could get scary, Chess._

_It’s a good thing we know Miss Miracle, then._

“Thanks, professor,” Iris says out loud. “I appreciate it. We’ll call you if we need anything else, but you probably want to get back to your husband.”

She nods. “Of course. I’ll be back later in the week, I wish to coordinate some training sessions with Veronica. She can be rather hot-headed at times, and wants to develop her powers as quickly as possible.”

“Why?”

Professor Stein shrugs. “For the same reason she’s obsessed with pizza, I suppose.”

After the professor leaves, Iris calls Chesca back down. “So, look, Colin and Dr Wells won’t be here for a while, and you know how he said he didn’t want to be too involved with what we’re doing?” Chesca nods and Iris continues. “Yeah, well I wanted to see whether we could talk to Cobalt Blue.”

“You think he can help?”

“Well, listen to what Stein said. Dr Wells has talked about the uses of tachyon particles in her articles before, so maybe she knows more than she’s letting on. Besides, you’ve been talking to him, right? I mean, as much as he’ll let you.”

Chesca nods again, more cautiously this time. “Well it’s more that I talk and he listens, and I make sure he’s eating. But I guess we can try talking to him.”

They make their way down to the Pipeline, Iris in her suit, and Chesca types in the commands for his cell before turning to Iris. “Look, he’s not – he’s really freaked out by all of this. Let me talk to him first, okay?”

Iris raises her eyebrows. “When did he get so sensitive? He’s a villain.”

“Iris, the last time he saw you, you were beating him up.”

“Yes, and then he punched me in the face. And he tried to kill hundreds of people. I don’t often claim the moral high ground, but I’m claiming it here.”

“Please, Iris?”

Iris looks at her friend. She’s sincere and unusually serious, so she sighs. “Fine.”

“And be nice.”

“I’m always nice!”

“Iris nice. The doe-eyed, completely harmless nice.”

She huffs and nods, so Chesca walks into the Pipeline. Iris can see the figure of Cobalt Blue sat cross-legged on the floor, still in his white and blue suit, his shoulders hunched. She tips her head, surprised. This is a far cry from the deranged metahuman that almost killed her last week. He raises his head when he hears Chesca coming, and sits up. “Hi,” she says, her voice completely different. “It’s me. How are you doing? Are you hungry?”

He shakes his head. “Good, because I don’t have any Thai food. Feeling any better?” A shrug. “Gonna let me take off the mask?” A vehement shake of the head. “Okay, fine. So, I have someone here who wants to see you.”

Cobalt Blue stills and then scrambles back into his cell when Iris steps forward, shaking his head violently. Chesca presses her hand to the glass and talks soothingly to him. “It’s okay, she’s not here to hurt you.”

 _No promises_.

 _Iris_.

 _Okay, okay_.

“She’s right,” Iris says evenly. “I’m not here to hurt you, I just want some answers. Can you do that?”

He looks at Chesca, who nods encouragingly, and then taps a few times on the bars. “Why is he doing that?”

“It’s how he talks,” Chesca explains. “It’s a prisoner of war code. It’s a good thing I watch so many spy movies, or his lunch order was going to be sandwiches.” She pauses, deciphering the taps. “He says he’ll try. But only yes or no questions.”

“I can do that.” Iris takes a deep breath. “Can you tell me who you are? Your name?”

A shake of the head. _No_.

“Have we met?”

A short nod. _Yes_.

“Are we friends?”

 _No_.

“Why did you attack me?”

“Yes or no, Iris,” Chesca reminds her.

“Right, sorry. Do you know Calamity?”

 _Yes_.

“Did she make you do this?”

 _Yes. No_. Then he shakes his head, confused, before Iris assures him. “Okay, don’t worry about that. Are you scared of her?”

 _No_. He pauses, looking at Chesca, and then starts tapping. “D,” she says as he continues. “O. C. T – Doctor. Do you mean Doctor?”

He nods eagerly and Iris steps forward. “Dr Wells is Calamity, isn’t she? It’s okay, we’re going to find out what she’s doing,” Iris says firmly, “she won’t hurt anyone else-”

But he shakes his head, listless, banging on the glass in desperation. “Hey, it’s okay, you’re safe, she can’t hurt you-”

More banging, and then suddenly he flinches back, away from them, and both of them look behind to see Colin standing there, way back at the entrance. And for a split second Iris is cold, _freezing_ , as if someone has sucked all the warmth out of the room, and then Dr Wells comes around the corner, her blue eyes cool. “Iris, Chesca,” she nods. “Everything alright?”

“We were just trying to see whether we could get the mask off,” Chesca says quickly.

“He still seems quite averse to the idea.”

“Looks like it.”

“Perhaps we should concentrate on work.”

“Great idea.”

“I’ll see you two upstairs.”

She turns and wheels back upstairs and Colin hangs back to walk up with them. “Are you two trying to get yourselves killed?” he whispers furiously. “We got here and you were both gone!”

“Relax Colin,” Iris says, pulling off her mask. “We were just talking.”

“And you couldn’t wait for us? Are you trying to make it look like we suspect her?”

“Of course not, we – Okay, seriously, I’m getting you mittens. Why are your hands so cold?”

“That isn’t the point,” he snaps, and then they all stop when they hear an alarm go off. They rush to the Cortex, where Dr Wells is at the terminal. At the same time, Iris’ phone starts ringing. “Iris West? Nora? I’ll be at work in a minute – What? WHAT? Yeah, fine, I’ll be there in a sec.”

They try to ask her what’s wrong, but she’s out of her costume and gone before they can open their mouths.

***

It starts off like a normal day at work, at least. Barry gets coffee, he checks his messages before the staff meeting, he tries to avoid Missy, who looks even grumpier than usual today. He fails, obviously, which shows him exactly what this day is going to be like. “Bart,” she says. “Have you given any thought to what we talked about?”

“You mean the donut in my hair?” he asks.

“No, the pictures I gave you last Wednesday.”

“I got hit with Cobalt Blue’s memory-wiping gun, remember?” he says in a bored voice. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know, Erica sent around a memo.”

“Oh, right,” she sighs dramatically. “I have no idea why all the interesting things happen to the most undeserving.”

“If I see him again, I’ll let him know you’re next on the list.”

Erica calls them all up for a staff meeting then, and he tries to remember what on earth Missy could be talking about. “So, everyone has their assignments,” she says as everyone sits down. “Luke, you’ve got the pollution in the bay story, Missy you have to write up that article on the disparities between Coast and Central City education spending, Barry, you’re researching the development budgets…”

“Who’s got sports?” Kirk asks.

“That will be determined by whatever happened at the game last night.” Erica presses a button and the large projection screen starts to slide out of the ceiling from behind her. “I’m thinking you and a couple of interns…”

Erica keeps talking but in a few seconds, none of them are watching her. Because they’re watching the screen. She blinks, staring, when she realises no one is paying her any attention. “What’s the matter with all of you?”

Barry’s throat has gone dry and he’s flashing back to Christmas, with the terror and the uncertainty and all the dead bodies. “Uh, boss?” he croaks out. He points to the screen. Erica turns and lets out a choked noise.

**_YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE_ **

**_STOP LOOKING_ **

**_OR CHRISTMAS WILL BE NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT I WILL DO_ **

The words are seared into the screen in white, and for a moment no one says anything. Barry swallows, suddenly feeling like everyone’s watching him. _It’s me_ , he thinks, _it’s because I’m investigating Calamity_.

“We need to call the police,” someone says as everyone starts chattering amongst themselves. “Ricky, we need to call the police. And are we reporting this?”

“No, not until they get here,” she says quickly. “If I know Captain Singh she’ll want to keep everything under control. I just…I can’t believe this is happening again.”

The police arrive within minutes, most likely because an attack by Calamity is classed as an emergency. He sees his mother, Patty and Captain Singh, as well as several others, and all of them jump into action mode as soon as they see the message. Patty comes up to him, her face drawn tight with worry. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, I guess,” he says. He looks into her blue eyes and wonders whether he should tell her about investigating Calamity. He hasn’t told anyone mostly because he knows they would have told him to stop, but now he at least has to tell one of them. “Just freaked out. We spent so long thinking she was gone and then something like this happens.”

“I know,” she sighs. She spots something behind him and then clears her throat. “I’m going to have to ask everyone to clear that area, our CSI will be here in a minute and she needs room to work.”

“Iris is coming?”

“Yeah, she’s on her way. Crappy way to start the day, huh?”

Captain Singh calls her away right then, and then the detectives are giving instructions and interviewing people in turn. Everyone steers clear of the raised table and the projection screen, gathering in the main part of the offices. Then he sees a familiar figure giving instructions to Erica while he’s being interviewed.

“Okay, everyone,” Iris says in her most authoritative voice (which Barry has to admit is pretty authoritative), “CSI coming through. Nobody touch anything, alright?”

As Barry watches she walks to the dais and puts her gear kit down, pulling on her gloves and taking pictures of the scene. When his interview is over he goes up to his mother and Patty, who are going over their notes. “Anything?”

“Well, we’ve gone over the security tapes, and nothing. And no one has seen or heard anything out of the ordinary,” Nora says. “Maybe Iris can find something? She didn’t the last time, but-”

“Um, Nora?” Patty says quietly, pointing. They all turn to look at Iris, who’s facing the screen, not moving. “Her dad – I guess, the last time…”

“Yeah,” Nora sighs. “Barry, come with me. Patty, Singh wants you to tell Erica what to do next, and I want to see whether we can talk to the night security guard.”

Iris is staring at the screen when they walk over to her, and Barry sees that her hand is over her heart. His own constricts when he realises that it’s where Miss Miracle’s emblem would be, and that this time at Christmas it was pinned to the door of the precinct with a knife covered in blood. “Iris,” Nora says softly, touching her shoulder, and she jumps slightly.

“Sorry,” she says, swallowing. “It’s just – a lot. What does the captain say?”

“Well, we don’t have a lot to go on, like the last time. You?”

“Calamity didn’t leave any traces before, so I doubt she’d leave any today. But I’ll still work on the scene, take some pictures. If anything it’ll let us know how she’s thinking.”

“Do you need any help?” Barry asks. Iris adjusts her glasses.

“Yeah, actually. I don’t really know how this place works, so I’ll need someone to turn the lights on and off, tell me what usually goes on so I can figure out what’s out of the ordinary, that kind of thing.”

“Whatever you want, sunshine.”

“Great, you get to be a CSI assistant for the day. How often do you use this thing?”

“Every day, pretty much,” he replies after his mother has walked off again. Iris climbs onto the table to take another picture of it. “It’s where we watch videos when we don’t want to work the televisions.”

“And anyone can figure out how to operate it?”

“Right.”

Iris puts the camera down and gets out a torch so she can start lifting prints. Every few minutes she’ll make a noise or a gesture that anyone else wouldn’t have understood, but twenty years of being her best friend means that he knows what she’s talking about. “I need a…” she trails off, making a weird gesture with her hands as she stares at the message, and Barry grabs a penknife and a small Ziploc bag. “Thanks. I need to take a sample of this, it looks like she burned her message in, and then I’ll need to fingerprint everyone in here.”

“Really?” he frowns. “You don’t think one of us is Calamity, do you?”

“No, of course not. But I need to rule out any fingerprints that could belong to any of you when I get back to the lab. Not that Calamity will leave any.” Iris pauses. “Look, are you busy at lunch? I have to get these back to the lab and analyse them, but I need to talk to you.”

“Sure, I need to talk to you anyway too.” Because honestly, if there’s one person he should be telling about this, it’s Iris. Not just because he’s sure that message was directed at him or even because she’s Miss Miracle, but because Linda and Wally are involved as well and she would hate it if anything happened to them. It suddenly hits him, again, that it wasn’t just Miss Miracle that was captured by Calamity, it was Iris. And now she’s reliving the entire thing all over again.

He catches his mother on the way out, while Iris is telling the captain about what she found. “Hey, mom? Uh, what happened with Iris and Calamity? Is she okay?”

His mother sighs and rubs her head. “It’s not…that simple, Barry. I don’t know what happened, she only told me little pieces.”

“So did she escape, or did Calamity let her go?”

“I have no idea, sweetheart. She just turned up at the precinct that night and headed out again, and it took me another week of coaxing it out of her. Not even the others know, not really, I don’t think.” His mother shakes her head. “All of this was so much easier when you were both thirteen and all I had to protect you from was the measles.”

***

Iris can’t stop feeling cold.

She knows it’s illogical, and she’s not even at CCPN anymore, but she feels like Calamity is right behind her, making her freeze with that mind control power of hers. She knows she needs to get it together before someone comes in demanding a report from the crime scene. Iris rubs her eyes briefly before putting her glasses back on and getting to work.

It’s better than the last time, at least. There’s no one dead or kidnapped, as far as they know. She knows, though, that soon this will be in the news, and then people will start to get scared again and ask what they’re doing to combat it.

She doesn’t want to tell them that Miss Miracle is scared too.

She called Colin after she got back, and he told her that Dr Wells could have done it right before he got there for physical therapy this morning. So now they know it’s Dr Wells, they just have to prove it. Which is why she has to tell Barry that he’s the one the message was aimed at. Him and Missy, probably. She would have thought that someone already told him about it, but obviously not. She hopes he won’t be too mad at her.

Iris looks up when someone knocks on the door to her lab. “Patty? Did I forget something?”

“No,” she says. She walks in and puts a brown bag on the table before sitting down, her usually calm demeanour kind of nervous. “Um, Barry said those are your favourite.”

Iris peers in the bag. “You brought me brownies?”

“Yeah. I mean, I just thought – it’s never easy seeing anything that reminds you of the thing that killed your dad. I should know. Are you okay?”

“Sometimes. You?”

“I’m a cop and you’re a CSI,” Patty laughs. “I think we’ve probably got the same issue.”

“Yeah, doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out why we’re doing this.” She pauses. “How’s your mom about it? I mean, no matter the circumstances it’s hard having someone ripped away from you like that.”

Patty takes a brownie from the bag. “My mom’s less…zen than me. We never caught the guy who did it.”

“My mom’s the opposite. Something about me being her bright spot.”

“Moms are weird.”

“Moms are weird.”

It’s strange that she finds this kinship with Patty, of all people, but she can still feel that uneasiness that comes up whenever Patty talks about her mother. Before she can explore it, however, she hears a familiar pair of heels clicking into her lab. “There you both are,” Nora says briskly. She drops a paper bag on the desk and pulls up a chair, and Iris raises her eyebrows. “Remind me to thank the person who sent out the memo of everyone bringing me food.”

“Patty brought you food and that’s because she’s nice. I brought my lunch to make sure you ate something.”

“Well, I’m doing this and then heading out for lunch, but I’m happy to hang with you guys. Oh, that reminds me!” she reaches into her bag to pull out a DVD. “ _My Best Friend’s Wedding_. Barry asked me to give it to you, but then he got hit with the gun and I guess he forgot.”

“Thanks,” she says in surprise. “I asked him for this weeks ago and he kept saying he had it, but he always forgot to get it from you.”

“Well, that’s what happens when you share a DVD collection,” Iris shrugs, going back to her computer. “And a CD collection.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Nora clears her throat. “So have you girls decided what you’re getting Captain Singh for getting engaged?”

“God, I don’t know,” Patty frowns. “Are they registered anywhere?”

“Bobbi probably registered them somewhere, I just have no idea what to get her that won’t make her grumble about the ridiculousness of the wedding industry.”

“Any ideas, Iris?”

“Barry and I are getting them a cocktail-maker,” Iris says absently. She frowns at her screen as she types, not noticing Patty giving her an odd look.

“Both of you?”

“Yeah, we’ve done it since we were kids, since we couldn’t afford to get anything fancy. Although Barry usually wants to get something ‘exciting’ and that’s how we almost got banned from his orthodontist. Did he ever tell you that story?”

“No, he hasn’t mentioned it.”

“Barry wanted to get him a remote control plane, since he collected them,” Iris continues vaguely. “So obviously he wanted to show him how it worked, but he never reads instructions properly, so we broke two of his ceiling lights.”

“And he wasn’t mad?”

“Well seeing as I’m pretty sure I put his kids through college, he wasn’t too mad about it,” Nora points out. She looks between Patty looking at Iris and Iris not noticing anything’s wrong and clears her throat. “Did you guys hear about Tyler?”

“Oh yeah, he finally got into culinary school,” Iris remembers. “He told me last week. I’m going to miss seeing him at Jitters.”

“Yeah, he’s the only one who knows my coffee order,” Patty admits. “Now I’m going to have to train someone else.”

“Tell me about it. I remember when he first started working there and he tested all his recipes on us. I think I went into a sugar coma from all the brownies Barry used to bring me here.”

“I…can imagine.”

“Although that’s how he found out how to make my favourite brownies,” she continues blithely, while Nora tried not to put her head in her hands. “And it – _crap_!” she says suddenly, and they both stare at her. “Iris? What is it?”

“I’m late,” she says quickly, gathering up her stuff. “I’ll be back later. Tell me if you like that movie, Patty, it’s one of my favourites.”

***

Iris wants them to meet at STAR Labs, so he brings them lunch and meets her outside. “Remind me to get you a key card,” she says, scanning her own and letting them inside. Barry studies her as they go down to the Cortex. She doesn’t seem as shaken as she was this morning, but then she’s been lying to him for months, maybe he can’t read her anymore.

“How’s everyone at work?” she asks.

“We have today and tomorrow off,” he tells her. “Captain Singh wanted to put in some new security measures and everyone’s really spooked, but Erica wanted us to break the news tonight so people get over it over the weekend.” He pauses and sighs. “Look, Iris, I have something important to tell you, and I want you to listen to me.”

“Sure,” she says, setting out their lunch, but Barry steps forward and grabs her shoulders

“No, Iris. I mean _really_ listen to me.”

“O-Okay,” she breathes, smiling a little. “Whatever you need to t-tell me, I’m listening.”

Barry takes a deep breath. “When was the last time you spoke to Wally?”

It might be his imagination, but he thinks that Iris deflates a little. “Um, I think last week? Scott and I went to dinner with him.”

“Right. Well, the reason I wanted you to meet him so much was because he’s kind of involved in the whole Calamity thing.”

Iris’ mouth opens and closes. “I – How?”

Then she listens as he explains that Wally figured out there were weird gaps in his and Linda’s memory, and then whatever Calamity did to him wore off so he knew that something had gone wrong. “Well, not wore off,” he admits. “Apparently her powers don’t work on him. So she’s capturing people and making them metahumans, and making them commit all these crimes.”

“Yeah, but why? Do you think it’s a power thing? Maybe she likes having control of Central City.”

“But she doesn’t _really_ have control of the city,” he points out. “When you’ve got someone like that, they want to be visible, they want to be a constant source of fear. This hiding and then letting everyone love Miss Miracle, but only coming out when someone’s close to finding her? It means something else.”

Iris sighs. “Well, that’s something else to worry about. Why are you telling me this now?”

He frowns at her. “Because that’s why Calamity left that message, to get me to stop looking into metahumans. I’m sorry, Iris, I should have told you, but Wally and Linda-”

“Barry, stop apologising. We could have avoided all this if I had just told you everything in the first place, and you were trying to protect them. I just – what about the pictures from Missy?”

“What pictures from Missy?”

“These ones.” Iris crosses to a cupboard and takes out a folder before handing them to him. “What am I looking at?”

“You showed me those on the day Cobalt Blue hit you with the gun,” she explains. “You said that Missy told you those all match up with the people who have gone missing since Calamity turned up.”

Barry thumbs through the pictures in disbelief. Okay, maybe he had been a little suspicious of the quiet, aloof woman that had put Iris in the coma, and maybe he’s kind of afraid of how mysterious she is. But he never thought she would want to kill Iris. Or anyone, for that matter. “This is crazy.”

“I’ll say. I don’t know whether she found out about Missy or you, but we need to tell Wally and Linda,” Iris carries on. “They’ll be worried when this thing comes out on the news. Missy too, actually, since this whole thing was her idea. How do you want to do it?”

Barry pauses, chewing his fries. “Actually I think Miss Miracle should tell them. Missy will be more likely to believe you more than me anyway.”

“Because she throws donuts at you and calls you Bart?”

“I’m telling you, I have no idea how that woman is still employed.”

They laugh and continue with their lunch, which Barry misses because they haven’t done this in a long time. Even with the whole ‘sociopathic villain who’s pretending to be your friend’ thing hanging over them, it’s still nice.

“So Olivia Queen is the Green Arrow?” he asks. “Seriously? But I thought she was a hard-drinking party girl.”

“Believe me, if she were a hard-drinking party girl, she’d be a lot more fun,” Iris mutters. “She’s always so grumpy. Oh!” she realises. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you who she was.”

“Why?”

“Well, the last time I pissed her off she shot me.”

“She _shot_ you?”

“In fairness, I tried to kill her.”

“Iris.”

“It’s a long story, a metahuman turned me crazy and…Huh. Actually, it’s not that long.”

Barry laughs at her, shaking his head, until he remembers what else happened that night – that she also tried to kill him and Patty. She said she had been in a different place with him, when they’d had their argument, with the flirting and trying to break them up, and maybe that fed into some of her anger. But he still can’t help but feel that there’s something missing from that day, because whenever he looks at her something tugs in his gut.

“Chess,” Iris says as their friend walks in. “What’s up? I thought you guys were all downstairs.”

“Colin and Dr W went to a conference,” she explains. “They’ll be back later. Hey, Barry. What are you guys doing here?”

“Just getting more confirmation that your boss is a sociopath,” Iris says, standing up. “I’ll tell you about it. I actually need to get back to work, but I’ll call you later, Barry. And _you_ , be nice to your sister.”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” she wants to know. “Are you leaving too?”

“No, I have the day off, so I’ll probably just go back home.”

“Oh, you know what? I have something for you.” She rootles around in one of their wardrobes as Iris wishes them both goodbye. “Your clothes, freshly laundered. Sorry it took so long, I had to get the stains out of the Miss Miracle suit, because iris has no respect for other people’s property.”

“I thought it _was_ Iris’ suit.”

“Is she still telling that lie?”

Barry chuckles and then looks down at his jeans and shirt. The entire reason that he’s only just getting them back is because they used to have Iris; blood all over them. When he closes his eyes, he can still imagine it. He feels that tugging thing again and looks up. “Iris is okay, right? Did she ever tell you what happened with Calamity?”

Chesca bites her lip and shakes her head. “Not all of it. All we know is that Calamity kidnapped her and somehow she got away.”

Barry nods, fingering the clothes. “Right.”

“You’re very…” Chesca searches for the word. “Protective of her.”

He gives her a rueful smile. “Yeah, I know it’s annoying.”

“No, Barry-”

“No, it’s true, I am. I always have been. My mom and Patty get annoyed with it, but Iris never does. I guess it’s – did Iris tell you about my sister?”

Chesca starts. “You have a sister?”

“Had,” he corrects quietly. He sits down and she does the same. “She died right after she was born, when I was five. And that I was – God, I was so excited, because my mom said a little sister is kind of like a best friend. And I was starting first grade and I thought I could bring her in for show and tell, because I was a kid and I thought that’s how it worked. But then she…” he swallows, his voice shaking a little, “she d-died, and my dad left. But then I started first grade and I met Iris, and we were friends from, like, the first day. And we’ve been best friends ever since, but I guess I just never got over the fear of losing another person I care about, because…because it’s so easy for them to leave.”

Chesca looks at him for a moment, before wiping a tear away, and Barry groans. “Sorry, I didn’t want to bring you down.”

“No, it’s okay,” she says. “You know, Iris is really lucky to have you. No,” she adds at his look, “I mean it. I don’t think she would have gotten through this year without you, even if she never told you.” She holds out a fry to him. “Welcome to the team, Barry Allen.”

***

“This better be good, Allen,” Missy grumbles, and Linda turns to Barry.

“I can’t believe she’s so grumpy all the time.”

“Try working with her,” he replies, and then clears his throat. “I wouldn’t drag you to Jitters past closing time if it wasn’t good.”

Missy rolls her eyes and goes back to her phone. Wally, who’s been snacking on the muffins and cookies that Tyler left out, looks at them. “I still can’t believe this is happening – you said she came to CCPN?”

Barry nods again. Tyler had agreed to let him use the place – he’s leaving and besides, ‘Miss Miracle rocks’ – and Iris should be here any minute to warn them all. Convincing Missy to turn up had been easier than he thought it would be, maybe because a sociopath had attacked their workplace today, but that doesn’t mean she’s any nicer. Linda and Wally are understandably shaken, of course, but Barry has assured them that everything will be fine.

“Does Iris know?” Wally asks. “Is she okay?”

“She knows,” Barry says carefully. Iris decided not to tell them just yet who she was, since Wally is still a relatively new addition to her life. “She’s fine, but I think she’d prefer it if you guys were safe.”

“I know, I just wanted to help.”

“Good evening, everyone.”

They all look up to the upper platforms to see Miss Miracle – Iris, he remembers – standing above them, her eyes glowing like golden lamps. Her voice is distorted and she’s mostly in shadow. “Thank you for coming.”

“Okay,” Missy admits, standing up. “I take it back, Allen. You’re not full of it.”

“No, he isn’t,” she agrees. She folds her arms. “I want to thank you for what you’ve been doing – Barry told me you’ve been trying to bring down Calamity in your own ways. But now I’m going to need you to stop.”

“I’m not sure I can do that,” Missy disagrees. “I’m a reporter, I find the truth.”

“That’s true. But if you keep digging, you’ll be a dead reporter,” she says firmly. “I don’t know why she sent that message, but it’s enough that she sent it. She knows that you’re looking, and next time she won’t be so friendly.”

“So you’re just going to defeat her by yourself?” Linda looks up at her, her face bathed in the golden glow. “Are you sure?”

“Miss Park, I’ve got some very talented people on my team,” she says softly. Her head tilts almost imperceptibly towards Barry as she speaks. “Believe me, I won’t be alone. But thank you for your concern. Now, do you promise to stay out of this?”

“It’s for your own good,” Barry adds. “If there’s anyone who knows how dangerous Calamity is, it’s her.”

“Fine.” Wally steps closer to her, craning his neck. “But you have to promise you’re going to do everything you can to catch her. My cousin’s got her life fucked up by her and she’s the only reason I’m doing this.”

Even without seeing her face, Barry knows that Iris is touched, and he’s glad that Wally was brave enough to come up to Barry and convince him to get Iris to talk to him, especially since the impression that he got of him last year was of a guy who constantly yelled at the doctors who couldn’t save his best friend. Iris has spent so long with so little to defend her, she deserves this. Which makes the fact that she not only lied to him but made him feel stupid all the more hurtful. “Well,” she says evenly, “she’s very lucky to have you.”

After they all leave (Missy just says she has better things to write about anyway, while Wally and Linda thank him for warning them before the news breaks), Iris floats down to his level, her eyes their normal brown colour. “Thanks for doing that. Miss Miracle may be the modern miracleworker, but she still needs her Twitter flunkie.”

“Of course,” he says easily. He looks around. “So, the only reason Tyler let me have the keys for this place is so that I could lock up afterwards…”

“Say no more, this is the part of my powers that I actually like.”

Iris uses her hands and mind to manoeuvre the chairs and tables back in place, as well as clear up all the plates and cups. He watches, his arms folded, and after a little while Iris stops. “Okay, what’s bothering you?”

“How do you know anything’s bothering me?”

“Because I have been reading you since way before I became a mind reader,” she says, smiling lightly. She sits down on the counter and faces Barry as he leans against the back of an armchair. “Spill it, Care Bear.”

Barry looks down at the ground briefly and sighs. “When I was writing about you, when you were Blink. Look, I know my mom said you had to get me to stop because it would put me in danger, and I get that, I do. But I worked really hard on that blog, and I did it for you, and you made me feel like an idiot and like I was wasting my time. That wasn’t fair, Iris.”

She ducks her head as he speaks, having the grace to look ashamed, before taking a breath. “Wait here,” she says quietly. She blinks away for a few seconds, and then is back with what looks like a large scrapbook in her hands. “So when we’re looking for metahumans, one of the things we do see if anyone has reported anything about it already,” she explains. “Like, with the Mist, people kept saying in the mob world that they kept seeing Kyla Nimbus everywhere, even though she was supposed to be executed the night the Particle Accelerator exploded.”

“Right, I told you about her the night we went the see _The Imitation Game_.”

“Yeah. And the thing is, the person who ended up being our biggest source was you.”

He blinks. “Me?”

“Yes, you, Barry,” she laughs. She opens up the scrapbook and he’s surprised to see it’s snippets of his blog with annotations and notes all over them. “You always managed to find them first, so you were the one helping us. And I never thought you were stupid, I thought it was amazing, which is what I told everyone. We have it open in STAR Labs all the time.”

Barry feels his hear lift. “They read my blog.”

“Everyone reads your blog. Olivia read the whole thing in one night once, and then she got mad that I’m not so thorough when I’m looking for metahumans.”

“She said that?”

“Ugh, ignore her. I told you, she’s grumpy _all the time_.” She pauses. “But I never thought your blog was anything other than brilliant, Barry. I know it didn’t seem like it, but I was always really proud of you.”

And right then is when he would ask her whether she still loves him because he’s feeling that tugging thing again, but then she starts frowning and puts a hand to her ear. “Chess? What is it? 911? What happ – Francesca Ramon, you needing to bitch about your sister over vodka _is not an emergency_! I just – okay, okay, I’ll be there in a minute.” She turns off the intercom and then looks back up at him. “Sorry, duty calls. Apparently. Let me just…” she snaps her fingers and several things fly across the room at lightning speed, making Barry duck out of the way of them. “Iris!”

“Sorry!” she says. Then she flicks her wrist and one of the chairs adjusts, before she sighs in satisfaction. “Okay. Thanks again. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She walks towards the door and he clears his throat. “Um, Iris?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think walking into a bar dressed like that will help anything, sunshine.”

“Oh. _Oh_!” she laughs. “Um. Thanks.”

She snaps her fingers and disappears, and Barry’s left chuckling to himself in the dim light of the coffee shop.

***

The bar is crowded and smells like a mixture of sweat, beer and chicken wings. Iris, back in jeans and a leather jacket thanks to Barry, spots Chesca already drinking by herself and walks towards her. “Okay, Long Island Iced Tea. You really think it’s a good idea to mix vodka, rum and tequila?”

“If you’d have the dinner I did,” she counters, “you’d be mixing alcohol, too.”

Iris regards her friend. She’s usually cheerful and chipper, so things must have been awful if she looks so miserable. So Iris nods and orders her own cocktail. “Okay, spill. I will bitch and moan and decry everything Danita did.”

About an hour and another cocktail later, they’re still going. “…and then I accidentally on purpose spilled sangria on her shoes.”

“She probably deserved it,” Iris says loyally.

“It would have been a churro, but I like those.”

“Why waste a dessert?”

“And then I left and came here.”

“Where you’d be appreciated.”

Chesca is quiet for a moment, biting her lip. “They’ve always liked her more than me,” she says quietly. “All I did was like science, but because I’m not all cute and perfect and brilliant at piano, they like her more than me.”

Iris grabs her hand and squeezes. “Well, speaking as someone who was brought back to life by the work of one Francesca Ramon,” she says warmly, “I think it’s their loss. And you know that’s not true, Chess. Did you sister at least like her present? What’d you get?”

“A guitar.”

“You got a guitar for a pianist.”

“She is my sister, and I would like her to learn new skills,” she replies. “Ugh, whatever, I don’t even want to talk about it anymore. What about you? Weren’t you supposed to be on a date with Scott?”

Iris sighs. “Yeah, but I had to cancel it. I had to tell Missy, Wally and Linda to stop investigating Calamity. I would have done it later, but I couldn’t risk them getting hurt.”

“Is everything okay with him?”

“Actually, I think I have to break up with him.”

It’s something she’s been slowly realising, ever since that day on the bridge, but made worse by the fact that she’s Miss Miracle. Chesca gives her a rueful look. “Why? You like him, what’s wrong?”

“Chess, my life is…insane. When we first started dating I had to cancel because of Firestorm. Last week I had to cancel a date because there was a residual stinger in my arm and I kept seeing Justin Bieber everywhere. And then today happened, and that’s not even the worst part.”

“What is?”

She shakes her head. “I spent so long convincing myself that I was over Barry. But then he kissed me on that bridge and it all came back to me. Even though I thought I was about to die, I thought if I could just save everyone, I got to go back to a world where Barry was in love with me. Because the truth is that he’s still the only one I’ll ever want.”

Iris looks down into her drink, wishing for the millionth time that she could get drunk. She has no idea why she even bothered. Between the helping her at STAR Labs, and then being for her when she’d been faced with Calamity’s violence, all that’s happened is that she’s still as in love with him as she’s always been.

Barry Allen is the love of her life, and that’s never going to change.

“Anyway, he deserves someone who’s heart doesn’t…wander,” she finishes. “Who doesn’t kiss other people and completely forget about him.”

Chesca nods. “You haven’t told him?”

“I don’t know what good it would do, apart from make him feel terrible. Sure, I feel guilty, but what’s going to happen? Barry doesn’t even remember.”

“I’m sorry, _chica_ ,” she says sympathetically. Iris shrugs.

“It is what it is, I guess. Besides, that’s what chocolate is for. Anyway,” she shakes her head as the waitress comes to get their empty cups. “You gonna be okay?”

“I think so. I want to find someone really hot to make out with, though.”

“Oh, you came to the right place honey,” the waitress says. “There’s a really hot guy with amazing blue eyes out by the entrance.”

“My cue to leave,” Iris laughs, standing. “Go get ‘em, Chess.”

Iris is preoccupied when she leaves, so she doesn’t notice that she’d recognise the hot guy with the amazing blue eyes. Because his name is Louis Snart, and he’s most definitely not there to make friends.

***

“… _I’m confident that with the help of the authorities and Miss Miracle, we can eliminate this threat. I have already had confirmation from her that she will not rest until she’s done everything she can to find Calamity_.”

The press conference is attended by all the major news outlets in Central City, and even some from Star City and Coast City. Barry’s blog is exploding, but all he’s done is put out the same statement albeit from Iris. He wishes he could do _something_ , though, because he’s going out of his mind with boredom. Patty left this morning, his mother’s at the conference, and Iris is at work. He does some work on his blog until lunch, updating it so all the information is up to date, and is surprised when he gets a call from Colin. “Barry?”

“Colin? Everything okay?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt your morning, I hope you’re not busy,” he says, his voice slightly breathless.

“Of course not. What’s up?”

“Do you happen to know where Chesca is? She didn’t show up for work this morning and she’s not picking up her phone.”

“Have you tried Iris? They were together yesterday, I think.”

“Yeah,” Colin sighs. “But she can’t find her either.”

“Okay, well I’m sure she’s fine,” Barry says, but they deal with enhanced jellyfish and crazy metahumans and villains every day. He instinctively grabs his jacket. “I’ll be there in a minute, and we can figure out what’s wrong. But she’s probably just late.”

He’s surprised to see even Dr Wells worried when he gets there; she nods distractedly when he arrives. “Barry,” she says quietly. “You haven’t seen Chesca? You have no idea where she’d be?”

“She and Iris went down to the bar on Spring Street yesterday, but that was the last time we saw her.”

Suddenly Iris and his mother appear in the Cortex in a shower of green sparks. “What happened?” he demands. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Snart,” she says shortly as Iris runs off to get her suit.

“Snart?” Colin, Dr Wells and Barry repeat.

“She’s back, and she’s got her weapons back too. She’s at the Santini family casino-”

“If she robs that they’ll be a mob war,” Dr Wells finishes. “Detective, you know the policy on Iris getting involved with mob situations…” Barry stares between the two of them.

“Policy?”

“The mob are dirty, dangerous. They don’t operate like normal criminals do, and they know Miss Miracle rescues civilians all the time. If she gets too involved-”

“They could use a civilian as leverage to get her to stop looking into certain crimes,” he realises. When they all stare at him, he frowns. “Guys, come on, I have a PhD in criminal psychology. Stop looking at me like I’m monkey who just proved string theory.”

Colin looks amused. “Point taken, but I thought Snart and Rory were in prison.”

“Apparently they got out,” Iris says tersely, swapping her glasses for the mask. “I can’t worry about all that stuff right now. Barry, could you be at the terminal today? Chess usually-”

“Of course, Iris.”

“Great. Nora, call the precinct, because they’re about to have two more guests.”

***

There’s not a lot Iris hates about being a superhero, but one of them is arriving in the middle of a shoot-out between three insane villains and the mob.

Bullets spit through the air with the force of cannonballs and Iris stops them with barely a thought. Then she sees ice blast through the air as well as a strange silver substance. “Iris, what’s going on?” Barry asks.

“Tuesday,” she mutters. “They’re really going at it. Hold on.”

Iris raises her fists in the air and all the guns go with them, before being flung into the corners. She spots a woman in a blue parka and sighs. “How long are we gonna do this, Snart?”

“Until one of us wins!” Snart yells, aiming the gun. Iris looks around, spotting a familiar figure, and has her arms around his neck before he can move. “Gonna shoot your baby brother, Lena?”

“You couldn’t stay quiet when you were helping last year. You had to flirt with Chesca,” Snart drawls, and Louis Snart, trapped as he is, shrugs.

“She’s cute.”

“Does someone want to catch me up?” Barry asks. “Does a supervillain have a crush on Chesca?”

“Yup,” everyone says over the intercom.

“Well, Miss Miracle, you know my little brother from our little adventure with Freddie Smoak last year. But I know you won’t hurt him, because you don’t want anything to happen to your little friend.”

Iris blood goes cold. “Chesca?”

“She works fast, you know. But unless you want to see her in pieces, you’ll let little Louis go.”

Iris’ hands start to shake and then so does everything in the room, but she lets him go. “Thank you,” he says. “And just so we’re clear, it’s ‘Silver Spinner’. Chesca came up with that.”

“Snart, you tell me where she is,” Iris snarls. “You tell me where she is right now or I swear to God-”

“Ooh,” she grins. “Go ahead, dollface. Read my mind. You turn up there and Chesca’s dead before you even see her. But I’ll think about it.”

Iris teleports back to the Cortex, her hands still shaking with rage. Barry, Dr Wells and Colin are watching her. “Mom went back to the precinct, but she sent us the video from the bar,” Barry says gently. “She got into a car with Snart – dude Snart. And the license plate was iced over.”

“She’s all alone,” Colin whispers quietly. “She’s not supposed to be there, this isn’t supposed to happen-”

Iris frowns. “No, of course not, but we’ll find her.”

“We’ve faced much more dire consequences than this,” Dr Wells adds. “We’ll get her back.”

“I’m back,” comes a quiet voice from the doorway. Colin leaps up and hugs her before anyone can say anything.

“I’m going to kill you. And then I’m going to resurrect you, so Ronnie can kill you too.”

“Sorry,” she whispers, stepping out of his arms. She looks shaken but unharmed, and Iris sags with relief. But, “Snart says he had you somewhere.”

“I was in a car with Rory a half mile from here. She got a call and then let me go.”

“Just like that?” Barry asks. “Why?”

 She doesn’t answer, still sniffling, and Iris steps forward. “Chess?”

“She was torturing my sister. And she wasn’t going to stop until…”

“Until what?”

“Until I told her who Miss Miracle is.”

Iris stares at her as the knowledge sinks in like a stone. Chesca pushes hair out of her face, her hand shaking. “And I wouldn’t have told her, Iris, I swear I would have died.” She sniffles again, harder this time, and then for some reason glances at Barry. “B-But…she was gonna kill my sister, and-”

Iris steps forward and hugs her friend even when she starts shaking. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Chesca,” Iris says firmly, her hands on her shoulders. “This is not your fault – I would have done the same thing.”

But she shakes her head, stepping back. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I can’t be the one to put you guys in danger anymore.”

“Chess…” Colin says, but Chesca leaves without a word.

Iris and Colin both make to go after her, but Dr Wells stops them. “I don’t think she’ll be able to handle the guilt of facing her two closest friends,” she tells them quietly. “I will talk to her. I think it best that the three of you try to find a way to stop Snart.”

There’s nothing that Iris would like less than leaving Dr Wells alone with a distraught Chesca, but she’s not sure they have a choice right now. Besides, she’s not going to hurt Chesca in the middle of a crisis. When she looks at the boys, she knows they’re thinking the same thing. Barry shakes his head.

“She’s right, we have to do something.”

“Ideas?” Iris asks, pulling off her gloves. She puts her glasses back on.

“Well, when casinos are under attack, they’re supposed to relocate the money to somewhere safe. Colin and I noticed that they didn’t actually steal anything and left as soon as you did. So they were probably robbing that place to scare them into moving it.”

“There’s our favourite Snart,” Colin mutters. “I think I saw a movie like that once.”

“ _Oceans Eleven_ , I think.”

“Great movie.”

“Classic.”

“Guys!” Iris admonishes. “Colin, see if you can get a location before he runs out of the city. Barry, call your mom and tell her we’ll need a police escort to get the stolen money back.”

Colin pulls up some complicated imagery on the computers and Barry has his mother on standby, and Iris scans the screens nervously until they find it. “There,” Colin says triumphantly. “The truck is on the corner of Churchill Street and there are two motorcycles on its tail.”

“On some level it’s cute that they do stuff like this together,” Iris mutters. “Most siblings hate each other.”

“Do you have a plan?” Barry asks, getting up to join her.

“Nope.” Iris reaches for her mask and takes off her glasses. As if by habit, Barry pockets them. “Be careful.”

“Duh, Barry. I’m a superhero.”

Both Snarts are firing guns at the truck, the driver of which looks terrified. Gritting her teeth, Iris launches herself at Louis and yanks him off the bike, letting it careen into the side of the road, before throwing him to the floor. Then she tackles Lena, teleporting her to the woods and dropping her in the dirt. Infuriatingly she seems only slightly shaken, getting up and shaking herself off. “Iris. How are you?”

“We need to talk, Snart.”

“Go ahead, dollface,” she says, the grin present even in the dim moonlight. “I’d love to hear you get out of this one. You can’t stop me now; I know who you are.”

“Ever been to the North China Sea?” Iris shoots back. “I’ve got a cell that would go great with your hair.”

“But then I’d miss the uplink that would tell the world who you are if you try to hurt me. So, Iris West of Central City Police Department, what do we do with little old me?”

“I know I’m not going to let you keep stealing whatever you want, whenever you want. It ends now.”

“Nope,” she laughs. “Can’t do that. I love this job. You know that thrill you get, that feeling when you chase people like me? Same high, different drug.”

“Then get your high in another city and stay out of mine.”

“Nuh-uh. I was here first, little girl, and I love this city.”

Iris stalks towards her. “You know why they call me the modern miracleworker?” she says softly. “Because I can do the impossible, and that includes stopping you whenever you get it into your head to commit another crime. So go ahead, push your boundaries, do what you want. But no one else dies – if you’re as good as you say you are, no one has to.”

Snart looks at her. “Okay,” she admits. “You’re right.”

“But make no mistake,” Iris says, her voice dangerously soft. “You ever come near my friends or anyone I care about again – _anyone_ – and you can tell the whole world who I am. It won't stop your ass being grass. You _and_ your rogues.”

“I suppose you’re secret’s safe with me, Miss Miracle.”

Iris nods once and makes to leave. “Wait!” Snart calls. Iris turns. “I can’t get a ride back to town?”

Iris just laughs and disappears, which doesn’t surprise Snart at all, really. “Rogues. Okay, that I can work with.”

***

There’s not much to do after Iris gets back – she wants to wait for Chesca and Colin wants to reassure Ronnie that everything’s fine, so Barry goes to CCPN for the emergency staff meeting that’s been called. Erica has everyone gathered around the centre table, the mood sombre.

“I know it’s been tough,” she says quietly. “But this is where the fight is. Being who we are isn’t about the good times, the football games and the fluff pieces on who Brianna Wayne is dating. It’s about times like this, when we’re the only ones who can find the truth. Research your articles, write, but be safe. And take care of each other.”

She leaves them to pick up some work for the weekend, since the new security measures will be installed then, and Barry is surprised to find Missy at his desk. “I’d better not catch you doing anything dangerous,” she tells him sternly. “Strictly articles on homeless children and the disappearing middle class.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good. Enjoy your weekend, Barry.”

He blinks after her in pure shock, and then just shakes his head. It’s been a weird enough day. “There’s my soldier,” a familiar voice says.

“Mom?” he laughs, hugging her. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to give you an update. Money’s back in the casino, though Snart and her gang got away. I heard about the deal Iris made.”

“She didn’t have a lot of choice, mom.”

“I know,” she sighs. “I’d just prefer it if villains with guns didn’t know the names of my kids.” She pauses. “So I had an interesting lunch yesterday. I caught a show.”

He frowns. “A show?”

“Yes. The latest in the captivating saga of My Son, Barry Allen, and His Two Women. We were talking, and I think Patty may be a little threatened by Iris.”

“What? What happened?”

“Nothing happened apart from Iris talking about how close you guys have always been, and she was so distracted by Calamity she didn’t notice anything.”

Barry runs a hand through his hair and his mother regards him. “This got complicated, Barry.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Who do you love?”

That question will never have a straight goddamn answer. Because how can he say _I love one, but I could love the other_? Or _I love both, but maybe one not enough_? “I mean, I love Patty.”

Nora pauses. “Well I think you need to make your girlfriend see that, because if she feels threatened by someone who you keep saying you have no feelings for, then there’s a problem.”

“Iris was too late, mom,” he says quietly, ignoring that tugging feeling. Because Patty has been loyal to him, no matter how many times he’s asked himself ‘What if’ and considered ‘Maybe’ since the confession at Christmas. “I’m with someone else.”

“Then let Patty know she’s the one you’re picking.”

***

“You should be at home,” Chesca says quietly.

“Like I was going to leave my best girl alone,” Iris scoffs. She hops off the table, where she’s been waiting ever since the boys left. “Where’s Dr Wells?”

“She went home. The guys?”

“Same. So, she convinced you?”

“Yeah, actually,” she laughs. “She said that I showed her what it was like to have a daughter. And it was weird, Iris, but she sounded sincere.”

“She’s good at that,” Iris admits. “But she’s still a liar. And we can’t put this off anymore. I keep noticing all this stuff – you know she and Colin always do that twisty ring thing?”

“You noticed that too? And the ‘Isn’t that right, Dr Wells?’”

“Right. I think she might be hurting Colin.” Iris doesn’t want to admit it, but there is something about the fact that Colin is so scared about investigating Dr Wells. She isn’t forgetting that it was her that helped save Ronnie, and it’s entirely likely that she could threaten to take her away.

Chesca shakes her head. “How do we do this? How do we investigate her?”

“We need to find out everyone we know about her – and everyone she’s interacted with,” Iris says. “It’ll take time and patience. And we need to be stealthy.”

“We’ll need help,” Chesca points out. “We’re just two people, we can’t do it by ourselves.”

“Nora will help. And Barry.”

“I’m really glad you told him,” Chesca says after a pause, and Iris smiles.

“Me too. Headed home?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Nope, gotta do something first.”

Iris is lucky that the prison has allowed her to see her mother, since she didn’t book a visit. But her world has been spinning on its axis lately and she needs some reassurance. Her mother smiles as she sits on the hard plastic chair. “Hi, baby.”

“Hi, mom. How are you?”

“Same old, same old. You’re not too scared about Calamity, are you?”

Iris pauses. “I’m… trying not to let it keep me up at night.”

“Good, I – Iris? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she replies, but her mother shakes her head.

“No, you’re worried about something.”

“It’s nothing, I’m fine. It’s just been a really…long couple of weeks.”

They both look behind her when a guard turns on the news, and Iris sees herself as Miss Miracle performing some feat or other. Really, with everything that’s been going on, they all melt into one. When she turns back, her mother is giving her a thoughtful look. “I met her once, you know. Miss Miracle. She was saving Nora from one of those metahuman things.”

Iris smiles. “That must have been cool.”

“It was. And I see her all the news all the time, and it kind of got me thinking what I would say to her if I was her mother.”

“R-Really? What would you say?”

“First I would say be careful. I know she has superpowers and she wears a mask, but there are people who care about her and she should _be careful_. And – And she should be proud of herself, and that I’m proud of her, because she’s saving a lot of lives.” Her mother pauses before smiling. “That she’s a hero, and she’s doing just fine.”

Iris doesn’t realise she’s crying until the tears splash in her lap, and she removes her glasses. “Well, um,” she says, wiping her eyes, “I’m sure she’ll be, um, glad to h-hear that.”

Francine nods slowly. “I think so, too.”

“I love you, mommy.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Iris has stopped crying when she gets to Jitters, where Scott is waiting for her. To his credit, he already knows what’s about to happen. “Oh, I know that look,” he says, giving her a rueful smile. “God, I hate that look.”

“Am I really that obvious?”

“Only to someone with eyes.”

Iris hates this. Scott is perfect and lovely and she could totally fall in love with him – if her heart didn’t belong to someone else. “I’m sorry, Scott, I do like you a lot, but-”

“You’re still not over him,” he says gently. They both turn to see Barry talking to Tyler and a lot of their friends – they’re going out to celebrate him getting into culinary school; Patty was talking about it earlier. “It’s okay, I get it.”

“Is it?”

“Well, no. But nobody did anything wrong, Iris. It is what it is. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see this coming.”

Iris looks down at her hands. “Right.”

Scot stands. “I’ll see you around.”

He kisses her on the cheek leaves, and Iris orders a coffee and contemplates ordering a brownie or a dozen (really, it’s been that kind of day) when she feels someone touch her shoulder. “Hey, sunshine,” Barry says softly. “Everything okay?”

“Not really. Scott and I broke up.”

His face falls. “What? But I thought – you really liked him. Did he do something?”

“No, it’s…He’s nice. He’s sweet and smart and his grandmother leads the church choir, and I keep having to cancel dates because I’m a superhero who runs around in a mask saving people. He deserves a normal girl who doesn’t do all that.” She sighs. “I guess it’s because I’m still learning how to be Miss Miracle. Maybe after I tackle the sociopath trying to kill us all, I’ll give the whole love thing a try again.” She smiles regretfully at him. “Guess he wasn’t my Prince Charming.”

Barry sits, his expression strangely nervous. “Yeah, b-but that doesn’t mean he’s not out there. He could be… late, or maybe he doesn’t know what he wants, or he could be scared of how things could change…and I’m rambling,” he laughs, embarrassed, scratching the back of his head. “Sorry. I just, uh – he’s out there, Iris. For you, I know he is.”

“Thanks, Bar.”

He pauses and smiles, before nudging her lightly with his shoulder. “You’re good at the whole hero thing, you know.”

“I don’t know about that. Snart got away,” she points out.

“I know, but that’s not it. You comforted Chesca, you’re making sure to protect Wally and Linda and Missy, and you’re working with the precinct. That’s the kind of hero I want to write about.” She smiles at him and he smiles back, before glancing at the floor. He shoves his hands in his pockets and then looks up at her. “Hey, so is there anything I forgot from the day I was hit by the gun? I keep feeling like there’s something missing.”

Iris takes a deep breath. She could tell him. She could say that he told her he loved her and that she’s the only thing he’ll ever want. But it’s not that simple, because he was about to die and Nora was in danger and they’ve always been so goddamn complicated. She removes her glasses and cleans them out of habit, and in an effort to not look at him. “I mean, the doctor said your memory will come back, and everyone’s already told you stuff. I didn’t…miss out anything important, I don’t think.” She puts them back on and twists her fingers. “And if it is, I think you’ll just, kind of, remember it on your own. I don’t think you’re forgetting anything you need to know. Nothing… important, anyway.”

“Right,” he says quietly. He rubs his face. “That’s what I thought. And we’re good.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not mad at you anymore, we’re good. You don’t need to avoid me or give me space or change which days you go to the gym – I’m not an idiot, Iris – because we’re good. Okay?”

“That’s great,” she says warmly. “I’m glad, Barry, and I’m so sorry, I won’t ever lie like that again.”

“Well, you did get karmically attacked by a jellyfish.”

“Exactly.”

Iris lifts her arms hesitantly and then steps into his arms, sighing as he hugs her back. And it hurts, it does, but there is one thing she remembers, and it’s the reason she’s been sleeping better. Even through the hallucinating and all the blood, she remembers Barry singing to her like when they were children, and she gets to carry that with her for a while. She rests her head against his chest, hearing his heartbeat (she doesn’t know that Barry is doing the same, that this, Iris’ coconut oil hair smell and her arms around him and the possibility of them is all he’ll allow himself to have, because after this it’s over), and then lets go. “Are you sure you’re not coming?” he asks. “Tyler would love to have you there.”

“Yeah, I’m not in a people mood. But I got him a gift, so it’s cool. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Iris is halfway home when she gets the message from Freddie.

 _911, Foundry_.

She’s there in minutes, frantically looking around for blond hair and glasses. “Freddie? Freddie, where are you?”

“Iris, thank god, you – you’re in your suit.” Freddie, his hands full of files, stares at her.

“Of course I’m in my – Freddie, when you message a superhero ‘911’, she’s going to be in her suit,” she grumbles. “What is it?”

“Come sit.”

He leads her to the terminals, and she notices he’s shaking and pale. “What is it?”

“You asked me to look into that organisation – M.A.I.M.E.D.?”

“God, that was weeks ago, I completely forgot about it. Liv told me everything, I’m not joining-”

“No, Iris. This is important.” He spreads them out. “Liv told you twenty years ago there was this big bloody schism, with everyone fighting each other. It was _insane_. You had the Zolomons, the Carlisses – there’s one they just call ‘Savitar’. And then on the other side, you had the Garricks, the Ognats, the Mercuries…everyone picked sides.”

Iris frowns. “Okay, I’m still with you.”

“But there’s a catch – they all use secret identities. They never use pictures in their database in case it’s compromised, and they identify each other with code. All of this would be fine if it weren’t for twenty years ago. One of the families on the bad side were the Thawnes.”

“Like Eddie,” she breathes.

“Right,” he nods. “And twenty years ago, Thaddeus Thawne and Emmanuel Thawne were both killed. But there were still three Thawnes left, and Waller has been trying to find them ever since, because if there’s one thing M.A.I.M.E.D. agents do best, its revenge.”

“Let me get this straight. There are Thawnes in the world hell-bent on getting revenge on agents who killed their family members years ago. The could go by their real names, and they could go by fake ones. And they have long memories.”

“All true.”

“Great.”

“Iris,” he says quietly. “The agent who killed them…you know him.”

“I do?” she says, surprised. “Who is it?”

He takes a deep breath. “Henry Allen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo that was that. let me know what you think, i hope it's not too complicated.


	15. A Cruel, Cruel World For Good Boys and Girls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry, Iris and Nora learn the importance of family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yet another long update. hope you like! Title taken from the song 'Soul Wars' by AWOLNATION.

“I could move them to Lian Yu.”

“You can’t – Iris, that’s a terrible idea.”

“Well, why not? Nobody can find them on Lian Yu.”

“Because,” Olivia says, “there is no express train to Lian Yu when you want to hide your family members there. Also, I keep criminals there.”

Iris resumes her pacing while Olivia watches her walk around the Foundry as she lifts weights. Every so often something starts to rise off one of the tables and Olivia has to put it back down. “Iris, I really think you need to calm down about this.”

“Calm down? I just found out that Barry’s dad used to be a secret agent for an organisation that not only isn’t supposed to exist, but that ended a feud by _killing off half their agents_. Oh, and three of them are alive and could want to kill Barry or Nora at any moment. Do you know when I should start panicking?”

“I didn’t say don’t do anything, I said calm down,” she points out. “Panicking won’t help anything, and it won’t keep Barry or Nora safe.”

Iris rubs her eyes behind her glasses. It has been a week since Freddie had told her everything, and she’s still working out how to tell Barry. But how is she supposed to tell him this? Barry and Nora absolutely Do Not Talk about Henry Allen. Iris has never met him and Barry doesn’t even know what he looks like anymore, since Nora threw out all of his pictures right after he left and he never came back to visit. They are divorced and Nora kept the name for Barry, while Barry’s grandparents on his father’s side had tried to contact him exactly once. Barry had come to her about it, his usual easy confidence crumbling around this subject, to ask whether he should talk to them, and she helped him stand strong in his decision to say no because he didn’t want anything from them. When she mentioned this to Freddie, he said it might have been a recruitment thing, since their agents were supposed to be in it for life.

The thought still makes her sick.

Barry and Nora are in Central City right now, fully aware that Iris is helping Olivia with the Suicide Squad. But the secret is eating her alive and she needs to tell them before it’s too late. “Right.”

“What do you know so far? What did Freddie tell you?”

Iris closes her eyes briefly. “You know M.A.I.M.E.D. agents are, like, super secretive, right? Well, they don’t have any pictures on the database that Freddie hacked into.”

“How do they identify each other?”

“There’s a code that’s send out each day by like, a cypher or something,” Iris says. “In the paper or on the radio, usually. I don’t know what it is, but it basically means that only other agents can identify other people. Which helps because they all use fake names and know how to change their appearances.”

Olivia thinks for a moment. “And Barry’s father – Henry – he killed who, exactly?”

Iris picks up some of the files Freddie printed for her. “Thaddeus Thawne and Emmanuel Thawne, they were brothers. But apparently Thaddeus and Emmanuel had wives and a kid that they sent into hiding right before the schism started, so I don’t know their names, or whether they’re alive. They still can’t find them, I don’t think.”

“You don’t think?” she repeats. “I thought Freddie hacked into their system.”

“That’s just it,” Iris sighs, slumping into a chair. “He says that the only thing scarier than hacking into this thing was that time you asked him to hack into the Pentagon.”

“I didn’t ask him to hack into the Pentagon!” Olivia counters. “He – I swear, he’s going to get us all murdered.”

“Or maybe Waller will, because they found Freddie in their system. He got out and we’re safe, but it’s going to be a while before he can go in there again, and this is all he could find.”

Olivia pauses again, and Iris bites her lip. They’re going through a lot in Star City, and Iris would have left them alone by now, but Olivia is the only one who has anywhere near the kind of experience she needs in dealing with this. “Henry,” she says again. “Is he alive?”

Iris blinks. “I – don’t know. He hasn’t been mentioned in any of these since he killed Thaddeus and Emmanuel.”

“And are any of these Thawnes still alive? Any that you know of?”

“One,” she admits. “Eobard. But Freddie told me that Waller tried to get some of them to reform, or whatever. And now he’s his right-hand man, so I guess it worked. And then there was this one guy, Eddie – he was an ADA for our district. But then he was one of the people kidnapped by Calamity, and now he’s missing.”

The whole thing has been making her head pound for days. She has no idea whether Eddie’s kidnap was connected to him being a Thawne at all, or whether everything in their lives had decided to come crashing down at this very inopportune moment.

“Right, you guys think he’s dead, don’t you?” Olivia clarifies. “That’s what the Captain said.”

“Yeah, the district department declared them all dead until we have undeniable proof saying otherwise.”

Her friend thinks for a moment. “Iris. Have you ever considered the possibility of not saying anything?”

“Why?”

“Because I think this would hurt them rather than help them,” she points out. “Telling Barry that his father left him to carry out a mission that likely killed him because he was never the man he thought he was isn’t going to make him happy.”

“The point isn’t to make him happy, it’s to keep him safe.”

“Sometimes keeping secrets keeps people safe.”

“Liv, every time I lie to Barry something bad happens,” Iris laughs.

“Really?” she asks. “How?”

“Well, there’s the time I was attacked by a giant venomous jellyfish and he forgot that he told me he was in love with me. As times go, that was pretty bad.” Olivia just stares at her, her usual neutral expression one of dumbfounded confusion.

“What _happens_ in Central City when I’m not there?”

“Freddie didn’t tell you?”

Olivia’s eyes darken and she goes back to lifting weights. “He and I aren’t exactly on the same page these days.”

“Prime example of why I’m not keen on keeping secrets,” she answers. She sighs. “I’m going to tell them, Liv, I’m sorry. And I have to tell the team, too, since they could be in danger as well – I just have to tell Nora and Barry first. But I don’t know how I’m going to prepare them for it.”

Olivia puts the weights down and comes sit in front of her. “Iris, there isn’t any way to prepare the people you love for something like this. You just have to be there to protect them in the best way you can. Okay?”

Iris shrugs. “Okay.”

Olivia hesitates, sighs, and holds her arms out. Iris eyes her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to hug you.”

“Are you ill?”

“I’m being affectionate,” she grinds out. “Freddie and Dig say I should be more affectionate; this is me being affectionate.”

“Well, stop it. It’s freaking me out.”

“Iris, I have a little brother. I think I know what it looks like when someone needs a hug.”

Iris regards her for a moment, before stepping into her embrace. “And I know Nora doesn’t always approve of my…methods,” she says carefully. “But if you need anything-”

“I know,” she interrupts. “Thanks, Liv. But you should be careful, people might start thinking you like having me around.”

“Of course I like having you around. Miss Miracle is great for target practice.”

***

“…so that’s the sports section done,” Erica continues, clicking through the projections. It’s brand new, since the one that Calamity wrote on was sent away so Iris could analyse it. Everyone writes down their own and Barry waits for Erica to give him something on the sewer renovations after the Woman of War attack or something.

“Time for the features section. We still need someone to do that interview for Tony McGhee– Missy, weren’t you covering that?”

“No can do,” she shakes her head. “I’m following a lead on embezzlement in the district department and our availability doesn’t work.” She pauses and smiles. “I know, why don’t you give it to the cub?”

“Allen?” someone asks, and Missy rolls her eyes.

“No, Tanner, the other newbie (!) Yes, I’m talking about Barry. If he can make jellyfish interesting perhaps he can do the same for strange little men who spend all day playing with test tubes.

Everyone turns to Barry, who manages to control his gaping. “Uh, yeah, I’d be fine with that. I could do that.”

“Wow, Missy, I’m surprised at you,” Erica says, impressed. “Giving Barry something as big as that. What’s gotten into you?”

She shrugs, stirring her coffee before dipping a cookie in it. “I like to keep you all on your toes. Don’t get used to it, though. I’m sure Barry will disappoint me eventually.”

“Thanks, Missy,” he says dryly.

“Any time, cub.”

“Alright, that’s everything,” Erica laughs. “See you all tomorrow.”

Barry can’t stop grinning as he packs up his stuff, almost dropping half of his files as he tries to figure out the best way to tackle the interview. The best place to start is probably Iris, since she knows so much about him, and maybe Chesca as well, they-

“Whoa, careful,” Scott says, narrowly avoiding Barry barrelling straight into him.

“Sorry, Scott, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I get it,” Scott nods in understanding. “My first interview, I was bouncing off the walls.”

“Any advice?”

“Have a curveball question, something to catch them off-guard. Nothing rude or invasive, obviously, just something you think no one’s asked before that might interest people.”

“Thanks, Scott,” he says slowly. “That’s a really good idea.”

“Sure. Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Barry watches him leave. He doesn’t know who instigated the breakup (although Iris has assured him that he doesn’t need to beat his face in with a two by four, and since she was laughing when he jokingly asked, he’s assuming that she’s fine), but there doesn’t seem to be any animosity between them. Which helps, because he doesn’t have the greatest track record with people who hurt Iris’ feelings. He calls Patty so he can tell her the news, but her phone goes straight to voicemail. Barry realises that he hasn’t seen his girlfriend outside of work for three days, and a growing, gnawing feeling that he’s had since the jellyfish attack comes back.

His relationship with Patty is what he would describe as ‘grown-up’. They live together, they spend one day a month sorting through their bills, they have dinner with each other’s parents. But, for some reason, he sometimes feels like there is a kind of wall between them. Well, not a wall, exactly, but like he’s walking in one direction, thinking that she’s right alongside him, but then it feels like she’s ended up in a completely different place. Like, he told Patty about Malina once they’d been dating for five months, but she never talks about her father dying or how that affected her beyond making her want to be a cop. Plus, the fact that he never properly met her mother until a few months ago, even though they’d been dating for over seven months at that point. Granted, they’d explained that Eleanor’s job meant that she had to travel a lot, and Patty told him that she’s glad she has a stable job because travelling so much as a kid made it hard to make friends.

And now it’s like she’s hiding something.

At first he felt like he was being paranoid, like the whole thing with Iris and his mother lying to him making him think that _everyone_ was lying to him. But he’s sure that he isn’t. She’s always working late or out or whatever, but whenever he asks about it he either gets noncommittal answers or ones that feel evasive. And, okay, sometimes couples go through rough patches and they’re both busy with work, but still.

Barry sighs, about to pocket his phone, when a message pops up.

_Group chat: The Miracle Workers_

**Group meeting at the Allen house! I’M BRINGING QUESADILLAS**

When did we decide this?

**Like a whole twenty minutes ago get with the programme Allen. Your mom says it’s cool**

Iris West changed the group name to ‘Find Calamity’

**You ruin everything West**

Where are you, Iris?

_On the way to the house. Liv says hi btw_

**How are #theskwad**

_Alive. Barely. I don’t know why Liv always gets it into her head to antagonise Waller_

I still can’t believe Olivia is the Green Arrow

_The novelty wears off, believe me. Although I may be in love with her personal chef_

Chesca Ramon changed the group name to #MiracleVsCalamity

_What is the matter with you_

**I’m trying to add some levity to the situation**

That’s actually pretty funny

**HA! Two out of three, the name stands**

_Since when was this a democracy?_

**Since I have to clean the stains you’re always leaving in my suit – would it kill you to not run into dirty places?**

_MY suit, I’m Miss Miracle!_

**Semantics**

_I vote that Chesca brings brownies to the meeting_

I second the brownie suggestion

_Vote carried_

**I regret bringing you to the team Allen**

_Ahahahahahaha._

I’m sorry about that, spocklovesuhura

_AHAHAHAHAHAHA_

**You told him?**

#bestfriendprivileges

_I tell him everything. Get me my brownies._

**Why can’t you do it?**

_I’m already in the house_

**Omg iris you have teleportation powers**

_I’m tired, Harley Quinn hit me with his baseball bat today!_

**You’re supposed to be a hero, take one for the team!**

Guys. I’ll get the brownies. I’m near Jitters anyway

**Let the record show that I like him better than you Iris**

_Good luck getting him to watch the Wrath of Khan with you_

Barry makes it home before his mother and Chesca, and he finds Iris there looking at a file. She puts it down when she spots him, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Barry, hey.”

“Hey, sunshine,” he says easily. “What ya got there?”

“Oh, just some…reading. Science stuff. Are those the brownies?”

“Yeah…Oh, you’re just not gonna wait?”

Iris, who’d snapped her fingers so the box jumped out of his hands, talks through a mouthful of brownie. “No,” she mumbles, “I’m not. I was almost killed by a man who dresses up in a harlequin costume and calls people ‘puddin’’. I deserve all of these; you’re lucky I’m even sharing.”

“Fair enough. Hey, speaking of science stuff, I wanted to ask you something.”

Iris swallows. “Sure.”

“How do you do that thing with your eyes?”

“What thing – oh, you mean this?” She takes off her glasses and pauses. After a second, her eyes begin to glow gold. “Yeah, that. How does it work? Does it hurt?”

“That’s one of the powers that I have no idea where it comes from,” she says, putting her glasses back on. “They don’t hurt, though, and I can still see when I’m doing it. I just have to be careful not to blind anyone when I’m doing it. Plus, it totally helps with seeing in the dark.”

He grins. “That’s so cool.”

Iris smiles kind of shyly back and picks up another brownie. “Yeah, it is. Did you want to know anything else? Pretty soon the others will be here, so I’d get your questions in now.”

“Yeah, actually. I know you said you’ve never read my mind-”

“I haven’t,” she interrupts. “I promise.”

“I know. But you also said that you could hear everyone when you woke up, and that it scared you. Do you have to turn your powers off, or something?”

“Yes and no,” she admits. “The human mind is really complicated. If you’re thinking about your day and what you’re going to have for dinner and what happened the last time you went out with Tyler, that’s a lot of jumbled thoughts. It’s deliberate mind-reading on my part – sorting through everything to find out what you actually mean. If you’re thinking of something specific, it’s a little easier, but I’m trained enough now that I don’t hear anyone thinking anything unless I’m really tired and can’t block everyone out.” She takes another brownie. “Like the telepathic conversations.”

He frowns. “Telepathic conversations?”

“Think something.”

_Think something?_

_Yes, like that._

“Whoa!” he says out loud. “We haven’t done that since you were called-”

“Blink,” she interrupts. “Dark times. I didn’t have a voice modulator back then. But yeah, it essentially means I can talk to people in their heads, when they want me to.”

Barry grins at her. “I bet that comes in handy when you’re at work.”

“I may have used it to figure out what some of the cops at the precinct want when they’re yelling at me,” she admits, still chewing. She swallows. “But it doesn’t work on everyone.”

“Really? Like who?”

“Uh…Colin, Dr Wells, Captain Singh. Tyler. Cobalt Blue – I can’t get past the mask. Um, Patty’s mom?”

“How’d you figure out you couldn’t read them?”

“Like I said, I can kind of hear everything low level, kind of like being in a crowd but not picking out the voices. When I can’t read someone, it’s like a vacuum in a wall of noise. Really noticeable.”

Barry stares at her for a second, taking this all in. He’s not mad or sad about the lying, and he’s accepted that Iris’ life is different now even though she tells him everything, but there’s something amazing about the way she describes then…She has spent so long telling everyone about the impossible, about things that can’t be explained, and now she _is_ the impossible, teleporting from place to place and moving things with her mind and _flying_. She blinks at him. “What?”

“Nothing, I just…I guess I can’t believe that you’re the impossible one now.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t stop me from being Iris West,” she laughs, “CSI who’s going to get her ass kicked if she doesn’t get to work early and figure out how someone stole a dozen face-painting kits yesterday. I’m telling you, Liv is so lucky I like her, making me go after criminals on my day off.”

Barry leans back on the sofa, his hands behind his head. “How are those guys, anyway? They’ve been doing this for a while, they should be good at it, right?”

Iris shrugs again and grabs another brownie. “Freddie is mad at Dig and Liv, Liv hates the fact that Freddie is dating Ray so she’s irritated with him, Dig things they’re both idiots, and they’re all keeping secrets from each other. And there’s something about a Lazarus Pit, which gives me a headache just thinking about it. The whole thing was giving me anxiety.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, enough stupid superhero shenanigans. What’s new with you?”

Barry sits up, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, actually. I got my first interview – Tony McGhee, the guy who runs Mercury Labs.”

Iris’ eyes light up. “Barry, that’s great, I’m so happy for you! You must be excited.”

“I am, it’s really cool. I have to talk about tachyi-taych-”

“Tachyons?”

“Right, those. And I can’t even spell them, so I was thinking you could help me?”

She grins at him. “Sure, whatever you want. What did Patty say?”

“I haven’t told her yet, she’s working late, so…”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure she’ll be happy for you. And that you’re doing stuff that doesn’t involve venomous jellyfish.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. Iris takes a deep breath.

“Um, Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you, um, heard from-”

Unfortunately, that’s the moment that Nora and Chesca come into the house, apparently in the middle of a conversation about the merits of the film _Back to the Future_. “And really,” Chesca finishes, “it’s just a cinematic achievement.”

“I’m sure it is, Chesca,” Nora says, amused. She shuts the door and hangs up her jacket before sniffing. “I don’t know what those are, but they smell great.”

“Quesadillas, courtesy of _moi_ ,” Chesca says, handing them to Barry. “And the brownies that Iris asked for.”

“What?” Barry frowns. “I got brownies already.”

“Iris’ texted me and said that you forgot.”

Everyone turns to look at Iris, who’s putting quesadillas on plates and pouring water with her mind while finishing the brownies. “I had a really difficult – _Harley Quinn hit me with a baseball bat_!”

“Okay, Iris’ ability to pilfer brownies out of everyone aside,” Nora says, “we called this meeting for a reason, and I know everyone’s got work tomorrow. What has everyone managed to find?”

While everyone picks a plate Iris manoeuvres a board full of newspaper clippings and pictures of people. “Well,” she says in between mouthfuls of quesadilla, “I read her autobiography a few times to see if it would help.”

“And?” Nora asks.

“Nothing major jumps out, really. Six hundred pages and the big takeaway is that she’s enigmatic. But, it did help me compile a timeline of what she was doing at certain points during this whole thing.” She points to a date. “1985, Terrence Chambers and Dr Helena Wells, newly married move to Central City from Baltimore, Maryland to begin work on what would eventually be the Particle Accelerator we know today. Fourteen years later, in 1999, while working on this machine – M.I.N.D. – Terrence Chambers is killed in an explosion caused by a malfunction during a test run.”

“M.I.N.D.?” Barry interjects. “What do we know about that?”

“It’s the thing that was built before the Particle Accelerator,” his mother explains. “I don’t know much about it except for the fact that it blew up, but the whole thing was covered up by that shady organisation I was telling you about last week.”

“That Waller guy really likes his initials,” Barry mutters.

“I’ll say,” Nora laughs. “Thank God we’ve got nothing to do with M.A.I.M.E.D.”

“R-Right,” Iris says. “Um, anyway, Terrence died. One year later, 2000, my dad is killed by Calamity, who isn’t seen since. Then in 2014, the Particle Accelerator goes live, explodes, and puts me in a coma for nine months. I wake up with powers and become Miss Miracle. Then at Christmas, Calamity turns up and kidnaps several people involved with the Metahuman Task Force, killing half and leaving them all around the city.”

Everyone chews thoughtfully, getting everything straight. Nora frowns at something and points. “Who’s that?” Iris looks at the board.

“That is Jesse Chambers, Terrence’s nephew. He spent a lot of time with them, until Terrence died – his parents were always busy and weren’t into science, so they always left him with Terrence and Helena.”

“Yeah, she used to talk about him all the time,” Chesca says quietly. “Apparently Terrence’s sister stopped him from visiting after…you know.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine her letting their son visit the woman who killed her brother,” Nora surmises. “Okay, what else?”

“That’s it,” Iris admits. “All of this makes me think that Dr Wells did this on purpose, because Calamity wasn’t seen by the public until after I became Miss Miracle. And if she created me on purpose, she must have known about creating the metahumans. Barry?”

Barry puts his plated down and grabs his bag, before getting up to pin up several pictures as he takes her place. Before he can begin, however, there’s a knock on the door. Iris springs up to answer it. “Colin! You made it.”

“I did,” he admits. “Dr Wells sent me away for the evening, and I stopped at Jitters for your cronuts.”

“IRIS!” everyone else says.

“Look, I’m sorry, but you guys don’t get attacked by people called Killer Croc on a daily basis,” Iris says, taking the box from him.

“And apparently none of us have a stomach that doubles as a supermassive black hole,” Chesca counters.

“Okay, moving on,” Barry laughs. “Iris told me that Dr Wells must have known about what the Particle Accelerator would do – Hailey Rathaway knew it was dangerous.”

“Ah, Hailey,” Colin muses, sitting down. “You think we should let her out?”

“No,” Iris and Chesca say in unison.

“Anyway,” Barry continues, “when Iris told me that, I remembered some stuff I found out about Dr Light – Linda – and Toni Woodward.” He points to the pictures. “Both of them had a brand on them, in the shape of a square. Blackout had one too, on her back. Woodward said that it was her job to kill Miss Miracle, and Blackout said she had to take the place hostage or Calamity would hurt her son.”

Nora chokes on her food. “She told you that?”

“Ah.” Barry shoves his hands in his pockets. “I may have…let her go.”

“You let the electric-shooting psychopath go?” Colin clarifies, the fork halfway to his mouth.

“Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best idea, but if she got caught Calamity would have killed her so she couldn’t talk.”

“Okay, we’ll put that on the list,” Iris says. “We’ll find her when we find Calamity and all the people she’s kidnapped. Keep going, Bar.”

“Thanks. So, Linda, Wally and I figured out that she’s creating metahumans – the ones that weren’t created by the explosion, like Hailey and Iris – in some way and sending them after Miss Miracle for whatever reason. She’s kidnapping their loved ones to make them do it, and in the case of Linda, she’s making them forget they even did it.”

“That makes sense,” Iris realises. “Dr Light escaped by turning invisible, she must have made her forget to stop her from talking. But something must have happened to make her switch to killing at Christmas.”

“That, I can’t figure out,” Barry says. “Or why she’s sending them after you, Iris. It can’t be that she wants you dead-”

“Because I’d be dead already,” she says simply. Barry bites his lip – he hadn’t wanted to say it out loud because it’s the most terrifying thing he can think of. She looks at her hands briefly, which Barry has noticed are shaking a little. “Um, so when Calamity…took me, one of the things she said was that she was making me better. For what, I don’t know.”

Everyone is silent for a minute, before Colin clears his throat. “You know,” he says tentatively, “if you just, um, told us all of what happened-”

“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it,” she says quietly, but firmly. “I’ve told you everything you need to know.”

Barry glances at his mother, who shakes her head slightly, so he knows that Iris told her the bare minimum as well. He clears his throat. “So that’s that. I don’t know how she’s doing it, though, so-”

“Tachyons!” Chesca exclaims. Nora stares at her.

“Tachy-what?”

“Tachyons,” she repeats, getting up. “You said she’s creating the metahumans, right? And leaving this weird brand on them. Well, Iris and I talked to Professor Stein, and she was telling us how tachyon particles can be used to mimic powers. That might be what Dr Wells is doing – fashioning something to give people powers and sending them after Miss Miracle.”

“But come on, a tachyon device?” Colin says sceptically. “That would require _insane_ amounts of genius, not to mention somewhere to hide it.”

“Dude, are you forgetting that STAR Labs is essentially a maze? It’s probably hidden underground.”

“All of that is plausible,” Nora admits, getting up herself. Barry and Chesca sit down. “And it’s great that we’ve figured out what she could possibly be doing. But like we said, we still don’t know why she’s doing it. And more importantly, we have no idea why she killed Joe. Until we know those things, not to mention find a way to capture her, we won’t be able to get Francine out of prison.”

Barry rubs his eyes. In the weeks since he’s joined the team, he couldn’t find any reason why Dr Wells would want to order Francine to kill Joe. He kind of hoped that someone else would pull a reason out of thin air. “Well, we’ve gotten through a lot tonight,” Nora says firmly. “Well done, everyone. Now, I know we’ve all got work tomorrow, so…”

Everyone leaves, Chesca and Colin already bickering about something or other, and Barry and Iris clear the table. “Mom, did I tell you? I’m get to interview Tony McGhee for the paper.”

“There’s my soldier,” she says proudly, kissing him on the forehead. “I knew I kept you around for a reason – all the other moms are so jealous.”

“Mom!”

“Okay, I’m kidding. How are you doing it?”

“Looking through some old interviews and stuff,” he says simply. “Iris is going to help, though, so it should be good.”

“Well, I’m proud of you. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Actually,” Iris interrupts, “could you wait a minute, Barry? I kind of need to talk to you.”

Nora and Barry look at each other, and Nora sits down. “You know, the last time you looked like that, you were about to tell me that your science experiment went wrong and my kitchen was covered in nougat.”

“Or like that time she was moving out and didn’t know how to tell us,” Barry adds. But Iris doesn’t laugh with them, and then alarm bells start to go off in his head. He leans forward, studying her face. “You okay, sunshine?”

Iris swallows and then clasps her hands together. “Not really. What I’m about to tell you – I just want you to know that I love you both, so much, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you both safe. Okay?”

“Alright,” Nora says quietly. “Now you’re scaring me.”

Iris takes a deep breath. “I need to talk to you about Henry.”

***

She tries to make it easy.

But it’s hard, since even the mere mention of his name causes Barry’s face to screw up in confusion and Nora’s green eyes, so like Barry’s, to harden. It almost makes her not want to tell them at all. But then she thinks of what could happen if she doesn’t, that they could be hurt by something they can’t even see coming, so she does.

“What do you have to tell us about Henry?” Barry asks.

“Both of you know about M.A.I.M.E.D.,” she begins quietly. “And you know that they’re not supposed to exist because they deal with metahumans like Aqualady and Superwoman and the Martian – they sometimes work with them to clean up any messes that happen, or get rid of metahumans that are dangerous. When they came to see me I asked Freddie to look up some stuff on them, but then Olivia told me not to get involved with them and I didn’t. But Freddie called me last week and…” She pauses. “So, the thing is, these agents have to be specially trained basically from when they’re kids – shooting, languages, changing appearances, becoming other people – to be able to handle threats like this. And twenty years ago there was this big blow-up between the two sides and all these agents were killed. So, um, two of the agents that were killed were called Thaddeus and Emmanuel Thawne. They were brothers, and…Henry was the one who killed them.”

They both stare at her, shock etched on their faces. Nora closes her eyes briefly. “I don’t understand,” she says quietly. “You – That doesn’t make any sense. Henry was an undercover spy working for a government agency?”

“Yes,” Iris nods. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“But he was an insurance consultant!” Barry splutters. “He had, like, the most boring job in the _world_ – he went around the world telling people how to insure their companies!”

Iris swallows. “Yeah, that’s what the case file said. That was…his cover.”

Barry has his head in his hands and Nora is running her hands through her hair. “That – this is wrong,” she says finally. “Henry was a bastard who walked out on his family, not a spy. This is a mistake.”

The air is heavy now, thick with their pain and confusion, and the worst part is that she can see it on their faces that this could be true. Iris hates this, that she is telling them this in their house, their safe space, but she has to tell them because not knowing could be so much worse. “Nora, I’m sorry, but it’s not. I have his file – it has all of your information on it. Everything’s accurate until when he left.”

She reread it on the train back from Star City, startled by the sheer accuracy. It had the dates that Nora and Henry met and got married, Barry’s date of birth…even the date Malina was supposed to arrive, which is so sad that it leaves Iris speechless. But it’s also got dates that correspond with important events in their lives, dates where he went on missions.

“There are no pictures,” Barry mumbles. “Why aren’t there any pictures?”

Of course, Barry doesn’t know what his father looks like – his instinct would have been to look for him, to see whether he’d recognise this man that was at once close family and perfect stranger. “They don’t use pictures because they could compromise any missions they’re on – they go undercover a lot, so…”

This must be it, this must be what sympathetic pain is like, because Iris feels like someone is trying to twist a knife in her gut. “How long have you known?” Nora whispers.

“Freddie told me last week – I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell you-”

“Why are you telling us now?”

“The men Henry killed were awful, awful people – people who would have put innocent people in danger if they kept going. But they had family, and Freddie seems to think that their family could come back and get revenge against you guys.”

“The…Thawnes?” Barry tries. “Like Eddie? And that Eobard guy?”

“Yeah, but they won’t hurt you,” she promises, “Eobard is Waller’s guy, he won’t do anything, and Eddie…well, he’s still missing.”

“And Henry?” Nora asks finally. “Where is he?”

“Freddie can’t find any reports about him, he’s still looking, but I don’t think he’s alive anymore.”

Both of them sit silently, the reports clutched in their hands, and Iris feels eaten away with guilt. She thinks this must be what Liv is avoiding when she keeps all her secrets – not that it keeps people safe, but because even the Green Arrow is hurt when the people she loves are hurting. And if Olivia, with her strength and her endurance and her never-ending calm, is so affected, what chance does Iris have? She’s interrupted by Barry getting up suddenly. “I have to go,” he mutters, walking quickly to the door. Iris starts after him.

“Bar-”

“Not now, Iris,” he snaps, and then deflates, not looking at her. “I’m not mad at you for telling us, I promise. But I just – not now, okay?”

“Okay,” she says helplessly, watching as he leaves. When she turns to Nora, though, she’s already disappeared up the stairs, and Iris knows that they must be really family, despite the fact that she shares no blood with them. Because even though they’re gone, she still feels their choking, despairing hurt.

***

Barry makes it back to his apartment and has no idea how – his feet must have just taken him there automatically – and collapses on the couch in a daze. His messenger bag slides onto the floor and he hears his laptop thunk, but he doesn’t care. He feels like everything in life can fall apart in his hands at any moment. Maybe his graduation picture is hiding a trapdoor, or maybe the grocery list on the fridge isn’t really a grocery list, maybe it’s secretly a list of codenames or something. Because Henry Allen, who stopped being his father when he was fourteen and he and Iris decided that he wouldn’t have that power over him anymore, had apparently been a secret government spy, and now his old enemies could show up and want to kill him.

Barry has always liked to write (so he shouldn’t be surprised that he’s a journalist, really, it seems fated), and he’s always liked stories. Where Iris was better at math and science Barry was better at English and history, so he’s always had a pretty active imagination. He has only ever told Iris this, and Patty more recently, but he used to wonder what his father was doing. Whether he was thinking of him, whether he had a new family, why he left. Of course he got older and then realised that he just left because he’s a bad person, and he was okay with that. But now there’s this, that he used to work for the government, and he hates it. Not just because it’s another lie he has to wrap his head around, and not even because of the danger it represents. No, it’s because it has taken him this long to come to terms with the fact that his father left for selfish reasons, but this makes him noble. Yes, he is apparently a killer. But according to Iris he took out people who would have put innocents in danger, and Barry is not naïve enough to think that things like this don’t happen in this world. And now he’s dead.

Well, they don’t know, and Freddie’s supposed to find out more, but they haven’t heard from him for twenty years. So he gains and loses a father in twenty minutes, and he’s just supposed to deal with it, like it’s the same as telling him he supported the Gotham City Rogues or that he didn’t like chocolate ice cream. Barry, your dad used to be a spy, he’s dead and also, the family of some of the people he killed could want to kill you. And we have no idea who they are because they could all be using fake names.

Barry swallows and sits up, rubbing his face. He feels hollow, spent. Gaining and losing a parent in a day will do that to a person, he supposes. He just – he has no idea how to deal with it. How do you come back from something like this? He could call Iris, but he’s not so sure he wants to hear her assurances right now. She’ll be worried out of her mind though, so he’ll text her to say he’ll talk to her tomorrow. And his mom…she is strong, the strongest person he knows, but this could break her. She has survived so much and never complains about his dad, even when people asked questions about why he left, about whether she could handle raising her own son and the daughter of a murderer, about everything. And now she knows it’s a lie. So Barry decides to do what he always has, to be strong for his mother, because she’s always been so strong for him.

But he must be in a worse mood than he thought, or maybe it’s just all catching up with him.

Patty comes home while he’s still on the sofa, her brow furrowed in thought and tiredness. “Hey, sorry I’m late,” she says shortly, taking off her jacket and badge. She doesn’t really look at him as she does these things, which for some reason rubs him the wrong way. Knowing her and the way she’s been acting the past few days, she can go straight to bed without even figuring out anything’s wrong with him.

“Uh huh,” he says noncommittally.

As predicted, Patty doesn’t notice anything. “I had a really long day, I’m just going to go to bed, okay?”

Barry shakes his head, looking at his hands. “Of course you are.”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you think I’m an idiot, Patty? You’ve been weird and monosyllabic for days, and every time I want to talk you blow me off. What’s going on?”

At once, her face closes up and she ties her hair up in a ponytail. “Nothing’s going on, Barry. It’s just work.”

“Because I don’t have a mom, girlfriend and best friend in the police, and if I hear about what’s bothering my girlfriend I’m going to faint from shock (!)”

Patty narrows her eyes at him. “Nice, Barry.”

He stands, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’m sorry, but what do you want me to say? You avoid talking to me when something is clearly bothering you, and then you act like I’m being invasive. We _live_ together, Patty, I shouldn’t have to beg you to talk to me.”

“And I shouldn’t have to explain that I’m not in the mood,” she snaps back. “Not everyone likes to talk everything to death.”

Barry stares at her for a second, and then lets out a breath. “I’m sleeping on the couch tonight.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Barry knows he shouldn’t have picked such an unnecessary fight. But really, right now?

He’s finding it hard to care.

***

Iris gets the first crime scene of the day and has no idea what to expect.

As soon as she turned away from Barry slamming the door behind him the night before, she looked up to see Nora walking away upstairs. When she tried to talk to her, knocking on her door, she didn’t answer. She finally gave up after two hours, making sure to keep an ear open. But all the staying up must have caught up with her, because she missed Nora getting ready for work and leaving. She’s surprised that Nora went to work for exactly two seconds before she remembers that this is exactly what both Nora and Barry do when they’re faced with something big and life-changing – bury themselves in work until they’re ready to explode. She won’t be surprised if she finds Barry angling to open up CCPN before his boss.

Iris looks at her phone again as she walks into work. Barry messaged her to say that he’s fine, but he won’t pick up her calls. She knows he’s probably at work and Barry doesn’t tell her things unless he’s ready, but she’s still worried. Still, at least he’s got Patty there with him. She probably realised that something was wrong with him and maybe coaxed something out of him. She paces outside of Singh’s office, fiddling with her gear straps as she waits for instructions. The captain called her down a few minutes ago and then disappeared into her office. She tried to catch Nora’s eye before she went in, but she seemed not to see her. Iris tries not to let it dishearten her, though. Even though she may be a little more understanding when it comes to Liv’s doctrine about not telling people things to keep them safe, she is in this now. And Barry and Nora have always done their level best to protect her, so she will do the same for them.

Iris perks up when everyone walks out and gives her most helpful, I-am-totally-on-top-of-things smile. “Morning, everyone. Where do you need me?”

The captain nods at her as Patty and Nora discuss something in hushed tones. “Mercury Labs,” the captain says. “Apparently someone was attacked there late last night – there’s a body and some pretty traumatised workers. Patty and Nora are going to go do some canvassing.”

“Well, we’ll be done in no time,” she smiles brightly. “We’re the dream team, right?”

She’s met with almost resounding silence, Nora barely glancing at her and Patty just nodding absently. “We’ll see you in the car, Iris,” she says quietly, and they both walk off. Iris swallows and the Captain sighs. “Tough crowd.”

“Yeah, well Nora just got some…weird news. I guess she’s dealing with it.”

“Well, you’re going to have a hard day today, West,” the captain says. “I don’t know who pissed off Spivot, but even her cheerful, happy people act is looking a little thin today, and that’s coming from a grump like me. See if you can find out what’s up, okay?”

But that is easier said than done – the ride to Mercury Labs is tense and quiet, with Iris’ attempts at conversation being rebuffed or ignored altogether. Patty at least tries to make conversation, but Nora just ignores her altogether, which makes her wonder whether she blames her for telling her about Henry. But she puts it out of her mind when they arrive at Mercury Labs, cutting through the people gathered outside and the police tape. She sees Tony McGhee talking to someone, and Nora clears her throat. “I’m going to talk to him, ask him where he was last night. He could have an idea about who could have done this.”

“I’ll go talk to the witnesses,” Patty adds, and they both stride away in opposite directions, leaving Iris alone staring after them. “I guess I’ll just…do the CSI thing, then,” she says quietly. She flashes her badge at the guards and cops standing around the crime scene, putting down her gear box and flipping it open. She’s not a coroner but she does understand the basics of what happens when someone dies – it’s one of the rudiments of her forensics training. She gingerly lifts the sheet covering the body and stares, shocked. The body – Lindsey Kang, she remembers someone saying – is covered in red splotches. Had he had some kind of allergic reaction? She looks up. “Has the coroner been by here?”

“Yeah,” he answers, and then swallows when he regards the body. “Report won’t be done for a while, though. I don’t know how you guys handle that, you know. I mean, the coroner, she said… She said it looked like bee stings. But that’s crazy, right?”

“I don’t see why a swarm of bees would want to enter a scientific facility and…” But Iris trails off. There’s a kind of sheen on Lindsey’s forehead, and when she presses forward on her knees she sees that it’s too thick, although colourless, to be sweat. She takes a sample of it, careful not to get anything on her hands, and puts it back in her case. Chesca and Colin will be faster than anything she can do at the lab, anyway. She takes a few pictures of the body as well as the area, noting that, okay, it’s insane to think that killer bees would ever congregate to kill a deputy vice president and then escape, but there are vents and things they could have come through.

You know. If she believes it was killer bees.

Nora and Patty are still busy, so she takes herself to STAR Labs to get the guys to help before she can head back to the precinct to figure out what the hell is going on. She’s more than a little relieved to see that Dr Wells isn’t there, but she knows that she could turn up at any moment. Chesca and Colin are at the terminals, heads bent together as they work on something.

“Hey, you two,” she calls as she walks in. “Any chance you guys could help me today?”

“Of course,” Colin says cheerfully. “What is it?”

“I need you guys to analyse this.” She hands him the sample. “It was found on a victim at Mercury Labs this morning. If I’m right, he was taken down by killer bees.”

“Lovely,” he grimaces, getting up. Iris steps forward and looks over Chesca’s shoulder.

“What are you guys working on, Chess?”

“Good question, young grasshopper.” Chesca stands and presses a few buttons. Immediately, pictures of people start cycling through on the big overhead computers. “Since we’ve been looking into certain metahumans, and because of what you…told me yesterday,” she continues, her voice quieting briefly, “I thought it would be a good idea to hash out everything we know about the people in our lives. That way we can figure out who to trust and who can be allies.”

“It’s a good idea,” Colin says from the lab section, “but she did wake me at five in the morning for it. Ronnie wasn’t impressed.”

“She was too impressed, I heard her on the phone,” Chesca counters. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here, I have some questions for you.”

“Go ahead,” she says, sitting down. Anything to get her mind off this whole thing with her family.

“Wally’s mom is… Vera?”

“Valerie,” she corrects. “She’s my dad’s twin.”

“Your dad was a twin?” Colin asks.

“Yeah, twins run in my family.”

“Another interesting factoid,” Chesca says. “Okay, next one. Scott always wanted to be a reporter, right? He didn’t secretly want to be a spy or something?”

Colin rolls his eyes and Iris laughs. “I don’t think he secretly wanted to be a spy, but he did think he wanted to be an actor when he was a kid.”

“You know; I could see it. Those eyes…But, um, you know, whatever,” Chesca adds quickly, remembering Iris and the breakup. “I’m sure there are hotter guys out there.”

“Thanks, Chess. Anything else?”

“One more, for now. Why is Becky Cooper afraid of you?”

Iris raises an eyebrow. “That’s going to help us catch Calamity?”

“…yeah.”

“Chess.”

“Come on, tell me! Whenever I ask Nora she just lets out this huge laugh and says that you’re not as adorable as you look.”

“Good to know,” Iris laughs. She’s not sure it’s the right time to discuss the encounter with Barry’s Evil Ex that made Becky avoid her for the rest of high school. “Now, do you have any more actual questions?”

“Oh, I’ve got something,” Colin says, still squinting at the test tubes. “Did you know Patty can speak Russian?”

“Patty Spivot?” Chesca asks. “Overly-perky detective Patty Spivot?”

“The very same.”

“Seriously?” Iris frowns.

“Yes, seriously. When we were at the party I ordered a Black Russian and the waiter said _na zdorovie_ and I said _abramovich_ , the only phrase I remember from my high school classes, and then he started talking to me in Russian, and she came in and saved me so I didn’t look like too much of an idiot.”

“You learn something new every day, I guess,” Iris sighs. Because of course Patty speaks a foreign language flawlessly, because she’s perfect. That goddamn explosion. Chesca must notice her expression because she clears her throat.

“Well, that doesn’t mean she’s perfect. With her…long legs and pretty…um…eyes. Well, I bet she _doesn’t_ think Han shot first, and that alone would make her the worst.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Chesca’s decided that we hate Patty,” Colin answers helpfully.

“Why?” Iris frowns. Chesca twists her fingers together.

“Well, because of Barry.”

“Chess…” Iris sighs, smiling. “It’s okay. I’m over…Well, I’m working on it. But you don’t need to hate Patty. I don’t even hate her, which makes it worse, but still. She’s our friend. Okay?”

“Oh, good,” she says. “She’s always so nice to me, it’s hard to hate her. Although I hope no one starts talking about chocolate around her again, I’ll lose it.”

Iris frowns as Colin starts laughing. “ _Now_ what are you talking about?”

“Remember, at the dinner, with Barry’s dessert…”

“No, I don’t…Oh my God. You guys are the _worst_! Is that why you were laughing?”

“It was funny!”

“CHESCA!”

“Colin was laughing too!”

“I’m not the one who coined ‘Vanilla Pattycakes’,” he counters, and Iris presses her palms to her eyes, hating that they’re making her laugh at a perfectly nice girl.

“You’re both going to hell,” she says. “Understand? And I won’t even be sorry about it.”

“And on that note,” Colin declares, “the test is done. Wow, you were right, Iris.”

“I was?”

“The liquid was apitoxin,” he explains. “It’s honeybee venom.”

“Great.” Just when things can’t get any weirder. “I’d better get back. I’ll see you guys later, okay?”

Iris passes Dr Wells in the parking lot and her stomach twists, which she’s used to but still doesn’t enjoy. She nods at her, even smiles wider than usual, and Iris smiles back. When Iris starts her walk back to the precinct, she feels her body will itself into that state of panic it felt when Barry had been hit by the gun, just before she gave Cobalt Blue his orders. It fails, and she’s frustrated all over again. Because if there is one reason to get those mind control powers back, it’s to find some answers to the questions hurtling around her brain. _Who are you, really? What do you get by helping me?_

_Why did you kill my father?_

Iris hasn’t been able to conjure up the mind control powers since the attack. They think it’s something to do with adrenaline and state of mind, and since she had to be speaking to Cobalt Blue it’s at least pretty reliant on voice as well as telepathy, but that’s all. Sometimes, though, it’s frustrating. Because she just wants to corner Helena Wells and dig and dig until she has all the answers she wants. But then, how does that make her any better than her? She still remembers the cold tendrils of fear and despair that hacked and clawed at her brain when Calamity entered hers on that Christmas. The scariest thing, though, is that if Iris thinks about her mother in prison and her father cold in the ground, and the nightmares she’s suffered through for years, she can feel herself start not to care.

She shakes her head as she gets to the precinct. Nora and Barry are her priority right now, when she can find them. This, protecting them, she can do. She’s surprised to find Nora in her lab, impatiently flicking through files. “You’re late.”

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “I had to go see the guys to get this analysed. How do you feel about the Bee Movie?” she jokes.

Nora frowns at her. “Sorry,” Iris says again. “It’s killer bee venom, apparently. I took a small sample, but Lindsey Kang, if I’m looking at the bee stings properly, had enough in him to kill a herd of elephants.”

“Of course it did. Do you have any idea where this could have come from?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Good. We don’t need anything weirder in this city.”

Iris watches her carefully as she looks through her notes again. “I – Nora, if you want to talk about it-”

“No, Iris. I do not want to talk about it.”

She nods and tries again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you mad-”

“ _Of course I’m mad_!” she explodes. “What did you expect? What did you expect, when you walk into the house and drop this on us, on me, and then expect us to deal with it? This isn’t cool superpowers, Iris, or flying around saving people so you’re on the news, this is real life! This is _my_ life!””

Iris swallows and looks at the ground, suddenly feeling very small and stupid, before rubbing her eyes behind her glasses. Nora exhales, and when Iris looks up she sees that her hands are at her mouth.

“Oh God,” she breathes, her voice wobbling. “Oh God, Iris, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, you’re stressed-”

“No, it isn’t. Here I am yelling at you like this is your fault, and you don’t know how to deal with it yourself – you’re just a kid. You’re _my_ kid.” She pauses and wipes away a tear. “God, look at you, you’re _shaking_. Come here, sweetheart.”

It doesn’t matter that she’s twenty-five and she has superpowers and her actual mother’s in prison, because sometimes you just need a hug from the mom you have. She goes to Nora and hugs her tightly, who pats her back lightly. “I’m not angry with you,” she promises quietly, sniffling. “I just…This is a lot.”

“I know. Should I not have told you? I thought about it, but-”

“No, I’m glad you did. You didn’t want us to get caught off guard, that’s more than Henry ever did, anyway.” She lets go of Iris. “Is he…Do you know if he’s alive?”

“We don’t think so. Freddie’s trying to find out more, but we don’t think he’s been seen since Barry was five.”

“Right.” Nora wipes her eyes again just as the captain walks in. “West, I – Nora? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Dee.”

The captain regards her. “Okay, I’m sending you home. Get some rest and come back tomorrow.”

Nora simply nods. “Of course, captain. I’ll see you tomorrow. See you at home, Iris.”

The captain stares at Iris once Nora has left. “She _never_ accepts days off. She okay?”

“Not right now,” Iris sighs.

“Look, Iris, can you work from home today? If it’s not too much trouble?”

“I can do that,” she nods helpfully. “I’ve done the analysis and I can have the report ready for you by the end of the afternoon, if you want.”

“Thanks, Iris,” the captain says, and then peers at her. “Are you getting enough sleep?”

“I – yes,” Iris says. Which is only partly a lie, anyway. The memory of Barry singing to her during the hallucination only lasted a few days before it dissolved like paper in water, chased away by the worry of this new problem. But the captain just shakes her head.

“Sorry. We’ve been looking at adoption agencies for after we’re married – Bobbi shows me one brochure and suddenly I start mothering.”

“Well, family’s always important,” she points out. “I don’t know where I’d be without my mom, she’s pretty awesome.”

The captain regards her, something like respect in her eyes. “She’s lucky to have you, you know. Have a nice day.”

Nora suggests that they collect Barry from work if he’s struggling as well and they can all just spend the day together, so Iris walks into CCPN looking for him. But his desk is empty and she can’t see him anywhere. She can’t see Scott, either, so she’s forced to approach his mentor, who has her feet up on her desk as she studies something. “Um, Ms Bridge?”

“Oh, Barry’s friend, hello. How can I help you, Daisy?”

Iris blinks. “My name is Iris.”

“Of course it is. Any reason you’re here in the middle of the work day, lightning girl?”

“I was looking for Barry,” she explains. “He, um, got some really bad news last night, and I just wanted to check on him, see how he’s doing.”

Missy looks up from her work and gives her a pondering look. “You know, that makes sense. He wasn’t doing that annoyingly friendly thing he does every morning when he says hello.”

“Do you mean smiling?”

“Yes, that. Well, I’m afraid he’s not here. The interview with Tony McGhee got moved up to today or we’d lose it, so he had to think of all his questions today. He’s off doing the interview right now. He didn’t seem too irritated, though,” she adds, seeing Iris’ expression. “I think he wanted the distraction. Now I can see why.”

“Right,” Iris sighs. “Do you mind if I leave him a note?”

“Be my guest,” she shrugs. Iris thanks her and walks quickly to Barry’s desk. She knows for a fact that he’s seen her calls and messages – the curse of the dreaded blue ticks and traitorous iPhone messages – but she wants him to know she’s been here as well. Either he’s seen them and isn’t ready to talk, or he’s busy. She doesn’t dwell on the other reason for too long, that maybe he’s mad at her for telling him and doesn’t want to yell at her about it. She rootles around his desk for a Post-It and picks up a pen.

_Call me if you need anything – Iris xx_

As she’s putting the pen away, her eyes fall on the picture frame by his desk. There are three: a portrait picture of Patty smiling, one of him and his mother from when he was a kid, and the one of them from Disneyland. She picks it up, her green-painted nails stroking the glass. Like Barry, she has the ridiculous picture with the stupid faces and the Mickey Mouse ears, and Nora has the sensible one. It was so long ago, when their biggest problem was organising how they were going to Skype when Nora was at home, Iris was at Notre Dame in Keystone and Barry was at Berkeley in Coast City. Now they’ve got sociopathic metahumans and revenge-obsessed spies to worry about. Iris just hopes she can protect them, because it seems like her family has been in danger ever since she woke up from the coma.

***

Barry is waved quickly through security when they seem his badge and he’s directed to a fancy-looking conference room where someone serves him tea, coffee and sandwiches on a fancy china set. Dr McGhee is due to arrive any moment, he’s told by a frazzled-looking assistant, so he looks over his questions and interview notes before he arrives, trying to calm himself. They got the call that they’d need to do the interview today instead of on Friday this morning, so Barry had to come up with a bunch of questions on the fly in the space of about four hours. Thankfully several years of research for his dissertation means that he was able to skim a load of interviews and short biographies about the man so he could get the general gist of what people knew about him and what people wanted to know. Besides which, it was a welcome distraction from what was going on in his mind.

It still feels like it’s happening to someone else, this whole thing with his dad, but it’s having a very real impact on him and he knows he’s not handling it very well. Patty left before he woke up, still mad, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to talk to her about it simply because he doesn’t know how to drop that on her, especially when she won’t sit still and talk to him long enough for him to tell her. _Hey, Patty, my dad used to be a secret government agent who killed rogue spies for a living, so there could be people coming to kill him at any moment. Also, could you get milk?_ Besides, it isn’t fair that he keeps giving her parts of himself only for her to wait weeks and months for her to open up to him. He tells her this and then what? She tells him what’s bothering her at Christmas?

Barry hasn’t heard from his mother, but then he knows that she would have thrown herself into work with the same vigour he’s doing right now. He’ll see her tonight, though, when it’s likely that she’ll have calmed down long enough to want to deal with it. Iris, on the other hand, has called five times, left three messages, and has texted him a few times as well. He can feel the worry in her words, as well as her hesitancy because she doesn’t want to bother him. He would call her back, but it’s all so fresh and raw and he doesn’t want to unload until he figures out how he feels.

“Mr Allen,” someone says. He looks up to see Billie Carlisle, the person who showed him to the room before running away again. “Everything alright?”

“Everything’s great. Is Dr McGhee ready?”

“He is, but – oh, he’s right here, actually. Dr McGhee, this is-”

“Barry Allen,” he interrupts smoothly. “I know who he is.”

Barry blinks in surprise as he stands to shake his hand. Dr McGhee is tall and broad-shouldered, with stern blue eyes, sandy blonde hair, and a British accent. He has a lab coat over his suit and Barry can tell he must have just come from doing work because he’s pulling off gloves. “You do?”

“Yes, I read your blog. And your both of your dissertations, actually.”

“You read them _both_?”

He smiles at him. “You’d be surprised at what being the head of a fancy scientific research facility will get you.” He turns to Billie. “That will be all, Billie. I’ll call you if you need anything.”

She nods. “And you’re sure it’s alright to use your office?”

“Quite alright. We do what we can, don’t we?”

She leaves and they both sit down again. He pours himself some tea – Earl Grey, which Iris will get a hell of a kick out of when he tells her – and Barry turns on his recorder. “Sorry about this,” Dr McGhee says. “All the commotion. I’m afraid we had a rather unorthodox incident here this morning and I’ll be tied up for days – that’s why we had to move the interview to today.”

“I heard, the attack. Is he alright?”

He sighs, tapping he spoon on the rim of the glass. “Unfortunately not. I’ve informed Mr Kang’s parents of his death. Such a shame, he was instrumental in some of the developments we’ve been having in the realm of nanotechnology.” He waves a hand. “Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself, and I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to the ramblings of an old fuddy-duddy like me.”

“Actually, that’s exactly why I came here,” Barry laughs. “Though I’m sure they’re not just ramblings, seeing as I saw an actual robot playing catch with a dog on the way in here.”

“Ah, Cornelius. Quite ingenious, that one.”

“The robot?”

“The dog.”

The interview is casual but focused, Barry being determined to leave a reputation of being friendly without forgetting why he’s there. After all, the point is to make him seem more accessible, especially after the Particle Accelerator explosion and the ostracism of Helena Wells meant that the city doesn’t really trust doctors with fancy toys in big buildings. Dr McGhee is charming and friendly, if not a little serious, and makes a lot of science jokes, some that are laced with sarcasm, and some just really British. Iris will like this, when it comes out. Hell, so will his mother and Patty. He’s hit, then, as the interview draws to a close, of the thought of whether his father ever read anything he wrote.

“Mr Allen?” Dr McGhee says.

“Ah, sorry. So, final question – pick a non-scientific person, living or dead, and tell me why you’d be them for a day.”

He looks thoughtful. “Interesting question…Who was that fellow taught all the young men with the lightsabres?”

“…Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

“Ah, yes, him. I’ve always wanted to be a Jedi Master.”

Barry laughs and takes a sip of his coffee. “Well, thank you, Dr McGhee, I appreciate it. I should let you get back to your day.”

“Believe me, the pleasure is all mine,” he says. “Feels nice to have something in my day that doesn’t involve talking to the authorities, even if I was forced to do this to my deputies to prove I won’t be the next scientist to blow a hole in the sky.” He smiles, shaking his head. “Come on, Mr Allen. Don’t think I don’t know why my people refused to drop this interview even after everything that happened today. The Particle Accelerator didn’t just hurt the people who turned into metahumans.”

Barry thinks about Iris, small and sleeping in the hospital bed for nine months, but also her family feeling like their world rocking under their feet, Chesca with her family deriding her job, and people like Dr McGhee. He regards him. “I met your friend, once. Iris West?”

“Yeah, that’s her. When did you meet her?”

“She and Dr Wells were attending a conference of mine about tachyon particles. Charming young lady. Chatty. I hope she doesn’t use those puppy dog eyes on everyone she knows; none of you would stand a chance. Although I have to say, I was happy to see that Miss West made such a resounding recovery thanks to Dr Wells. It reminded me of the old Helena.”

Barry tips his head. “The _old_ Helena?”

For the first time that day, Dr McGhee looks a little sad. “You’ve probably heard from your Iris that Dr Wells and I don’t see eye to eye. Lots of barbed comments in research papers, that kind of thing. But it wasn’t always that way, not before Terrence died.”

“Her husband?”

“Mm. Helena was so bright, bubbly, optimistic. She used to come here all the time just to chat about what she was doing over lunch, and sometimes she brought her nephew with her to come and see what _we_ were doing. But when Terrence died and Jesse stopped visiting, it was like she became a completely different person. I remember at the funeral she looked at them burying Terrence and it was like she had no idea how she got there.” He pauses, sighing. “I suppose that’s what happens when you lose your entire family in one fell swoop. It’s like she lost her anchor.”

Barry’s never considered that. He knows that Helena lost her husband and her nephew, but he never thought about the impact. He suddenly thinks about what would happen if Iris and his mom were both gone, all at once and leaving him alone in the world, and he can’t breathe. He’d feel adrift, too. “I never thought of it that way,” he says quietly.

“We never do. Anyway, you’re right, I should – what in the _world_ is that?”

Both of them walk out of the room when they hear alarms blaring and people running around. People are slamming into them as they head in all directions, and that’s when Barry hears the buzzing.

“Oh my word,” Dr McGhee breathes. A swarm of bees has gathered in the room high above them, the sound practically making the ground vibrate. Without thinking, Barry’s hand steals towards the watch in his pocket and he presses one of the buttons on the side. “Doctor,” he says. He steps back, in front of him, trying not to anger the bees, who appear to have not found who they’re looking for yet. “Doctor, we need to get back in there, right now. No questions, just go.”

Barry must have inherited that authoritative voice, because the doctor follows him into the room without hesitation. Once Barry has barricaded them in there, they see something flash and suddenly Iris is standing there in front of them, clad in her golden suit and eyes aglow. “Miss Miracle!” Dr McGhee says. She nods.

“Doctor, Barry. Are you both alright?”

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Barry answers. “What are those?”

“Killer bees, apparently. Doctor, do you have some sort of PA system in here?”

“Yes, why?”

“Tell everyone to lock themselves in rooms like this one. Barry, call your mother.”

They pause when they hear pounding on the door, relentless and making the door shake. “You’re going after _that_?” Barry demands.

“Apparently.”

***

“Oh, for real?” Iris mutters. The bees are desperate to get into the room, pounding viciously on the door. Thankfully, everyone has listened to the doctor’s instructions and escaped. “Guys, a little help?”

“How do you direct someone who’s walked into the Paranormal Activity: Bee Edition?” Chesca wants to know.

“Iris, I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Colin says. “I know bees usually movie in groups, but I’ve never seen uniformity like this before.”

“So nobody knows anything,” Iris clarifies. “Great.”

“No, Iris,” Dr Wells says calmly. Iris’ blood runs cold and she fights the instinct to snap at her. “Don’t think of them as one bee. As we said, there’s uniformity. Think of them as a swarm, and they’ll be much easier to control.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I’ve never had the opportunity of dealing with killer bees in this capacity, but I have my predictions.”

Iris sighs and concentrates. Usually, when she wants to pick something up with her mind, she concentrates on a specific thing – it’s size, shape, weight. But now, she looks at the swarm, tries to imagine picking them up all at once, imagine how it would move – and it works. The bees are still writhing, fighting to get into the door, but they’re in her grip. “It worked,” she says in surprise.

“Well done, Iris,” she says warmly. “Now, lead them outside and disperse them.”

“That, I can do.”

Iris leads them out carefully, expertly, and excruciatingly slowly, outside. It takes effort and concentration to make sure none of them escape, until she’s can fly a mile or so away. She holds her hands out, the bees still swarming, and shoves her palms outwards. They scatter haphazardly around the sky, confused, and Iris lets out a breath. “Okay, met my weird quota for the week. Now I have to make sure that everyone isn’t stuck in that building until the sun goes down. Chess, I – ow. _Ow_! What the – shit!”

The bees, so confused and scattered when she first left them, apparently aren’t as stupid as she thinks. One stings her, and then another, and then Iris is feeling her vision blur and then she sinks to her knees. The last thing she hears is Dr Wells shout her name before everything goes black.

“Iris? _Iris_!”

She opens her eyes an age later and Nora’s face, slack with relief. “N-Nora? What are you doing here? What happened?”

“Barry called me, he’s in the car. And your heart stopped – Dr Wells had to tell me how to start the defibrillator in your suit.”

“Well, you did a good job,” Iris groans, sitting up. She puts a hand over her heart. “Still beating. What happened to the bees?”

“There were none around when I got here. But, um, you’re all stung…”

“Whoa, those things were for real, weren’t they?” She looks at her hand – a small electrical charge is running over her palm. “Huh.”

Nora helps her stand, catching her when she sways, and Barry gets out to help Iris into the car. “There you go dying on me again,” Barry jokes, his voice shaky with relief.

“Sorry,” Iris says, shifting to get comfortable. “Habit, apparently.”

Colin greets them when they get to the Cortex, though by that time Iris has half-healed and she can stand properly. It still stings a little when she peels off her suit, though. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Iris says. “They were all going after people locked rooms.”

“Not before they killed someone else,” Nora says grimly. “Billie Carlisle, she was practicing for a demonstration when they came in through the window.”

“Billie?” Barry frowns. “She was using Dr McGhee’s office. And didn’t you say that Lindsey Kang was giving a talk that Dr McGhee was supposed to be giving last night?”

“You think that killer bees are attacking him?” Colin frowns. “Why?”

“I have no idea, but if there’s one thing I know in investigative reporting, it’s that there are very little coincidences,” Barry says, and his mother nods.

“And two is already way too many for this old cop. Look, I have to tell Dee about this, but keep me posted. Barry, I’ll drive you back to work.”

“Great, I need to tell Patty not to worry.” He squeezes Iris’ shoulder briefly. “Call me, okay?”

They both leave and it’s completely the wrong time to ask how they’re doing, so she allows everyone to give her medicine while they brainstorm. “I thought we hit the threshold with mutant jellyfish,” Chesca says. “But seriously? Killer bees? What’s next?”

“Sonic spiders,” Dr Wells suggests idly, studying Iris’ films. Iris snorts.

“Did you just make a joke, Dr W?”

“Doctors can joke,” Colin says. “Right, Dr Wells?”

“Yes, Dr Snow. That’s right. Besides which, I have seen animals behave in abnormal manners before, and despite my relationship with Dr McGhee, I have no godly idea why bees would want to kill her.”

“All I know is, I hate bees, ain’t nobody got time for – BEES!” Chesca screams the last word and Iris starts. A lone bee starts buzzing around the room. “It must have come from your suit!”

Quick as a flash, Iris snaps her fingers and it stills – controlling one is much easier than controlling one hundred. She uses the other hand to float a test tube to her, before manoeuvring the bee inside. They all gather around to look. “Unbelievable,” Colin says quietly.

“Is that a…” Chesca asks. Iris squints.

“It looks like a-”

“Robot,” Dr Wells finishes. She takes the tube and studies it. “Nanotechnology. Incredible.”

“Incredibly _freaky_. Robotic killer bees?” Chesca practically squeaks. “Are we insured for this?”

“I don’t believe so, Chesca. But perhaps we can add robots to our resume.”

“That sounds promising already,” a male voice says, and they all look at the door. Iris smiles in surprise.

“Freddie? What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he says. “But I kind of need your help. It’s…Well, it’ll be best if you come outside.”

Temporarily distracted by this, they leave the bee on the table and follow him. Freddie points to the sky. “Just keep looking. You’ll see it.”

“Is it a bird?” Chesca asks.

“A plane?” Colin tries.

“You guys read about Superwoman too much,” Freddie laughs. He grins as the figure becomes clearer. “Besides, it’s my girlfriend.”

As he speaks a woman clad in a red and blue metal suit lands in front of them. “Hi!” she says cheerfully, flipping back her helmet to reveal black hair and hazel eyes. “I’m Ray.”

Iris introduces everyone, become a little warier when she gets to Dr Wells. Who, for her part, seems almost as elated to meet Ray Palmer as she is to meet her. “The pleasure is all mine, Ms Palmer,” she says kindly.  They head back inside. “This is nothing short of a work of art, I’m very impressed.”

“Thanks,” she says proudly. “I was hoping you could help me with it, though – that’s why we’re here.”

“I mean, I wanted to see you guys,” Freddie adds. “And Barry, I wanted to congratulate him on his front page.”

After Chesca has stopped everything to examine the suit and gush over it, she looks up, taking off her goggles. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m having a little trouble keeping it up,” she says, scratching her head. “And I heard you’ve been very helpful with Iris and the Miss Miracle suit, especially since she learned how to fly, so I was hoping you could help.”

“Count. Me. _In_.” Chesca is already tinkering with the suit, tools at the ready, and Iris clears her throat. “Did you guys forget about the swarm of robotic killer bees?”

“Robotic killer bees?” Ray repeats. “Cool!”

“Dr Snow and I will provide ample support, Iris,” Dr Wells assures her.

“And I am happy to sit this one out,” Chesca adds. “Unless you _want_ me running around screaming in Spanish every time there’s a buzzy-buzz noise.”

Iris sighs and Freddie seems to notice. “Um, honey, why don’t you and Chess try to fix your suit, and Iris and I will go to Jitter’s for some java? And then maybe we could all go for dinner later?”

After his latte and her Americano, Iris loosens up, and they catch each other up. “…your mentor is a sociopath, there’s someone controlling killer bees, and your best friend’s dad used to be a spy,” Freddie finishes. “Okay, your Wednesday sucks worse than mine.”

“Yeah.” They’re silent for a little while on the way to the precinct, where Iris has to drop off her report. “Ray’s nice.”

“She is,” Freddie agrees. “Light and fun and no island-adjacent baggage.”

“You guys are still fighting?”

“We’re all fighting.”

“What does Liv think about the suit?”

Freddie doesn’t answer and Iris stares at him. “Frederick Morgan Smoak. Do not tell me you are keeping Ray in the dark about the Arrow and the Arrow in the dark about the Atom?”

“Alright. I won’t tell you.”

“Freddie, you need – how are you _not_ a blathering wreck?”

“Oh, I am,” he tells her. “I’m just really good at hiding it.”

“Aren’t we all?” They walk into the precinct and spot the captain immediately, who’s understandably a little stressed because of the attack. “How’s Nora?”

“She’s…Nora. But a little better.”

“Good to hear.”

Iris walks back over to Freddie, who’s studying their mural. “ _A fair and just society_ ,” he reads. “Neat. Hey, isn’t that Barry’s girlfriend?”

“Yeah. Hey, Patty!”

Patty stops, so distracted she almost walks past them. “Hey, guys,” she smiles. “It’s Freddie, right? Iris…”

“Ex,” he finishes cheerfully. “But it’s cool.”

“Totally cool,” Iris adds. “We’re friends.”

“The friendliest. Well, not the _friendliest_ -”

“Because he has a girlfriend-”

“I do, I do have a girlfriend, we – We should get dinner, so you can meet my girlfriend!”

Patty looks between the two of them, trying not to smile. “Sure, dinner sounds great. I’ll tell Barry.”

“Awesome,” Iris grins. “And I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Better?”

“I just thought you seemed kind of down this morning.”

“Oh.” Patty swallows. “It was nothing, really. Just one of those days.”

She starts to talk to Freddie and Iris almost believes her, but then something hits Iris from Patty – a blonde man, Patty’s eyes and height, slumping to the floor with blood blooming across his chest. _Daddy_! her voice screams, and then it’s gone. “Iris?”

“Sorry – what?”

“Is eight okay?” Patty repeats. She nods.

“Yeah,” Iris says. “Yeah, eight is fine.”

***

Iris is still thinking about that when she arrives at dinner. In fact, she’s so distracted by the fact that she’s just relived Patty’s father being murdered in her head, she completely forgets that both the love of her live and her ex are at this table, and that she’d made out with all the guys at this table. But then, those are the wonders of being a mind reader.

“Ray, right?” Barry says, and she smiles at him.

“That’s right. It’s nice to meet you, Barry.”

“Wow, Iris, how many billionaires do you know?” Patty asks.

“Enough,” she answers as the waiter shows everyone to their seats. “Trouble is around you guys like Chesca on Twizzlers.”

“But they throw the best parties,” Barry says. He looks around. “Um, Ray? Where is everyone?”

“Oh, I bought out the restaurant,” she says cheerfully. Everyone looks at her. “I, um, thought it would be nice. Privacy, you know?”

“Well, I think it was sweet,” Freddie says, kissing her on the cheek, and Iris smiles at them. The meal goes on smoothly, with everyone being interested in what’s going on in everyone else’s city, but Iris’ begins to notice two things. One, that every time she lets her mind wander, it falls back on Dr Wells, because she’s now back in her helpful and friendly phase, with no trace of Calamity in her. And the other thing is that, for whatever reason, Barry and Patty are having a fight. She tries to stay quiet about their relationship, both because of her own wellbeing and because it’s none of her business, but it’s getting harder and harder to ignore.

“So, Patty, Iris was telling me about those killer bees,” Freddie continues. “You guys have any leads yet?”

“Not yet, but we’re working on it,” she answers. “Although I haven’t read Iris’ report yet, maybe that’ll give us some leads.”

“Not from there,” she disagrees. “Besides, all I’ve found is that they’re highly toxic and that getting near them could kill you.”

“Right, the whole ‘I’m a cop so I can’t tell you anything’ schtick,” Freddie grins. “You know, that gets really old for us civilians.”

“I’ll say,” Barry mutters, and Iris clears her throat.

“Well, it’s not just for our health. It saves lives, and it’s the law.”

“Plus, sometimes you have to keep secrets,” Ray continues, happily skewering a piece of ravioli. “Keeping things close can be good for you.”

“You know, I don’t find that,” Barry disagrees. “I actually think secrets can be really bad for relationships.”

“And I think,” Patty says, buttering her roll, “that keeping things close can be better for those people who don’t like to dwell on their feelings all the time.”

“R-Right,” Ray says. “But what I actually meant was, like, I have to keep secrets for my company, to make sure nothing gets out to our rivals. Iris, I’m sure Dr Wells has probably kept some secrets in her time.”

Iris scoffs, drinking her wine. “Oh, she’s a riddle alright. A riddle wrapped inside a mystery, inside an enigma, wrapped inside a bi-”

“Dessert!” Freddie interrupts frantically. “Look, the desserts are here! Who ordered the chocolate cheesecake?”

“I need some air,” Iris says quickly. She gets up before anyone can say anything and walks into one of the empty rooms, breathing through her nose. Freddie finds her pacing.

“Okay, what is up with you guys?” he asks. “I thought Central City was supposed to be the fun one?”

“You kind of came at the wrong time.”

“Iris – Iris, stop pacing you’re going to wear a hole in the carpet. What’s wrong?”

“What _isn’t_ wrong?” Iris snaps. “Dr Wells switches between cold and nurturing, and I can’t figure out when she’s going to be which, or when she’s going to turn into Calamity and murder me for shits and giggles. Barry’s dad used to be a spy and I have no way of finding out whether the family of the people Henry Allen killed want to kill Barry and Nora too. I don’t even know what they look like! I – maybe it’s my boss. Maybe it’s Patty – hey, maybe it’s you! Are _you_ a spy?”

Freddie frowns at her. “Iris, I have asthma.”

She rubs her eyes. “How do you guys do this every day?”

“Tequila. Look, Iris, there’s no hard and fast rule for this. You’re doing the best you can, okay? Just hang in there, everything will be fine.”

Iris bites her lip, and then Ray walks in with a nervous smile on her face. “Hey, um, so they’re kind of – fighting, and I don’t know them well enough to make awkward conversation around it.”

Ray is right, when they get back Barry and Patty are in the middle of a hushed but heated argument. Right before she’s about to try and interrupt, Patty’s pager goes off. “Someone’s attacked Mercury Labs again. I’m sorry, I have to go. Thank you for dinner, Ray.”

“No…problem,” she says quietly as Patty leaves. Iris gets a call too, and she knows what it’s about before she answers. “Chess?”

“No, it’s Colin. Chess won’t deal with the bees anymore. They’re back at Mercury Labs, Dr McGhee called the police a few minutes ago.”

Iris apologises to everyone, flashing back to the Cortex to grab her suit before going back to Mercury Labs. It’s different at night, which makes the fact that she’s hunting robotic killer bees a little more terrifying.

“Upstairs,” Colin directs her. “Dr McGhee’s office, I think.”

Iris makes her way up the stairs, careful not to make too much noise. Suddenly, though, as she rounds the corner, the swarm buzzes high up, and then flits through and open window. “Guys, we were too late. I’m gonna find the doctor. Dr McGhee?”

“In here!” he calls. Iris flashes beyond the door to find him at his desk, slightly shaken but alright. “Doctor, I really think you need police protection.”

“I’d much rather have you, given that your presence seems to scare him off, Miss Miracle.”

Iris stares. “Him?”

“Yes,” the doctor sighs, “him. When Detective Allen informed me that the bees were robotic, and that they were meant for me, I realised who it was. Bertram Larvan, a former employee of mine, is controlling them.”

“Bertam?” Chesca demands. “Jeez, sometimes they don’t even need to be named.”

“Chess, go away.”

“Although I am partial to the Bug-Eyed Bandit.”

“Chess!”

Iris shakes her head. “Why do you think it was him?”

“Because I fired him last year. We were working nanotechnology for our next project, but he was more interested in turning them into weapons. I’ll never be one to use my projects for that, but it became impossible for him to work here. No doubt he’s upset with the fact that the project went on without him.”

“So he feels betrayed,” Iris says, “by someone he thought would help him.”

“I just never thought it would come to this.”

“Well, betrayal is a powerful thing.”

***

Barry’s on the couch when Iris comes back home, absently working on his laptop. “Hey,” she says, surprised. “You’re here tonight?”

“Patty and I had a fight,” he shrugs. Iris removes her jacket and sits on the coffee table.

“Right, I saw. Are you okay?”

“Not really. I was…God, I was a jackass. No wonder she’s mad at me. I apologised to Freddie and Ray, by the way. They were great about it, which made me feel worse.”

“Eh, they’ve got their own problems.”

“I’m just so tired of being lied to,” he sighs. “I don’t know what it is, or whether it was me, or if I did something…”

Iris sighs, taking her glasses off. “In any other situation, I wouldn’t be telling you this. But, um, do you remember when I just moved in here, and I didn’t really want to talk to anyone? And you sat outside my room until I would talk about what happened?”

Barry frowns. “Yeah…”

“Well, I was with Patty today and I kind of saw something – I think her dad must have died around this time, and she might be reliving it.”

Realisation washes over his face, quickly followed by shame. “I didn’t know,” he sighs. “I knew he died, but not when.”

“Barry, grief’s a lonely thing. And sometimes, yeah, it can be a selfish thing, which is why she’s acting the way she’s acting. Now, it shouldn’t be, which is why it was good that I had you to open up to, but by that point I’d been friends with you for years.”

“Fuck,” Barry groans. “I should have been more understanding, or-”

“Barry, you’re talking like you haven’t had a concrete, safe truth upended in the last twenty-four hours,” she laughs sadly. “You just found out your dad wasn’t who you thought he was – you’re allowed to be a little selfish too. How are you doing with that?”

“Terribly,” he mumbles. “I’m mad and I have no idea who to be mad at.”

“Ah, that problem. Well, as someone who’s spent an inordinate attempt mad, I’m telling you that all that really helps is time. And brownies. And Assassin’s Creed,” she laughs. “And eventually, when you’ve both calmed down, you’ll be able to talk.”

“When did you get so smart, sunshine?”

“Since always, Bartholomew.”

“Okay,” he smiles. “Anything bothering _you_?”

“No, not really.”

“Uh-huh. And the truth?”

“I hate you.” She grimaces. “I don’t know how to defeat her. Calamity. I want to get my mom out of jail so badly, but the only person who could teach me how to get more powerful is the person who ruined my life.” She swallows. “I have – new powers.”

He regards her. “And I’m guessing they’re not flying or glowing eyes.”

“No, they’re not. Um, they’re mind control. And I keep thinking if I can just use those, I can make her confess. But they scare me, those powers, because she used them on me once. I can’t imagine doing that to someone else. Even her.”

Barry nods. “Well, Iris, you have to take things one step at a time. Don’t think about how to get her to confess, think of catching her vulnerable. Then once you have that plan, go with the next one. Do you have any ideas?”

Iris pauses for a moment. “Well, I haven’t told anyone about this yet, but she and I are the same, right? And Captain Cold’s gun stops me because I can’t teleport.”

“You want to use Cold’s gun on her?”

“Well, I can’t, that’s the problem. And the Blue Blaster broke when he punched me, and I have nowhere to build a new one without Dr Wells knowing about it.”

Barry pauses. “Well…I mean, there’s Linda.”

“You think I should tell her?” Iris frowns.

“She works at Wayne Industries, she’s gotta have access. You and Chesca could work on it there. And Linda and Wally want to help.”

“Maybe I should just put it in the Yellow Pages,” she mutters. They laugh and he looks at her for a moment. “What?” she asks.

“I just…You were defending Patty. I thought, with everything – between us…”

Iris shrugs. “Patty makes you happy,” she says simply. “And you being happy – that’s everything to me, Barry.”

He feels that tugging in his chest again, at that look of certainty and adoration, because she has always, always looked at him like that and he never saw it. He never saw her. “Anyway,” she continues, “I have robot killer bees, Captain Singh, and the Bug-Eyed Bandit to deal with. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

***

Being a part of the Miracle Workers (Iris has given up and only asks that Chesca doesn’t make up T-Shirts), Barry has discovered, means that you’re on standby whenever something happens. That could be anything from a supervillain in a parka with a gun to crazy robotic killer bees. He makes it to the end of the day, spending the whole thing on polishing the interview, and then goes to STAR Labs in the evening in an attempt to feel useful. Iris is there with Ray, Freddie, Chesca, Colin and Dr Wells, all admiring the suit.

“So, you built this?” he asks admiringly. “That’s amazing. So you can fly too?”

“For a little while,” Ray says. “Then, well – splat.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Chesca says. She hands Ray an iPad. “Just some ideas. By the way, are you totally married to ‘The Atom’?”

“Speaking of important things,” Iris continues, “what are we doing about Bertram?”

“Well, I’ve been working on that,” Freddie says. He leads Iris and Barry to a computer terminal. “That is Mr Larvan, and he’s been quite busy since he was fired. Purchased several high-speed computers and tech, though of course I don’t know his address. However, I was able to take apart the bee, and I found a tracker in it. When our boy starts to let the bees out, we’ll know.”

“Great,” Iris says. “You have any idea to make it so I don’t turn into a human piñata for those things?”

“I’m going to hack them.”

“Hack them?” Barry repeats.

“Hack them.”

“You mean my safety depends on whether you can out-hack the guy with the killer bees?”

“Have I ever let you down before?”

“You’ve never been stung by one before.”

“Ye of little faith.”

“Barry, Colin,” Dr Wells laughs, “you will remain here with me. I’m sure Iris would appreciate the help while she’s going after Bertram.”

“And call your mom,” Iris adds. “He’s going straight to Iron Heights when this is done.”

“Where do you think he’ll strike next?” Barry asks.

“Mercury Labs is closed for the day after the attacks, but we’ve got ears on it and the good doctor’s house,” Colin explains. “Bertram, judging by his modus operandi, likes to go in at night, so theoretically-”

“Whoa!” Freddie exclaims. “Speak of the Bug and he…shall…ahem Bandit. Killer bees, Mercury Labs!”

“He’s right,” Dr Wells calls. She holds up the test tube, where the lone bee is banging against the glass. “He must have activated them remotely and they all act as a team.”

“Where’s Bertram?” Iris demands, already suiting up. Freddie taps. “Crap. Crap, he’s on the other side of town.”

“I can’t do both at the same time!”

Dr Wells wheels to the terminal, taking charge. “Iris, you will find Bertram. Ray, the lightning in your suit will allow you to redirect the bees.”

“Me?” Ray asks. “But I could fall!”

“So Colin and Barry will drive in the find and assist you remotely. Chesca and I will man the terminals.”

“Every single one of you,” Chesca says darkly, “owes me for this. I _hate_ bees.”

***

Barry and Colin drive to where they’ve located the bees, Ray up ahead, while Iris tries to locate Bertram. “Iris, have you found him yet?” he says into the microphone as he drives.

“Not yet,” she admits. “He’s scrambling the signal – I’ve been all over the city twice now.”

“Any luck with the bees?”

“We’re almost there,” Colin says. “Barry, make another two rights. Ray, the bees are right outside.”

“ _Miss Miracle_ ,” a deep, quietly vicious voice says.

“What the fuck?” Barry demands.

“Guys, he – he’s in my _suit_!”

“You thought you could outsmart me, didn’t you?”

“Nobody hacks the suit,” Freddie snarls. “You wanna bring it? It’s. Been. _Brought_!”

“Ray, get the bees,” Dr Wells orders. “You want to distract them enough so that you’re the enemy. Iris?”

“Freddie, have I got a location yet?”

“Yeah, the old warehouse on Tenth. Ironically, used to store honey.”

“Ray?” Colin and Chesca say together. They’ve arrived at the labs but there’s no answer. When they look up, however, they see several flashes of lightning and then the swarm starts to follow Ray. Barry twists the wheel and the van spins, following Ray. “I can’t stop them,” Freddie says. “You’ll have to keep flying. But I might be able to redirect them towards the bay.”

“Great,” she says. “So all I have to do is not die.”

“That would be helpful.”

***

Iris gets to the warehouse and looks around. “Bertram!” she yells. “I know you’re in here!”

“Good for you.” His disembodied voice is no longer in her suit, but it seems to come through the walls. “Now, if you knew what was good for you, you’d leave me alone.”

“It’s over, Larvan! I know you…I know you feel betrayed, believe me, I understand that, but this wasn’t the way!”

“What do you know, Miss Miracle?” he sneers, and that’s the first she hears of the buzzing.

“Guys…”

“With your superpowers and suit and all the hero worship. What do you know about me? I lost _everything_!”

Iris thinks of herself, of Barry, of Nora, of Patty, even of Dr Wells. “You’re not the only one who lost everything!”

“No,” she says. “But I’m the only one who can do something about it.”

Iris freezes in panic when the bees rise up from the ground, as if they’ve been there the whole time, the buzzing deafening her. Then, just as quickly as they rise, they stop and fall until the floor is carpeted with little robotic bees. “Stay away from my friends, you Bug-Eyes Bastard,” Freddie mutters, and Iris laughs. She races through the warehouse until she finds Bertram and handcuffs him. “We’re good. I’m calling the CCPD to come and get him, so-”

She’s interrupted by a thud and she gasps. “It’s okay!” Barry says quickly. “It’s just Ray.”

“That was _awesome_!”

Iris flashes to them quickly, where she sees Barry and Colin helping Ray down from the top of the van. “…and I just don’t know why I never thought of it before!” she’s saying excitedly. Iris frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“The bees! I’ve been approaching this all wrong. I need to go smaller.” She holds up one of the bees. “And this is going to help me.”

“Time to come home, all of you,” Dr Wells says. “Well done.”

“Yeah, you kicked ass and I didn’t even have to see a single bee!” Chesca adds.

Barry, though, is watching something floating towards them. Too late, he realises it’s a bee heading straight for Ray and leaps in front of her, before Iris can do anything. Colin barely manages to catch him before he falls, and then lays him on the ground. He checks his pulse. “He’s tachycardic, but your defibrillator doesn’t work externally.”

“Wait,” Iris says. She kneels next to Barry and rubs her hands together, before putting them on his chest. She exhales, and a little charge goes out. Barry coughs a few times and then opens his eyes. Iris pushes the hair back from his face. “Now who’s dying on who, Care Bear?”

“Hey, you started it, sunshine,” he says. She pulls him to a sitting position, and Colin checks him. “Perfect. Well done, Miss Miracle.”

“Well, I do what I can.”

“You wanna head back to the lab?”

“Actually, could you drop me off at my apartment?” he asks. “I think I’ve been avoiding it enough.”

Iris looks at him and smiles. _Told you. Time_.

_Cocky dork._

_I’m telling Linda._

_Now?_

_I’ve got a few hours before dinner, why not?_

***

Patty seems to be waiting for him when he gets there, sat on their sofa. “Before you say anything,” he says, “I’m sorry. I’ve been going through a lot, and I kind of dumped some of it on you.”

“No, it’s my fault, Barry,” she sighs. “I knew what I was doing, and…My dad died on this date. And we never caught the guy who did it, so every year around this date I get really mean and closed off and snappy. And I’m never usually with anyone but this year I’m with you, only I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Why not?”

“You’re _Barry_ ,” she laughs. “You wake up singing showtunes and you make pancakes and you walk around like you’re going to conquer the world. I didn’t want to bring you down.”

Barry looks at his hands. “I get that. And I’m not mad at you. But Patty, it can be selfish, but it doesn’t have to be _lonely_. I want to be able to help.” He pauses. “I found out something about my dad a couple of days ago, and it really fucked me up, but I know I’m not going to get through it without the people I love. Without family.”

“I’m sorry, Barry.”

“It’s okay. I’m not letting it get me down. And as for us and your dad…Maybe next year?”

She smiles. “Yeah. Next year.”

He goes home next, to find his mother upstairs in her room, holding a photobook closed. “Hey, honey. Everything okay with Patty?”

“Yeah,” he says, sitting next to her. “She’s having dinner with her mom, they like to be alone this time of year.” He juts his chin out. “What’s that?”

“The last picture of your dad,” she says slowly. They’re quiet for a little while, each thinking of what that means. “I never knew him.” Her voice is soft, on the verge of tears. “All this time, I never knew him. I was okay with him leaving eventually, and this I suppose I’ll get over, but I’ll never be okay with what he’s done to you.”

Barry blinks. “Me?”

“Oh, Barry,” she smiles sadly. “You precious boy, you have no idea. I saw it when you were small, what it did. You’re so afraid of losing people you open up your heart to everyone and promise to protect them with everything you’ve got, even from when you were a kid, and I was always so proud of you, but it also scared me because…because you’re my boy, and every time you give your heart away you’re giving away mine as well.”

Barry looks at his hands, tears pricking his own eyes. “I’m not scared, mom, I’m never scared. How can I be scared when I’ve got you?”

She smiles through her tears and hugs him. “But I don’t want to see that,” he says, letting go. “He’s never been anything to me before, and it wouldn’t be fair to make him something to me now.”

“Then we’ll say no more about it.”

***

Iris packs her stuff into her bag at the precinct, thinking. Linda and Wally took everything much better than she expected. Well, Linda was excited, first thanking her for protecting them and then promising to help. Wally promised, too, but even he admitted that he couldn’t do much. There was only one thing Linda disagreed on.

“You’re coming to my house,” she’d explained. “I have a workroom and we won’t be disturbed.”

So there’s that. Iris is worried, of course, but she can’t live her life like that. She’ll eventually just have to turn around and face what’s chasing her. And Chesca has the list, and she _is_ getting more powerful. She’s Miss goddamn Miracle. She can do anything.

She pulls on a jersey against the cold April night and walks downstairs. She’ll spend the day with Nora and Barry so she’s allowed to work from home again, which is why she’s collecting work. But she’s surprised to see Eleanor Spivot in the lobby. “Eleanor?”

“Iris,” she says pleasantly. “How are you?”

“Fine. Are you looking for Patty?”

“No, actually. She and I are having dinner; I came to pick up her car. You?”

“I was sent out to get dessert,” she says, laughing. “I guess it’s family dinners all around, right?”

“Indeed.” She looks at her moment. “I didn’t know you supported the Angels.”

“Oh, no way. I went to Notre Dame – Keystone City Patriots for sure. Why?”

“Well, your jersey says Coast City Angels.”

Iris looks down and her heart drops out of its chest. “I – Well, this is Barry’s. I guess he brought it home and I kind of appropriated it, since mine looks so similar. That tends to happen with family, I guess.”

Eleanor stares at her for a second too long before smiling. “Yes, I suppose it does. Can I drop you anywhere?”

“No, I like the walk,” she says. “Um, have a good night.” She leaves, wondering whether she can add Eleanor to the suspect list on the ground of ‘I can’t read her mind and also she scares me’.

Barry’s setting the table when she arrives and Nora is playing something on the radio. “I got the brownies!” she says, shutting the door. “And I didn’t eat any.”

“There’s a surprise,” Nora says. She sets down a large, steaming casserole dish. “So when you’re telling me about how you chased a glorified beekeeper across town I’ll have some snacks.”

It is a loud, warm dinner, her favourite kind, and for a while she can forget about everything on the outside. When they’ve finished clearing the table Nora faces them, her green eyes serious. “I don’t know how we’re going to get through this,” she says quietly. “I don’t know what the endgame is. But do you remember what I said to you both in high school?”

Of course they do. “Protect each other.”

“Exactly. And we’ve always been good at that – we were good at it yesterday, and today. And as long as we keep going that, I think we’ll be fine. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Nora holds her arms out to them both and they hug. She kisses them both on the forehead, murmuring _I love yous_ , and Iris realises that she hasn’t held them this tightly since there was a shooter loose in Star City while she was there on a conference and she told them to stay in the precinct, and they didn’t let go of each other’s hands the whole time, and when she got back it felt like she would let go for hours. So when they gathered in the living room and Barry made fun of Iris while she squealed about Downton Abbey and Nora did her reports, it’s like it’s always been. Nora was thankful she had two kids she’d die for, and Barry was grateful that even though he lost two people he still had Iris, and Iris thought of the night she’d lost her family and gained another one that she couldn’t live without, and all of them thought that with this, even when it tried so hard to be, the world may not be so cruel after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think! sorry it wasn't so cheerful


	16. Tricksters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We find out who's got tricks up their sleeve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've tried to edit this as much as possible, but there's a LOT in this chapter, so tell me if you don't understand stuff.

Barry is running again, just to feel good before work. He slipped out while Patty was sleeping and will get back in time to shower for work. He’s decided, as per Iris’ advice, to take things one step at a time. (“And if you really need to blow off steam,” she’d said, “Chesca and I have this game involving a catapult, watermelons and my powers. It’s strangely satisfying.”). Henry Allen is nothing but a stranger. His mother has, however, given him a gun, just so he can keep it under his bed. He also feels a lot better knowing that Miss Miracle is just a text away.

He twists around his usual path, past Jitters and the bakery and towards the park. It’s early, so the only kids who are there are the ones who are too young to be in school yet. He stops and pulls out his headphones, swiftly cutting off the Bruno Mars blaring through them, before getting cold water from a newsstand. It’s a nice day, one of those agreeable sunny ones that shows spring will soon melt into summer and bring lazier days and pleasantly chilled nights. A kid with brown curls and dimples runs into his legs, not looking where she’s going, and he laughs. “Careful,” he says, and the kid smiles and says sorry before running off. That’s when he sees them.

Barry doesn’t know where they came from but there are dozens, little red presents wrapped up in a pretty gold bow, floating down towards the playground with little parachutes attached. Alarm bells go off in Barry’s head, and he starts towards the girl who ran into him as he reaches for one of the presents. Then the ground shakes as an explosion goes off, and the excited squeals quickly turn to screams as they realise what’s going on. Without thinking, Barry dives in front of the kid closest to him and drags her away just as the present closest to him explodes. _They’re all bombs_ , he realises.

The kid in his arms is shaking. He uses one hand to reach into his pocket and press the button on the watch that Iris gave him even as he’s soothing her. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says, walking her quickly away. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Iris.”

“That’s a cool name!”

“R-Really?”

“That’s my best friend’s name, and she’s pretty cool.”

Even as he’s speaking, there is a flash of gold, Iris herself appears in front of him, and all the bombs that have not yet exploded hang suspended in mid-air. Face hidden by the mask, Iris curls her fingers so that the bombs bunch up – not touching – and gestures for the parents to come and get their kids. Iris turns to him, eyes glowing. “Are you both okay?”

Barry looks at the girl in his arms. “You okay, sweetheart?”

“Yeah,” she nods eagerly, her eyes like saucers as she takes Iris in. “Are you Miss Miracle?”

“Yes. Barry and I are friends.”

Little Iris scrambles down from his hold and hugs Big Iris’ legs. “Thank you for saving me.”

“My pleasure.”

Then she runs off, having spotted her parents, and Iris sighs in relief. Barry gestures to the bombs, still floating in the air. “What are you doing with those?”

“Chesca is going to call the bomb squad for me,” Iris answers, one hand on her ear. “Ferris Airfield? Awesome, do you guys know who could have done this?” She frowns and looks at Barry. “Any idea who the Trickster is?”

***

“… _Today’s special, a city in ashes. The trickster proudly welcomes you all to the new disorder_.”

“Oh,” Iris says as the video cuts out. “The Trickster’s a sociopath.”

“Well, she talks in the third person,” Chesca answers. “That’s never a good sign.”

“Please,” Colin scoffs. “You’re just mad because she named herself.”

Iris studies the figure on the video. She can’t be much older than Iris herself, with bright make-up, pink highlights in her black hair, and a long black trenchcoat with orange shapes all over it. Truth be told, she looks like she designed her outfit while on drugs, but Iris can’t deny that she almost massacred children this morning. She’s not going to underestimate her.

“Actually,” Nora corrects, “she didn’t. About twenty years ago, a woman called Jules Jesse wreaked havoc on the city with a series of terrorist attacks. At least ten civilians and two cops died. _She_ called herself the Trickster.”

“Someone was rocking the unitard,” Chesca mutters, looking at the images Colin pulls up. Dr Wells wheels forward.

“Where is this Ms Jesse now?”

“Serving half a dozen life sentences in solitary confinement at Iron Heights, given that she was just about the most dangerous thing that Central City has ever seen.”

“You mean until the Particle Accelerator exploded,” Iris deadpans, and Dr Wheels looks at her. Nora clears her throat.

“So Iris and I will go to Iron Heights and see Jules Jesse, see if she’ll help catch her fangirl.”

Iris walks out with barely a goodbye, because she knows for damn certain if she has to keep looking at Dr Wells she’s going to start hurling things at her. Chesca catches up to her at the elevators. “Hey. Hey, Iris, wait a second.” Iris stops. “Any reason why you were looking like you were going to commit a murder in there?”

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s just hard, working with her every day when I know what she did to me, and to my parents.” Plus, she hasn’t been sleeping properly again, though Nora doesn’t know about that. Last night she woke from a nightmare so bad she was shaking for five minutes afterwards, and now she’s here looking at Dr Wells as if she wasn’t the one with her hands around her throat last Christmas.

“Are you okay? You look kind of tired.”

“I need more sleep, I guess. Worrying about this doesn’t help.”

“I know, _mama_ ,” she says sympathetically, rubbing her back. “But we’re getting there, right? Remember, we made a lot of progress with Linda last night. I think we’ll have stuff to show everyone pretty soon.”

That cheers Iris a little, and she smiles. They’d spent yesterday afternoon and most of the evening with Linda, brainstorming and constructing something to disable Calamity, and as much as she’s living with this constant nagging fear, she feels better that they’re at least doing something. “That’s true. Are you free this? She wants to meet again after work.”

“Sure, just tell me when.” Chesca looks down at her phone as a little alarm on it goes off. “Um, I have to go. I have to feed the metahumans.”

Iris frowns. “You haven’t fed them yet? It’s almost eleven.”

“Well, you know, I like to make sure they’re doing okay.”

“Uh-huh. And are you going down there to talk to a certain Man in An Iron Mask?”

Chesca bites her lip. “Look, Iris, I can get that mask off him, I know I can – and he’s the closest thing we have to finding out what Calamity’s up to!”

Chesca is probably right, since he was apparently so close to revealing what her plan is, but still. “I know, but he’s dangerous. I know it seems to be the national pastime for people in this city, but he did try to kill me that one time. And anyway, I’m worried about _you_.”

“Oh, he won’t hurt me,” she replies with conviction, and Iris is about to ask how she knows that when Nora comes out and gestures for them to head to the elevators. “I’ll see you guys later.”

“So, it looks like Henry wasn’t the only one busy twenty years ago,” Nora says dryly once they’re in the car on the way Iron Heights. Iris looks at her.

“I’m trying to make it funny,” she admits. “Maybe then I’ll be able to handle it.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll get there. Nothing in my life has really changed, though, has it?”

“Right,” she says eagerly. “And Liv is reaching out to everyone she can, and Freddie’s going to look into it as soon as he thinks they’re not going to kidnap him for looking.”

Nora laughs. “Of course they are. And it’s nothing a little catching a sociopath won’t fix.”

They’re waved through the prison security, unlike when Iris visits her mom and she has to go through checks and hand in her cell. She frowns as Nora leads her through the prison. “I’ve never seen this part of the prison before.”

“That’s because it was built especially for our friend Jules,” Nora explains. When they get to the door, it’s got about a dozen locks and two guards armed to the teeth. They eye her suspiciously as she hands over her earrings and pen – they’re apparently not allowed any sharp objects. “As with many of the people who decide they’re going to start indiscriminately killing people, the prison set up weekly psychiatric appointments with her. She talked him into committing suicide.”

“Charming,” Iris splutters. One of the guards gives her a packet of Hershey’s Kisses. “You’ll need these.”

“Because only villains like Hershey’s Kisses?” Iris mutters. Nora shrugs and they go inside, faced with two chairs in front of a figure perched on top of a chair. Even with her glasses and the darkness, she can tell the glass is bulletproof. She can’t see anything but Jules’ hair, hanging in a tangled mess around her head.

“They never send women in here,” Jules says, quiet amusement colouring her voice. “Apparently they’re too delicate to handle a crazy lady like me. I soon set those idiots right.”

“Julianne James,” Nora says, ignoring her. “I’m Detective Nora Allen, this is CSI Iris West. We’re here to ask you some questions.”

“Something must have gone terribly wrong,” she sings, still not moving. “Cherry Cordial Kisses. I can smell them in your pocket. They must really want you to break me.”

Iris glances at Nora, before getting up and pulling the pictures of the bomb she had developed. “Early this morning, these parachute bombs went off in Central City Park.” She puts them in the chute, along with the Kisses, and she snatches them up. “Hmm,” she muses, after’s she’s ripped open the Kisses. “Seems like a rather mediocre delivery method. Fun, though. How many died?”

“No one,” Nora says in a hard voice. “Luckily.”

“Hmf. I suppose that’s good for someone, though I would have liked to see it.”

“The bombs had the same chemical composition as the bombs you realised twenty years ago.”

She stops, her hand in the bag. It crackles in her grip. “Impossible,” she snarls. “I never told anyone that formula.”

“The signatures are an exact match,” Iris counters.

“Yeah, and she called herself the Trickster, too,” Nora adds, and Jules stands, coming into the light. She would have been beautiful once, with those blue eyes and bright blonde hair, but now her skin is kind of weathered and there’s a maniacal glint in her eye. “She is nothing like me, detective. Nothing!”

“Do you know who she is?”

“If I did, I’d tell you so you could cut off her head, stick an apple on it, and put it on a pike outside my window. At least I’d have something nice to look at. No, this is the work of a rank amateur at best, a mere pretender, angling for my throne.”

“I hear you,” Iris says carefully, and Nora leans forward.

“So help us catch her. Prove there’s only one Trickster.”

“Oh, Nora,” Jules croons, laughing. “Trying to trick the Trickster? Hmm, no.” She throws a Kiss into the air and catches it in her mouth. “No, there’s only one way this could have happened – she must have found my lair. I ask only one thing – when you find this shtick stealer, this gimmick grabber, this pathetic, wannabe, fake…” he voice lowers to a snarl. “Make sure your safety’s off.”

***

“She sounds like a charmer,” Barry laughs into the phone.

“I especially liked the part where she tied up the chocolate wrappers to make a noose,” Iris says. “But at least I know what happened to those ribbons from the robbery a few weeks ago.”

“And how’s spocklovesuhura on the fact that this week’s problem named herself?”

“About as well as you’d expect. But, yeah, the quote for your blog is that Miss Miracle and the police are working on it, and um, maybe, just stay away from any floating bombs in the sky.”

“I think that was a given, but thanks.”

“Oh, and before I forget, I’ve gone through almost everyone at work, and now I’m looking through the people that _you_ work with.”

“Iris,” Barry laughs, “come on. You don’t have to do background checks on everyone mom and I work with. I’m sure they’re not spies out to kill us.”

“Because spies wear their spy names and intentions on their foreheads.”

Ever since Iris told them about Henry, she’s been working around the clock to find out whether the family of the people Henry killed could already be in their lives. Ruling out the obvious, both Iris and Chesca have come up with a list of people it could possibly be. Given how well he knows his best friend, however, he’s not so inclined to believe her system all the time.

“No, but I don’t think Agatha who works in senior interest is going to poison my coffee, Iris.”

“That may have been because I just watched _Red_ and she does look a little like Helen Mirren,” Iris admits.

“And do you really think the orthodontic assistant is going to kill me the next time I get my retainer checked?”

“He was always way too happy about tightening your braces. I always wondered about that.”

“And – did you really put Lana from the post office on the list because she likes Taylor Swift?”

“That was Chesca’s idea,” Iris points out. “You know she doesn’t trust people who like Taylor Swift.”

“Iris, tons of people listen to Taylor Swift. My girlfriend listens to Taylor Swift.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Barry, your girlfriend isn’t trying to kill you.”

“I just think,” he says, “if they were going to kill us, they probably would have done it already. I mean, Henry left years ago, why would they target us now?”

“That’s none of my concern,” she says, in a voice that lets him know she’s completely serious. “Yours and Nora’s safety isn’t something I’m prepared to risk. Okay?”

“Okay,” he sighs. “But the new barista replacing Tyler isn’t an assassin, Iris. Stop reading her mind when we get coffee.”

“…fine. I’ll talk to you later.”

Barry hangs up and makes a note to add her quote it to his blog. Though he writes for the paper and most of his stories come out through that, he still gets hits about metahumans on his blog, and he and Chesca have updated it so people can send it when they last saw a metahuman and the police can use it to catch them. Yawning briefly, he keeps clicking through reports of the explosion that happened when Dr Wells built her machine. It’s a way to distract him, he thinks, from the news about Henry. Your dad used to be a secret government spy and you need a distraction? Help expose the sociopath that’s terrorising your best friend.

He frowns. He’s reading a news article about the machine opening, about seven months before it blew up and killed Terrence. Dr Wells and Terrence are standing in front of it and smiling, but they’re in a room that Barry has never seen before. As far as he knows, however, it’s the same building as STAR Labs. He screenshots the picture and sends it to Chesca.

Where is this?

**Um**

**Hang on**

**According to the size and shape of the room, it should be underneath the cortex**

There’s a room underneath the cortex?

**Um no**

**I’m looking at the schematics for STAR Labs right now, there’s nothing underneath the cortex**

Barry thinks for a moment, looking at the picture. The angles of the room and the fact that there are no windows, even near the very top, suggest Chesca is right – the room is directly underneath the Cortex and is a complete replica. He can see where Iris’ suit would go, where the MRI machine sits, and where Chesca has her various workbenches.

**Okay there’s an old set of schematics for it**

**Here’s that room – it’s listed as M.I.N.D room**

But it must have been destroyed in the explosion, right?

Because that’s why we don’t know about it

**See**

**I am inclined to believe you**

**But that feels too easy, and I don’t want to ask Dr Wells about it because I don’t want to disappear**

Okay

How about we make this a contingency plan?

**I like that idea. But I’ll see what I can do**

Barry closes iMessage just as Missy walks up to his desk, her characteristic scowl considerably less pronounced. “Barry,” she says. “I wanted to tell you well done on your interview with Dr McGhee. It was informative and yet I didn’t want to stab myself in the eye out of sheer boredom.”

“Always a pleasure, Missy,” he laughs. “My best friend helped me with some of the science stuff, so I guess some of the credit should go to her.”

“That’s Lily, isn’t it?”

“Iris.”

“How nice. Anyway, Ricky asked me to tell you you’re covering the event at the town hall today. Nothing major, you just have to go in and get a few quotes. You got a suit and tie?”

“I do.”

“Well, cancel your plans tonight, because you’re going to a party.”

***

“You remember when I went away to Coast City for a conference, and when I came back Barry hadn’t cleaned his room for a week and it looked like a bomb hit the kitchen?”

“Yeah…”

Nora holds up a bunny with its head severed off, replaced with the two back legs of a horse. “I forgive you.”

Iris makes a noise in agreement as they explore the storage facility. Jules directed them to this place so they could try and find out what the fangirl had discovered, and whether she’s using it as a base. So far, however, all they have found is lots of stuffed animals cut into pieces, a couple torture devices, and several books on how to make Italian food.

“I guess even villains have to eat,” Iris muses, looking around the room. It’s decorated like a cross between a circus tent and a candy shop – there was actually a giant gumball machine in the corner, but it gave out little metal balls covered in spikes instead of candy. She shakes her head. “This place looks like no one has seen it since flares were in style. None of this proves anything, and what would the copycat want with _101 Ways to Love Linguine_?”

“We need the weapons she uses,” Nora says, looking around. “Or at least something that the Trickster could use to make another bomb or something dangerous.”

Iris looks around, before gesturing to a something half-obscured by a picture of Elvis Presley murdering Marilyn Monroe. “What’s that?”

Nora regards it, before walking over to study it. “It’s a door. Hey, help me move this.”

“How? It weighs a ton!”

Nora stares at her for a moment and then Iris’ eyes widen. “ _Oh_! Oh, right. Just, um…” She concentrates, and the picture shudders before shifting to the right, exposing the whole of the door. Nora nudges her shoulder, impressed. “Look at you, Miss Miracle. Moving stuff with no hands.”

Iris gives her a sly smile. “Been practicing. Let’s get this door open.”

Nora grabs the doorknob and twists, the door creaking open, and Iris has just enough time to smell the incendiary agent, just enough time to see the flash and react, flashing them away, before the bomb goes off and blows the door clean off its’ hinges. She covers her eyes against the debris and dust, the sound echoing in her ears. “That was close,” Nora says, coughing. She sits up. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” she replies, standing up. She dusts herself off and squints through the dust as it clears. “Well, that’s one way to get the door off.”

Nora pulls her to her feet and they approach the door cautiously, Iris’ mind alert for anything that could jump out at them. But there’s nothing. “Damn it,” Nora sighs. “The copycat cleared her out.”

“Are you sure?”

“You can see outlines where all the weapons used to be hung on walls,” she explains, pointing. She whips out her cell and taps the keys. “Take some pictures of this place, then get ready. We’re going back to talk to Jules.”

They make their way back across town to the prison, this time not so early so all the prisoners are away. Iris sees her mother being escorted somewhere between two guards that she recognises, and she pauses. “Hey, can we have a minute?”

The guards regard her for a moment and then look at her, before nodding and walking off to talk to Nora. Her mother steps forward, worried. “Iris, what is it? What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Nora and I have to question an inmate for a bombing case. Mom, listen.” She steps closer to her mother but is careful not to touch her – they’re supposed to keep their hands to themselves when they interact. “I’m close – closer than I’ve ever been.”

“Closer to…” Her mother’s face clears. “Iris, baby, we have talked about this.”

“I know,” she says simply. “And I’m done talking. I’m not letting you sit in here so you can pay for another woman’s crime anymore. Just…hang in there, okay?”

Nora comes up to them then and her mother turns to her. “Nora, what is she talking about?”

“Like she said, Francine, just hang in there. Iris, she’s ready.”

The Trickster looks disappointed when they walk in empty-handed. “What, no Kisses? What kind of way is that to greet someone?”

“We kind of forget the kisses when we’re almost blown up,” Iris snaps at her, and the Trickster looks shocked.

“Why the tone, Miss West? I thought we were friends.”

“The place you sent us to?” Nora tells her. “It was booby-trapped.”

“ _Quelle surprise_ ,” she gasps, a hand on her chest. Iris narrows her eyes at her.

“Don’t gives us that, Jesse.”

“Well, you can never be too careful with your private things, especially around Central City’s finest.”

“Bull, you weren’t protecting anything.”

The Trickster crawls out of the shadows. “What?”

“Your secret stash, it was empty. No firearms, no explosives, nothing.”

She glares at them. “You’re lying.”

“Nope,” Nora shakes her head. “Whatever you had in there was stolen, all of it.”

“No…” she growls. She clenches her fists even as she sits cross-legged on the tiny stool. “She’s stealing my legacy. Whoever this is, you need to find her, I will not let this – this-”

“Trickster?” Iris suggests, but she leaps forward and presses her hands against the glass, and she jumps backwards.

“That is my name! _Mine_!”

“What was in that room?” Nora demands. “What were you keeping in there?”

“A bomb.”

“How big?” Iris wants to know. The Trickster smiles slowly.

“Bye-bye, Central City.”

Iris glares at her and then her ringtone for Barry goes off. “Bar? I’m kind of busy-”

“The Trickster just posted another video,” he explains quickly. “We’re all watching it at work, I’ll send you the link now.”

Iris opens up the link that Barry sends her to see the Trickster grinning gleefully into the camera, this time wearing a mask. “ _Denizens of Central City_ ,” she says silkily, “ _or those of you who remain, welcome to Boom Day. I’m happy to report that my first trick was an exploding success_.”

“Show her,” Nora says grimly, and Iris turns the phone towards Jules. “ _But I think you all deserve something much…bigger_.”

“No,” Jules mutters darkly, her fingers pressed against the glass.” “No, no, no, no…”

“ _So! For my next trick…_.”

“Take off my mask, you _fraud_!” she roars.

“ _…keep your eyes glued…_ ”

“Sham. Take off my mask!” She bangs on the glass, irate, her eyes wide and spittle flying from her mouth. “ _Take off my mask_! TAKE. OFF. MY. _MASK_!”

***

“Well, whoever this Trickster is,” Dr Wells says, once they’ve all seen the video, “she’s certainly not shy.”

“Not every criminal chooses to hide in the dark, I guess,” iris says without thinking.

“Maybe,” Colin says quickly, “Chesca can find out where he’s hiding?”

But Chesca, who’s sitting at the terminals, shakes her head. “No can do, unfortunately. Whoever she is, she’s using some kind of Freddie-level scrambling technique to hide. It feels like the video came from a hundred different locations – until she releases another video, it’ll be hard to track her.”

“This psychopath could level the city if she wanted to,” Iris mutters, and Colin squeezes her shoulder.

“We’ll get her, Iris. We always do.”

“Miss West,” Dr Wells says. She wheels towards one of the training rooms. “A moment, if you please.”

Iris does her best to school her features into something neutral as she follows the doctor, but she’s not sure how well she succeeds. Nora is the one who suggested coming her for help (after they had to leave because she was certain Jules was going to pull a knife out of her hair or something), and it’s one of the first times she would have rather gone back to work and have Singh breathing down her neck while she worked. But now they’re here, and Dr Wells is watching her with those perceptive eyes of hers.

“I know what’s going on with you, Iris,” she says quietly. She blinks.

“You do?”

“Yes. I can imagine seeing your mother in prison while another woman who committed crimes roams free must have been unimaginably hard, but we are working on it.”

Well, her poker face must be better than she thinks. “It’s just…hard. Knowing my father’s killer is still out there.”

She takes off her glasses to clean them, which is so like Iris herself that she can’t feel a glimmer of annoyance. “It’s always…hard, when we can’t expose the people who have caused us damage,” she says. “But we will find her. You have my word. For now, I believe we should concentrate on catching the Trickster before she hurts anyone else. Together.”

Iris regards her, conflicted again. Everything points to Dr Helena Wells being Calamity, the woman who used mind control to order her mother to kill her father, ensuring she got sent to jail for it. But then there is this – the tender, caring side that Iris has no idea whether she’s faking or not. She resists the urge to read her mind – Chesca once told her that, in the beginning when her powers were not properly developed, having your mind read feels like knowing someone else is in your mind with you. She knows how to shield her mind from others, so she knows that Dr Wells can’t read hers, but sometimes she wishes she had the self-control to read her mind without being discovered.

“Of course,” she says. “Together.”

***

Barry studies himself in the mirror, the two bowties in his hand. He’s never been able to tie them, but all of his normal ties look boring and he kind of wants to stand out at this party, even if he’s just getting quotes from the mayor. He refused Patty’s help (and now he’s cursing his male pride), and he was kind of hoping that his mother was at the house when he came back to get his spare tape recorder. Well, Google it is.

“Oh, hey, Barry, I didn’t-”

“Shit!” Barry jumps and drops both of his ties when he sees Iris strolling into the kitchen in her Miss Miracle suit. “When did you get back?”

“About two seconds ago.”

“I  even didn’t hear you come in.”

“I have _superpowers_ , Barry. I was on patrol looking for this crazy Trickster chick, and I wanted to get dinner before I headed out again. I teleported.”

“Oh,” he says, waiting for his heart rate to still. She moves past him to get to the fridge, which opens without her touching it before an assortment of leftovers begin arranging themselves on a plate.

“You look nice,” she says, hopping on the counter. “Wait, is this that party Patty was telling me about?”

“Yeah, Mayor Bellows is there honouring someone or other. It’s no Wayne Industries party, but it should be fun, right?”

“Mm,” Iris says, floating her food into the microwave. She yawns, rubbing at her mask, and looks at her. He’s still getting used to the idea that it’s Iris behind the mask. “Tired?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, kind of. Guess I need more sleep. Do you need some help with those?”

He looks helplessly at the bowties before smiling sheepishly at her, and she rolls her eyes and hops down from the counter. The first thing she does is toss one of them aside. “Brown with polka dots? Are you serious?”

“Sorry, Iris.”

“You should be. Red is more your colour.”

“How are you doing this without your glasses?”

“My mask has lenses in them,” she says faintly as she smooths out the material, and he watches her. Her eyebrows are knitted together in concentration, and the tip of her tongue sits behind her front teeth, like it’s done forever. He has a sudden flashback to her doing this on junior prom night before Brad came to get her (“If you don’t have one to match Becky’s corsage, the auditorium might actually blow up”), and then feels that odd, tugging feeling right under his ribcage. “There, all done.”

She pats down his collar and then smiles up at him, and he’s looking at her, and the world seems to stop, and then the microwave interrupts them. “Um,” she says quietly. “Um, my dinner, so…”

“Of course,” Barry says, checking his phone. “I should – Iris, the Trickster’s broadcasting again.”

“I am HUNGRY!” Iris complains, and then takes the phone from him. Yeah, she’s there, in that godawful mask and terrible fashion sense. “ _Get ready for the games to begin_!” she trills gleefully. “ _I have a bomb. It’s a BIG bomb, it’ll make a BIG bang, and then a BIG hole, and then a big DROP in the POP-ulation!_ ”

“Someone didn’t get enough love as a kid,” Barry mutters.

“ _But never say that the Trickster isn’t fair_ ,” she continues, her voice dropping in mock-seriousness. “ _The bomb is somewhere between Spring Street and the Bay. Why don’t see if you can find it_?”

“That area’s huge,” Iris breathes. She turns to him, fully in Miss Miracle mode. “Barry, open up the app on the phone that connects you to my suit, I’ll drop you off at the precinct so you can coordinate with your mom and the others.”

That’s how, five minutes later, he finds himself in the precinct as everyone is running around after the bomb. He sees his mother, Patty and the captain in front of several television screens, the captain barking orders into the phone. They look up at him and Patty gasps. “Is that-”

“Yeah, it’s her,” he says. “She’s looking, I’ll keep you posted.”

On the other side of the phone, the others are scrambling to find the bomb. “Guys!” Iris yells. “I can’t find it, I need your help!”

“There’s nothing on traffic cams or CCTV,” Colin says.

“I retasked the STAR Labs satellite to scan the area for incendiary devices – a bomb that big has to be giving out some kind of thermal or chemical signature,” Chesca adds urgently.

Barry moves away from the group. “Then why can’t you find it?”

“Because it’s a trick,” Dr Wells says suddenly and with conviction. “The bomb’s not there.”

“No,” Iris disagrees. “No, it has to be. I’m gonna keep looking.” Barry frowns. Why isn’t Iris listening to Dr Wells?

“Mom,” he whispers. “The bomb might not be in the city, it-”

“Captain!” Patty calls, and they all rush over to the terminal she’s manning. “There was an explosion at Iron Heights.”

“The prison,” Barry realises, hanging up. “It was a trick, the prison was the real target.”

“Jules Jesse,” Dr Wells breathes. “I guess she tricked us all.”

They look at the surveillance footage, and Barry’s jaw clenches when he sees the smoke clear. Patty points. “He’s helping Jules Jesse escape, and It looks like they have a hostage.”

“Goddamn it,” the captain snaps, and Barry looks, and freezes.

“M-Mom,” he stammers. Because he recognises that woman. She has Iris’ nose and her eyes and _oh God_ … “Mom-”

“Who is that?” Patty frowns, and Nora puts a hand to her mouth as Francine West is led away by both Trickster’s at gunpoint. “It’s Iris’ mother.”

***

 _They have her mother_.

Barry’s the one who told her, his voice calm and reassuring because he knows what this will do to her. He wanted to come to her, but she told him to go to work because if she looks at Barry, who’s going to hold her hand and promise her everything will be fine, she will fall right the fuck apart, and nobody needs to see Miss Miracle as a blubbering mess. All because she was too goddamn stubborn to listen to Dr Wells when she told her the bomb wasn’t there.

Now she’s half here, in STAR Labs, trying not to lose her mind while everyone else talks about what to do, and half in the nightmare she had last night, where Calamity actually did kill her mother instead of merely showing her how it easy it was to do it.

“Why did they take Francine?” Chesca wants to know. “She never hurt anyone.”

“Her kid works for the CCPD,” Nora sighs. “What better bargaining chip than someone like that? And there’s something else – the kid who’s been pretending to be the Trickster is called Elsa Walker, and she and Jules have been communicating through snail mail for years.”

“And get this,” Colin adds. “Elsa is Jules’ daughter. She had her when she was a teenager and left her with her dad.”

“And then ran off to become a maniac,” Dr Wells says, disgusted. “Don’t worry, Iris. We’ve faced down worse, and we’ll find your mother.”

“Yeah,” Iris says quietly. “I guess I should have listened to you.”

She gets up and walks out, into the Pipeline, because she can’t breathe anymore, it’s too much, it-

“Iris,” Nora grabs her shoulders and she realises she was talking aloud. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”

“Do you – do think my mother’s still alive?”

“Yes,” Nora says with conviction. “They’re crazy, not stupid. They need her for leverage.”

“Nora…” she shrugs helplessly. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Yes, you can.”

“It doesn’t make any sense! One minute she’s helping me, and then she’s trying to kill me, and now I’m just supposed to trust the woman who may have killed my dad to help my mom?”

Nora takes her hands, waits until she calms down, makes her look at her. “Look, Iris. I have known you since you were a child, and you’ve always seen the best in people. Always. Why do you think we all love you so much? It’s because you look at people and you always see what good people can do, even when you saw more darkness as a child than most adults will see in a lifetime. I see all the flaws and the lies – I _wish_ I could be you. Even with all your little miracles, that’s your real power.”

Iris rubs her eyes. “I don’t know why she’s helping us.”

“All that matters is that she is.”

“I can’t lose my mom, too.”

Nora envelops her in a hug before she really starts sobbing. “You won’t. Come on, Iris, let’s go, come on…”

She takes several deep breaths. Her mother needs her, her friends need her, the city needs her. “Okay. Where are we?”

“Everyone upstairs is looking, Barry put out an alert on his blog, and Patty’s leading a team,” Nora says. “And the captain says you’re not allowed back at work, so you’re free to look, all we need is a lead from any of them and…what is that?”

“What?” Iris looks up, and then her face clears when she recognises that one of the metahumans is in distress. It’s Cobalt Blue, down at the end of the walkway; she must not have been paying attention, because he’s banging on the glass again with a kind of panicked urgency.

“Are you going to check on him?”

“No, I’ll get Chesca. She’s the only one he’ll listen to.”

Nora purses her lips but doesn’t say anything about that, and Iris rolls her shoulders and walks back upstairs. Both of the Trickster’s want to play?

Miss Miracle will show them who the fuck they’re playing with.

***

“Mr Allen? Mr Allen, you have to move into the main reception area…”

Barry blinks at the attendant trying to get him out of the way after they’ve given him his press pass. “Oh, sorry,” he says quickly. He pinks the badge to his suit and moves through the crowd, wanting to get a good seat so he can get a good recording and transpose the notes later. Truth be told, he isn’t in this room, he’s worrying about Iris and his friends, trying to find a crazy person who has Francine hostage. This whole thing seems like a twisted joke, that even as Iris spends every day saving everyone in the city, her own mother gets kidnapped. He knows that she told him to go to work, but she sounded so helpless on the phone that he can’t help but worry.

And there’s also the fact that Iris rather obviously didn’t listen to Dr Wells, probably because she’s finding it hard to trust her. He thinks back to that secret room underneath the Cortex and what it could be hiding, hidden from them after all this time. Maybe he’ll ask Chesca is they can look into that sooner rather than later.

“Champagne?” someone asks him. It’s a waitress, older than him with short, sandy blonde hair and oddly gleaming blue eyes.

“Uh, sure,” he says absently, taking a flute and sipping it. Then another waitress comes up to her, whispering in her ear, and she brightens. He frowns, briefly – she seems kind of familiar, but Barry has no time to pay attention to them, because the Mayor walks onto the stage to the podium, smiling jovially at everyone, and everyone quietens to hear what she says. Barry puts his champagne on a side table.

“Welcome, welcome,” she says, as the cameras stop flashing. “It’s my pleasure to have Central City’s finest here as I honour the achievements of-”

“Mayor Bellows!” the waitress interrupts him. She’s climbed up onstage and has taken the microphone from him, grinning at the audience. “How about a toast to Mayor Antonia Bellows? She doesn’t just talk to her staff, she bellows! You see what I did there? With the wordplay and the…yeesh, tough crowd.”

“Excuse me,” the mayor demands, taking the microphone back, “who are you?”

“Oh, how quickly they forget,” she sighs dramatically. “I’m the Trickster! I know you remember me, Antonia, I sent you that lovely bouquet of flowers dipped in fish oil after you became city councilwoman. Although I do believe you’re one of those people who calls me ‘Julianne’.”

Barry gasps as the other one takes off her wig, revealing the black hair with pink streaks that he recognises from the videos – Elsa Walker, the name his mother texted him before he got here. They grin excitedly at the crowd as everyone looks around in panic and confusion, and Elsa takes the microphone and hands it to her mother with a flourish. As surreptitiously as he can, never taking his eyes away from the podium, sneaks his hand into his pocket and speed dials his mother, holding it in his palm so he can hear.

“Such a good girl,” she croons before turning to the audience. “As I was saying, I am Jules Jesse, AKA the Trickster, ladies and gentlemen, and I am here to relieve you fine people of your money.”

“And what makes you think anyone is going to give you a cent?”

“Well, Madam Mayor,” Elsa explains helpfully, “we’ve put a little incentive in your champagne. Trimethylmercury 32.”

“Or, for the uninitiated, poison.”

Several glasses smash as people realise what they’ve just drunk, and Iris looks up at the high French windows. _Come on, Iris_ …

“So, unless you want to be swimming with the fish, you’ll all transfer the contents of your bank accounts to the account number on the bottom of your glass.”

There’s a piercing scream and Barry turns to see someone has collapsed, foaming at the mouth, and Elsa grins sweetly. “I remember her! She came about an hour ago – I offered her the first glass.”

“So, now you see we’re serious,” Jules says, “maybe you’ll move a little faster. And if anyone decides to call 911…” She pulls two revolvers out of her jacket. “ _We switch to lead poisoning_.”

Barry can’t help his hands shaking even with the phone in his hand, and they get worse when Elsa notices that he isn’t doing anything. She swings down from the podium and saunters up to him. “Hey, you’re cute,” she drawls. “Wanna come away with me? Give me a few minutes and I’ll have millions of dollars.”

“And a few more after that, and you’ll have almost as many life sentences.”

“Now, Elsa, what have I told you? You kidnap the boy, _then_ you make him love you.” Jules shakes her head at him and then pauses. “Oh, now. I recognise this one.”

“Barry Allen,” Elsa reads on his nametag.

“We _do_ know this one! This is that charming Detective Allen’s son from the prison. This should be fun, a cop’s mother and a cop’s son, have you ever heard of better hostages? I don’t-”

But then there’s a flash of green and gold, and Iris has them both pinned against the wall, her eyes aglow with anger. “Where’s Francine West?”

“Where you’ll be soon,” Jules grins. “See-”

“Let me guess. You’re going to get a bomb,” Iris raises an eyebrow and a small metal device floats up from the front of Jules’ pocket. “And if I don’t let go, you’re going to press this button…” A remote flies out of Elsa’s pocket. “And we’ll all die. Which would have worked…” As everyone watches, the remote is crushed in Iris’ telepathic grip. “…were you not idiotic enough to think about your plans _in front of a mind reader_.”

“You’re much nicer on that blog he writes about you,” Jules mutters glumly, and Iris grins wickedly at them, leaning close.

“ _Tricked ya_.”

***

Iris races to the old knife factory where they’re holding her mother. She’d been with Colin as he synthesised an antidote, when she heard Barry call them from where he was working. She flashed out of the Cortex, antidote in tow, when she heard them about to kidnap Barry because…well.

That shit did not fly around Iris West.

She’d tossed the antidote to the mayor with instructions, safely disposed of the bomb, and now she’s in this factory looking for her mother. Iris’ legs almost give way underneath when she sees her mother strapped to a chair, knives rigged in a trap above her head, and she grabs her and blinks away without a second thought. She takes them to the alley outside, eyes still glowing, and her mother stares at her in wonder. “Oh my God. It’s you!”

Iris takes several deep breaths and switches off her glowing eyes, stepping forward into the light and smiling at her mother’s shocked face. “Yeah, mom. It’s me.”

And her mother just holds her arms out to her, like she did when she won her first science fair medal. “You always were my golden girl.”

The noise that Chesca makes when Iris shows up at STAR Labs with her mother is the best thing she’s heard all day; she runs straight for Francine and hugs her. “Mom,” Iris laughs. “This is Chesca.”

“I know, I met her once when I was allowed to visit you. Although I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

“We were just reading about what the Trickster did in the nineties,” she explains, letting her go. “I – I’m just really glad you’re okay, Mrs West. And I think anyone would need a hug after this.”

“We all are,” Colin adds, coming out of a medbay. Iris steels herself when she sees Dr Wells smiling at her mother. “Mom, this is Colin, and this is-”

“Dr Wells,” she says eagerly, shaking her hand. “I’m never going to forget the woman who saved my daughter’s life.”

“It was my pleasure. She’s a remarkable young lady.”

Before Iris can say anything about that, she hears two people coming in through the corridor. “Iris?” Barry calls. “Iris, are you – Mom, they’re here!”

“Oh, thank God,” Nora sighs in relief as they both walk into the Cortex. Barry hugs Iris and Nora hugs Francine. “You gave us quite a scare, Frannie. Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she says faintly, looking at Barry in shock. She steps closer to him “Tell me this isn’t…Is that you, Barry Allen?”

“Uh, yeah,” he says, laughing shyly. “It’s me.”

“I haven’t seen you since you were in high school! You’re so _tall_!”

“Ate me out of house and home,” Nora mutters, and Francine laughs and gives Barry a hug.

“Well, it’s nice to put a face to the boy who sent in half a dozen furlough applications for me until the prison approved the last one. You got quite a reputation, Barry.”

Iris turns to him, a question in her eyes. “You never told me you did that.”

He shrugs. “I know. I just…I mean, it’s your mom, Iris. Of course I was going to get her to come visit you.”

Iris has loved Barry since she was a child, and sometimes she asks herself _why_ she does, but then he gives her these wordless, perfect answers, pulled out of him like the universe is trying to tell her _this is why you love him_. Like when they were both kids and he fake-proposed to her with that stupid candy ring and she said he could marry whoever he wanted, why did he pick her, and he said _of course_ he’s going to marry his best friend, who else is he going to marry? And then when they were teenagers, when he would tell her unwaveringly that he believed her about her parents in front of everyone at school and just _dared_ anyone to try to tell him different. And now, when all she has to do is go on his blog so she can see him freely tell everyone how much he believes in her.

At Christmas, when she was telling him how she felt about him, he looked so lost, like he was the one asking questions: _When did you love me? How long have you loved me? Why do you love me?_

And with everything he’s done for her and everything he is to her, all she can think is, _how can I not love you?_

“Aw,” Chesca says. “That’s so sweet.”

“Sweet?” Barry repeats. “I had to resort to bribery and threats to the DA. And mostly fresh breakfast muffins for the prison warden. I’ve never felt so dirty.”

“Barry’s out here living _Orange Is The New Black_ , for real,” Chesca laughs. Then she realises what she’s said. “Oh, I’m sorry-”

“That’s okay,” Francine says quickly. She looks at Nora. “I guess it’s time for me to go back?”

“Actually,” Dr Wells interjects, “with the fact that Francine has been kidnapped by two criminals and subject to such a traumatic experience, I’d suggest a full medical examination.”

“An extensive one,” Colin adds.

“With food!” Chesca finishes. Everyone looks at Nora, who shrugs, smiling.

“It’s not like she’s got a curfew. Besides, I’m hungry.”

“Awesome! Okay, I want Big Belly Burger. Orders?”

“Can I just have two of everything from the main menu and half a dozen fries?” Iris asks. Her mother stares at her and Nora just bursts into laughter.

“Oh, you haven’t heard? Miss Miracle eats me out of house, home, _and_ pension fund.”

Thankfully nothing seems to be wrong with Francine apart from the fact that she’s a little shaken, so Iris spends most of the time showing her mother her powers. “And – look!” She floats up into the air, her hands on her hips. “I can fly!” she says proudly.

“I can see,” her mom laughs, and her mother beams. Chesca grins.

“Hey, tell her about that time you left your boots at a house fire.”

“Or,” Colin suggests, “that time you forgot how to teleport and had to get an Uber home.”

“Or that time you just teleported and forgot my suit in an alley.”

“When are we going to start calling it my suit?”

Chesca huffs and shrugs. “When you start being able to look after people’s properly.”

Iris narrows her eyes and Chesca fries fly out of her hand and into Iris’, making Barry and Colin snort with laughter. “Well,” her mother says, “this is quite the setup you have here. We all wonder how you do what you do when we see you on the news.”

“It helps when you have a team with as much knowledge as this one does,” Nora says. She pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. “This old cop can only do so much. Chesca, Colin and Dr Wells have been a huge help this past year.”

“And Barry,” Iris adds proudly. “I couldn’t have done it without him, either.”

Barry kind of blushes into his dinner when she looks at him, which makes her smile even wider (neither notice that Nora and Francine are giving each other significant looks), before Nora clears her throat. “Okay, kids. Unfortunately, I’ve ignored too many texts from Dee. Fran, we have to go.”

“I’ll come and see you tomorrow to check on you,” Iris promises, standing up. The bittersweet feeling curls within her, being so close to her mother and yet having to send her away, but she clamps it down. She can and she will get her out and then this – all of the anger and helplessness and desperation – will go away.

And so will the nightmares.

“Of course,” her mother says. “Although I really don’t think anyone will bother me now that they know Miss Miracle will come after them.”

“I am the saviour of Central City. I tie up criminals and dump them in the precinct whether they’ve kidnapped my mother and threatened by best friend or not.”

“Iris, they were both wearing duct tape over their mouths,” Nora points out.

“A suggestion from the team.”

 _Oh right_ , Chesca says. _Totally not a symptom of your motto, ‘Thou shalt not fuck with Barry Allen’_

 _Shut up_ , Iris thinks back. _Like you guys didn’t do it first_.

_Is that what you did to Becky Cooper?_

_Wouldn’t you like to know?_

“Oh, we will take full credit for that,” Colin says, oblivious. “Totally our idea.”

“Well, I certainly appreciate it.” Her mother takes her face in her hands and kisses her on the forehead. “I love you, golden girl. Be-”

“Safe, I know,” she finishes. As she watches, her mother hugs Chesca and Colin, shakes Dr Wells’ hand, and then hugs Barry. “Please don’t grow anymore.”

“I’ll try,” he promises. Her mother holds out her hands for the handcuffs, but Nora shakes her head, and they share a smile before walking out.

“I like her,” Chesca declares cheerfully. “She worked for a publisher, right? Did she get you guys free comic books?”

“Chesca,” Colin sighs.

“What? It’s a valid question!”

“This is exactly why,” Iris says, “I never take either of you anywhere. I’m going home to bed.”

***

Most people, when they’re asked to help build a weapon to stop the most dangerous thing that Central City has ever seen, say ‘not on this lifetime’, and promptly shut the door. Linda Park, however, considered it for exactly four seconds before grinning and asking Iris what kind of gun she wanted.

She didn’t know exactly whether she should be more scared of Linda than Calamity.

In any case, a few days after her mother is returned to Iron Heights she picks up several donuts and three orders of hot drinks before heading to the loft that Wally and Linda share. Wally hugs her and takes his share of the food before going back to his football game, having just come back from an eight-hour surgery, and she goes to find Linda in the soundproofed workshop. She grins when she sees her, stepping away from her diagrams. Linda hugs her as well, which she’s used to now, having people that aren’t Barry and Nora and Colin and Chesca touch her, but she supposes that’s what comes when you’re not lying to everyone.

“Hey there, Bambi Eyes,” she grins. “Thank god you brought those, I’m starving. Did Wally eat all the ones with the rainbow sprinkles?”

“No, because I want to live to see the patients tomorrow,” Wally calls.

“He knows those are my favourite. Where’s Chesca?”

“She’s on her way,” Iris replies. Though she’s used to Linda’s company, it’s still taking her a while to get used to being in her space. Her workshop is a little better organised than Chesca’s, probably because she has more experience but less space where she lives. There are lots of little projects on tables and benches with labels on them, as well as tools organised by size. “She had to leave without seeming suspicious.”

“Right,” Linda says quietly. Iris pushes her glasses up her nose.

“I don’t know if I’ve told you this, Linda, but I really appreciate you helping us. It’s… _insanely_ dangerous, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to do it.”

Her cousin’s girlfriend doesn’t speak for a while, only tinkering with something on the bench. “Calamity took me and made me into a villain,” she replies eventually, her voice barely a whisper. “She made me forget everything and then made everyone in my life forget everything too. The only reason we even know anything is because her powers stopped working on Wally for whatever reason. And we’re one of the lucky ones. You and your friends are the only ones brave enough to face her head on and find those people who aren’t so lucky.”

Iris cannot say anything for a second, because she’s never considered herself brave. So she just squeezes Linda’s hand and they share an appreciative smile. Then there’s a buzzing noise and Linda crosses to the intercom. “It’s open now, Chesca.”

Chesca comes up about five seconds later and immediately starts looking for coffee. “Colin bored me to death about blood cells this morning,” she says by way of explanation. “Wait, who’s drinking coffee this late in the day?”

“Me,” Iris admits. “Didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and then Captain Cold decided she’d try and rob a gold store this morning.”

Chesca regards her, brows knitted together, but Linda claps her hands together. “Okay, awesome, everyone’s here. Now, when you guys asked me about this you told me you wanted to subdue Calamity and then capture her.”

“Right,” Iris says. “We just wanted you to design the weapon, though. Chesca and I are working on how to subdue her.”

“Right, but I had some ideas about that.” She pulls out a diagram. “This is what you guys gave me of the cold gun for ideas, because Calamity’s powers are like yours.”

“We were thinking you could design something that’s like it, but more powerful.”

But Linda is shaking her head. “See, that’s the problem, though. A gun that powerful would need a bigger generator, making it way too large cumbersome for someone as petite as Iris. No offence,” she adds.

“None taken.”

“Plus, shooting a gun this size accurately without hitting anything else would take more practice than you think, and I get the sense that you guys want to take care of this sooner rather than later.”

Iris sits down, chewing on a donut. “What do you suggest?”

Linda flips the board with the first design – the bigger gun – over, to reveal a much smaller device. This one has dozens of annotations and a little diagram of Iris; Chesca makes a noise of appreciation. “What is _that_?”

“I had this idea while I was watching the video of Iris saving the plane back in winter,” she explains. “Iris – Miss Miracle – uses her hands a lot for her powers, so I was thinking she could have something that wraps around her wrist so she could concentrate while chasing Calamity.”

 _I am making you better, little Miss Miracle_. Iris blinks, her heart pounding at Calamity’s voice – it seems to be something she feels rather than hears. “I don’t know, my hand-eye coordination isn’t the best.”

“But this is so much more natural!” Chesca says excitedly, taking the diagrams from Linda. “See, much better, with the size and – do you think we can get the same amount of power?”

“Maybe not the same, but it’ll be more precise, so easier to hit a target.”

“Are you guys sure?” she says uncertainly. “Because – I mean, I’ve seen her in action, and I don’t want to shit on your idea, but I wouldn’t want-”

“No, Iris, I get that you’re scared,” Linda tells her. “It’s the beginning of an idea, we can still work on it and I’ll give you a prototype so you can see how it works. Look, why don’t I take you through it…”

They spend much of their Saturday afternoon like that, and Iris is partly assuaged, firmly aware that it’s the worry and the nightmares that are making her doubt Linda. But Linda is sweet and so is Wally, and Colin and Chesca are helping her as well, not to mention Barry and Nora and her mother. She has so little family, she has no idea what she’ll do if she fails them.

“So, there’s that,” Linda finishes. “I’ll work on it in my time off, though, so it’s better for next time. Hey, do you want to hang out on Saturday?”

Iris gives her a surprised look. “You think you’ll have it ready by then?”

“No, Iris,” Linda laughs. “I thought we could hang out and catch a movie or something. You’re allowed to do that, you know.”

“Oh!” She pushes her glasses up her nose. “Sure! I’ll text you, that sounds fun.”

She doesn’t notice, though, that Chesca is shooting her rather worried looks.

***

_Miss Miracle Stops the Captain Cold._

The following Tuesday Barry flips his pen between his fingers, considering the title. It’s a pun, based on what Iris did at the weekend when Captain Cold robbed a gold store in the middle of the day. No one was hurt, but Cold did get away, and to Iris’ extreme annoyance Louis Snart gave her his number for Chesca. Missy took one look at it and pursed her lips, trying not to laugh, so at least he knows it’s funny.

“Yo, Allen,” one of his coworkers says. “Someone’s looking for you.”

Barry frowns and looks up, recognising the petite figure in the office. “Chesca?”

“Hi, Barry,” she says nervously. She walks up to his desk “I’m sorry to just show up like this-”

“No, it’s okay. Is anything wrong? Are you okay?”

Chesca opens her mouth, closes it again, and looks around. Barry glances at the time. “Hey, do you want to get lunch? I was looking for a break anyway.”

“Sure,” she says, relieved. “That would be great.”

They make their way to Jitters, but even though Chesca seems more comfortable she still looks worried about something. “So I…” she pauses. “Okay, I’m just gonna come out and say it, and I hope you don’t think I’m prying, or she won’t think I’m prying-”

“Chess, don’t worry about it. What’s going on?”

She sighs. “Iris isn’t…sleeping.”

Barry frowns. “What do you mean?”

“She’s not sleeping, Barry. I started noticing it a couple of weeks ago. She’s – she’s always exhausted when she comes to STAR Labs, and she keeps forgetting stuff. And not like the stuff she usually forgets, like remember Colin likes vegetable rolls when we get dinner. Big stuff, like to make sure her eyes are doing the glowy thing when she’s out.” Chesca swallows and looks down, her chin wobbling, and Barry sees that she must really be terrified. “And it’s okay when we’re there and we can remind her, you know? ‘Hey, Iris, you’re still wearing your glasses’. But we’re not there all the time, and she’s so worried about Calamity and everything, and…She’s not sleeping, Barry.”

Barry runs a hand through her hair. “I didn’t know.”

“Iris is really good at pretending everything’s okay until it isn’t. Did you know I only found out that she was taken by Calamity because I saw it on the news? And she still hasn’t told me what happened, but I think this might be why she’s been having such a hard time.”

“Have you talked to her? Or Colin?”

She shakes her head. “We wanted to ask you, seeing as you guys are so close. Did she tell you we went to visit Linda on Saturday?”

“Yeah, she told me you guys are thinking about a new weapon,” he says. “Linda texted me the details, it sounded cool.”

“Except that I noticed she seems terrified about that, too. I don’t know what to do.”

Barry looks down at his hands. He knows that she’s worried about Calamity, but they all are, that’s nothing new. But if she’s not sleeping…that could seriously screw up her concentration, reaction time and abilities. And the thought of Iris going up against that monster, with no sleep and no confidence…” I’ll talk to her,” he promises finally. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks,” she says, visibly relieved. “I just had no idea who to talk to, and I didn’t want to ask her in case she got annoyed, or…”

“Iris would never be annoyed with you for looking out for her,” he says gently. “But like I said, I’ll talk to her.”

Chesca hugs him goodbye and he heads back to work, trying to think of the best way to approach the problem. Iris probably won’t be upset at her friends talking about her if it’s because they’re worried about her safety, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have to be gentle about it. Maybe he should ask his mother? But that could be a lot of pressure.

He soon learns, though, that he doesn’t have to worry about that.

Barry heads to the house after work, intending to catch Iris before dinner. His mother’s car isn’t there but some of the lights are on. “Iris?” he calls, throwing his jacket on the couch. He frowns as he hears several thumping noises. “Iris, are you okay?” Then he hears more thumps and a crash, and his heart starts hammering in his chest. He races up the stairs to her room, marvelling at the sight in front of him. Objects are flying around her room, falling off shelves and knocking into her desk, and the lights are switching on and off. Iris is in her bed, her face screwed up in fear as she sleeps, obviously in the middle of a nightmare.

“No…” she whimpers, clutching the pillow. “No, stop it, _please_ …”

Barry moves towards her bed, ducking an encyclopaedia and picture frame, and grabs her shoulders. “Iris! Iris, wake up!”

“ _No_! Leave him _alone_!”

“ _Iris, wake up_!”

Her eyes fly open and she sits up, still struggling. All the flying objects stop and he cradles her face, trying to get her to look at him as she gasps. “Hey. _Hey_ , Iris, it’s okay, it’s just me. It’s Barry.”

She peers at him, her eyes unfocused. “B-Barry?”

“It’s just me, Iris. You had a nightmare.”

“Oh,” she sighs raggedly. Her chest is heaving and she looks terrified; Barry pulls her into a hug, her face buried in his shoulder. Her fingers curl into his shirt as she holds him to her, her entire body shaking and rasping noises coming out of her as she drags breath back into her lungs. “Shh, it’s okay,” he whispers soothingly, stroking her hair. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

Iris sits like that for a few seconds more, before pushing slightly against his chest. He lets go and she rubs her eyes, before holding her hand out for her glasses and putting them on. “Sorry,” she says as her eyes become more focused. “They haven’t been that bad in a while.” His eyes widen.

“They’ve been that bad before?”

“Yeah,” she admits shakily, looking around her room. “But it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have fallen asleep without your mom in the house. I was reading, but I guess I was tired.”

Barry notices that she’s still fully dressed and her Vans are on the floor, like she just kicked them off before crawling into bed. “What do you mean, you fell asleep without my mom in the house?”

“The whole…” she gestures to her room and her belongings scattered all over the floor. “It happens the worse the nightmare is. When your mom found out about them, she made me move back home.”

“Is this why you’re not sleeping?”

Iris frowns. “Who told you I’m not sleeping?”

“Chesca,” he admits. “She and Colin are really worried about you, Iris, and now I can see why. How long has this been going on?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Just after Christmas, I guess. They stopped for a while, but then Calamity attacked again, and my mom got kidnapped, and I guess it all got a little too much.”

Barry watches her as she moves the objects back into place with her mind. “Iris,” he says carefully. “You haven’t told anyone what happened that night, have you? Not the whole story.”

“No,” she says quietly. “Not all of it.”

“You can tell me, you know. If you want.”

Iris is silent, playing with her fingers, and he considers all the secrets they’ve shared in this room, and in this house. They used to stay up all night talking about stuff, the things they wanted, the things they were excited about, the things they were scared about. And, okay, back then it was more along the lines of Barry being terrified about his AP English final and Iris thinking she was going to fall off the cheerleading pyramid. And she never shared the biggest secret with him – _I was in love with you right from that moment_ – but this isn’t about that. This is about them being best friends and being able to share everything with each other, twenty-year strong unrequited love or not. Even if she says she doesn’t love him anymore.

“Yeah,” she replies eventually. “I guess I should tell someone, huh? Are you sure you’re not busy?”

“I came to talk to you, so no.”

“Okay. Just – I kind of want to shower and get out of these clothes, so…”

“Sure. Call me when you’re done.”

Barry goes back downstairs and makes them both grilled cheese sandwiches, before thinking of Iris and her black hole of a stomach and adding cookies, and texts Patty to tell her that he’ll be late home. By the time he goes back upstairs, Iris is in her pyjamas with her hair in its naturally curly state and tied up, the room smelling comfortably of her familiar coconut oil and cocoa butter. They sit cross-legged in front of each other, Iris’ back to her bed. “I don’t want to push you into anything, Iris,” he says before she says anything. “You should only tell me if you want to tell me.”

“No, I want to tell you. Not talking about hasn’t helped any, has it?”

 

_Christmas, 2014_

Iris paid the Uber driver and dragged her suitcase into her apartment building, yawning. She barely made it into her apartment before she kicked her shoes off, threw her coat and scarf on the bed, and walked into her kitchen to make hot cocoa. She looked at her phone as the milk heated up, wondering who to text. After the verbal abuse she’d gotten from her grandparents, she didn’t particularly feel like letting them know she was alright. Plus, she hadn’t even seen Wally.

She contemplated calling Barry and then dropped her phone. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could see the surprise and hurt and confusion on his face when she finally told him how she felt about him. They had barely spoken since, neither of them able to look the other in the eye even as they hugged before she left for Keystone. She took the milk off the stove and looked for some cookies so she could commence feeling ridiculously sorry for herself. It didn’t matter what Nora said about the universe wanting two people to be together or reminding her that Barry inevitably got bored of his girlfriends – all that mattered right now was that guy she was in love with was moving in with another woman, her blood family hated her, her mother was still in prison, and the whole city wanted her behind bars.

The universe had not been kind to her of late.

Then two things happened – she felt a jolt of electricity on her wrist underneath her watch, and her phone started a klaxon noise. Those two things meant that someone was sending out a distress signal, the length of it meant that it was serious, and the only person who had one like that was Barry. Iris didn’t hesitate once the phone showed her his location – she changed into the suit hanging in the back of her closet. The last time he’d seen Miss Miracle he said he never wanted to see her again, so whatever it was, it must be serious. She only briefly considered the fact that it was weird Barry was on the Jitters rooftop this late, but that didn’t matter. He was in danger, she would come.

The cold air snapped against her face when she got there, and she looked around, her heart in her throat when she realised she might be too late. “Barry?” she whispered into the wind.

And then Calamity appeared in front of her, black lightning crackling in her field of vision, grabbed her around the neck, and took her away. The next thing she knew, she was outside the precinct, Calamity standing a few feet away. Even with the mask covering her entire face, Iris could see the amusement in her features as she tipped her head. “I do like the outfit. Colourful.”

Iris rose on shaking limbs, her heart in her throat and her mouth dry. “It was you,” she breathed. “You were the one in my house that night. You killed my father… _why_?!”

“To make you better, of course.”

“WHO ARE YOU?”

“I’m Calamity, Miss Miracle,” she replied. Her voice was a growling, vicious rasp with an edge like knives on stone. “And I am here to show you something.”

Iris grit her teeth and launched herself at her – or, she tried to. Something cold gripped her, locking each of her limbs in place and forcing her to the ground. “W-What’s happening?”

“You didn’t think I was going to let you run off, did you? Now, I’m going to show you how easy it is to kill the people you care about, starting with Nora.”

Iris’ whole body recoiled. “No, not Nora-”

“Of course not Nora. Not _now_. But, see…” She flashes away and comes back holding Skylar Clarke, the new recruit, by the next. “…quick that was? Watch for this next part, this will be fun.”

“M-Miss Miracle?” Skyler gasped, shocked. Calamity tuts.

“No, dear. I believe you know this one. Take off your mask, Iris.”

Iris didn’t want to but she doesn’t need to – it slid off her head of Calamity’s own volition. Skylar gaped. “Iris? What’s happening?”

“I’m afraid you’ll never quite make it to detective, Miss Clarke,” Calamity growled. “But our dear friend has to be taught a lesson.”

“What – _ow_!” Skylar screamed, clutching at her head, and Iris felt terrified tears spring to her eyes. “Stop it! _Stop hurting her_!”

“Alright,” Calamity said simply, and dropped her. Iris stared at her, shaking.

Skylar was dead. Calamity looked up.

“No. No, you haven’t learned yet. How about your mother? How about dear Francine?”

***

“It went on for the whole night,” Iris continues slowly, unable to look at Barry. “First the precinct for Nora, then the prison for my mom, and then Jitters, the university, and the house for… you.”

Barry has been pale the entire time she’s been telling this story, but if it’s possible he now goes even paler. She swallows and continues, still eating, because as hard as it is to relieve it, telling someone the story – the whole thing, not just what she told Nora – is cathartic. “She’d leave me alone for little bits of it – I couldn’t move, though – while she took care of people who approved the task force. The DA, Shawn Baez – I think she killed Eddie, but we never found him. And then she took me back to STAR Labs and left me there, so I changed out of my outfit and came back to the precinct.”

Barry stares at her. “So you just showed up straight after she did that to you?”

“Barry, I think I was in shock. All I knew was that everyone would be worried and I don’t think I wanted to deal with it. That’s why your mom kept giving me all those weird looks. I didn’t really break down about it until I got home, and I didn’t tell your mom until later.”

Iris can’t look at him, because she knows he’ll have that look on her face, the one where he wants to go out and find the thing that’s hurting her, mixed with sympathy. And she knows that because she’s always been the same way; they’ve always worried about the other one. “Iris,” Barry says hoarsely. “You could have told me. It must have been…horrible for you to go through this alone.”

“You have enough to worry about, Barry. Your dad, your job, your life – you have enough going on without worrying about my nightmares.”

“ _You’re_ a part of my life,” he counters. “Of course I’m going to care about you having  _nightmares_ , Iris. But I’m glad you were ready to tell me.”

“Me too. And I wasn’t alone, by the way. I meant what I said on the roof. I read your blog every day, and it helped.”

“Are you sure you don’t need anything else?”

“Calamity in prison,” she answers, laughing. “But we’re working on that, right? So I guess all we can do is wait. And,” she says, seeing his face, “I will try to get more sleep. Promise.”

He gives her a small smile and she yawns, crawling into her bed. “So, do you want to know about what Snart gave to Chesca to her to go out with him?”

And of course Barry _has_ to hear that story, and then he has to tell her about how the whole newsroom went _dead silent_ because Missy was in the middle of a conference call with their boss and Cal Grant and Scott swore they could be on the verge of World War Three. Iris already feels much lighter, just by telling him, and for his part, Barry is glad that she isn’t keeping that locked up inside her anymore. He sits in her old rocking chair and eventually Iris starts to fall asleep. By that point they’ve stopped talking, just sitting in a comfortable silence that they can’t replicate with anyone else. Barry picks up one of her books ( _The Big Book of Bill Nye_ ; dear _God_ , his best friend is a _nerd_ ), and starts flicking through it absently, noticing that Iris is dozing.

_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine_

_You make me happy, when skies are grey_

Barry sings it quietly, almost as if he’s not aware he’s doing it. Neither of them acknowledge it – they never have. It’s a best friend thing, after all.

_You never know, dear, how much I love you_

_Please don’t take my sunshine away_

He sings it a couple more times, mostly because he doesn’t actually know the other words to the song. But he keeps singing until he’s sure Iris is asleep, and only leaves after his mother gets back.

***

Patricia Jane Spivot was born to kill Barry Allen.

That was what she thought when she first saw him, anyway, because marks are not supposed to be as handsome as him. They’re not supposed to be charming, they’re not supposed to be friendly, and they’re certainly not supposed to bring their best friend coffee and brownies to get them to help them with their dissertation. No, the son of the man who killed her father is supposed to be horrible, charmless, ugly. But Barry’s none of those things, so she has to remind herself of that whenever she finds herself forgetting.

She had to remind herself when they first met and he joked that she’d get sick of him soon because his entire family worked at the precinct, and when Iris was hit by lightning and he would let her pay for coffee anymore. Patty has to remind herself every day, because the truth is that despite what she’s been trained to do, it’s hard to remember.

She wasn’t always made to kill him – but then, she’d only been Patty for maybe two years. Before that she was Daphne Dean, the college student who was a little too good at shooting but who mostly kept to herself and didn’t ever try out for the team. And in high school she’d been Fiona Webb, the quiet child in a private boarding school whose mother dressed exquisitely all the time and who took her daughter on lots of expensive vacations. But then, her mother was a contract killer, the only work that fulfilled her after her husband died. One of the perks of the job.

And what happens when your real name is Thalia Thawne and your father was killed by Henry Allen.

Patty sits with her laptop, absently clicking through her files. She goes through several password-protected files, two layers of encryption and voice recognition software before she finds what she’s looking for. A few months ago she slipped up and let Barry on her computer and he almost found out everything, so she’s being cautious now. That’s the thing with Barry. He makes you love him and then you slip up. That is her first problem.

She and her mother had been watching this little family for years before Patty went in. A smart detective with a sweet disposition who’d been transferred from Midway (all falsified, of course) who would bump into him a few times before he got the hint. Then she could work her way in, make him trust her, let her mother know the lay of the land, and they could get their plan together.

While Patty’s – admittedly short – life has been all about killing Barry – Thalia’s life has always been about revenge. That’s what her mother has always told her. “Because they ruined our family, sweetheart,” her mother would always say. “And we need to avenge them.” She’d never met most of the people her mother had worked with, only heard stories – Emmanuel she’d met, her cheerful uncle who could kill a fly at fifty paces, Aurora Ognats, the pretty, dark-skinned woman who’d caught over a dozen rogue metahumans, Maxine Mercury, the teen prodigy who was already tapped to lead M.A.I.M.E.D. And then Thaddeus Thawne and Henry Allen, the best in the business.

She remembers liking her father, a tall man with broad shoulders who could make her mother seem less cold. But then Henry killed him – a sniper shot, she’d learn later – and then everything was cold. Her mother, her life, her heart. Cold apart from that desire for revenge, a little ember flickering in the wasteland. Neither Thalia nor Jesimae (‘nobody ever suspects an Eleanor’ her mother had said when they were picking their names) know where Henry Allen is, but they have no doubt that when both his son and his ex-wife turn up dead, he’ll know about it if he’s alive. And then he’ll know their pain.

The problem, of course, is that Patty was made to kill Barry.

She certainly wasn’t made to love him.

It happened slowly, so slowly that she didn’t notice at first. But she found herself looking forward to their meetings and their conversations, even finding an interest in what he’s studying and the undergrads he had to teach. That’s when she had to remind herself. It’s not like she hasn’t had boyfriends before, but – Barry is different. She hadn’t known that watching him, trying to construct the perfect way for them to meet, trying to get to know him, but he is. And that’s going to make it a lot harder when she wants to kill him. Her mother won’t be happy about that, but it’s true.

 _Hey, be home late, don’t wait up_.

Patty grinds her teeth together when she gets the text, because that’s her other problem.

When they first started watching the Allens, they hadn’t given much more thought to the girl they’d taken in as a child. It was clear that they were close and that she and Barry were best friends, and honestly, they’d thought that Iris West (five foot four, Twitter handle NerdyGirl89, the clumsy that walks into doors, not falls over) would be a useful way to get to him. But then they met and two things became glaring apparent: the first was that she was clearly in love with him, and by the way she lingered on him and complimented him and brightened when he was in the room, that wasn’t going to change. Patty was fairly certain that if she cut open Iris’ chest, she’d find ‘Property of Bartholomew Henry Allen’ tattooed on her heart in permanent ink.

The second was that, despite not knowing that his best friend was head over heels for him, Barry Allen didn’t look at other women when he was around Iris. She’d seen women flirt with him and he’d shrug it off or ignore it completely, preferring instead to listen to Iris talk about lasers. According to the people at work, he’d always been that way – he got bored with women that weren’t Iris. Even her own attempts at flirting had fallen flat, and she was almost at the end of her tether when the lightning struck. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, that lightning strike. She found Iris bleeding in her lab and made sure she was breathing before the captain called the ambulance. She still can’t believe that it took Iris West being struck by lightning and out of commission for nine months for him to notice her.

After that it was easier – he talked about her a lot, but then, he was grieving. She could understand that, at least. She just had to work her way into his schedule so it would be easier to get a plan together. It was fine.

And then Iris woke up, and Patty didn’t recognise the smile Barry was wearing when he walked into the precinct because he only ever wore that smile around her – the carefree, easy one that made his face light up and his eyes shine. It gave her a little dark piece of satisfaction to see Iris’ face when she found them making out in the alleyway, and she was glad her new friends seemed to monopolise her time so Patty had more time with Barry. So that was fine, even if Barry was more concerned about what Iris thought of their relationship than telling his mother about it. So that was fine, for a while.

And then came Miss Miracle, and Patty couldn’t believe that she had to share her boyfriend with the best friend that he clearly adored and the masked superhero that saved him at every opportunity. Of course, just when she went crazy and tried to kill them, Iris chose the _next month_ to tell Barry she loved him (which he revealed in a subdued conversation that should have been another clue), so after that each time they looked at each other there was this charged, agonised tension that added to the sexual tension that was already there because Barry insisted on touching or tickling or poking Iris whenever she got close.

So that is her other problem – Iris. Because their plan hinges on Patty being the most important person in Barry’s life so suspicion doesn’t fall on her and neither Nora nor Barry suspect anything. They’re already in dangerous water because Nora recognised her mother (“It was an assassination disguised as a cocktail party; how was I supposed to know she’d remember?”), so they need this part to work. But it hasn’t been easy. Even when they got over that and Barry and Iris stopped _touching each other so much_ , there was Scott. Which was a problem because Barry was jealous and didn’t know he was jealous, and even guilting him about it hadn’t worked. Patty didn’t know what happened on that bridge but she was grateful, because after that thing where he practically raced across the room to put Iris’ glasses back on her face, his touch more tender than she’d ever seen, she was certain he’d been seconds away from realising that he was in love with his best friend.

Of course, the worst part is that Barry has no idea of his behaviour – and she suspects that she’s just one in a long line of people who dates a person who’s been dating someone else their entire life. He’s as attentive as ever, voluntarily organising dinners with his mother and always inviting her to the house and bringing her little pick-me-ups from Jitters, even after he stopped working there. And Iris, too, is always nice. Cheerful and helpful and genuinely happy that she advised joining a kickboxing class. When Iris got her a brand of nail polish she’d been admiring as a thank you, Patty almost dropped it. It was like having a friend, that moment. She didn’t have many of those.

But still. Iris isn’t just a romantic rival, she’s getting in the way of her mission. Patty knows that Barry is probably with her right now, given the ridiculous way they worry about each other, and lately Iris has been looking like something is chasing her. She isn’t surprised – she only has her mother left, too, and having the Trickster kidnap her couldn’t have been easy. But all it does is reiterate that Iris is more important to him than she is. They have a fight, and Barry is miserable for a week. She gets a boyfriend, and Barry subtly mentions that he better not hurt her or he’ll end up like Lance Burke. Iris is the same, making him dinner and holding his hand and buying him expensive watches to replace the one that he lost from his father.

Patty shuts her laptop and grabs for her coat, frustrated. The way she feels right now, she’d march right over there and shoot them both, and her mother won’t be too pleased about that. The drive to her mother’s house is a good length for thinking, though, and she ponders something that’s been bothering her.

What does she do when it’s over?

What does she do when Nora and Barry are both dead and she’s got her revenge? What comes next? So much of her life has been about finding them, finding the best way to get into their lives, and then getting rid of them so Henry Allen, wherever he is, can suffer as they have. But when she thinks past it, all she sees is a black void. She shakes her head as she pulls into her mother’s driveway. One thing at a time. She finds her mother in the cellar, gun in hand, practicing on targets. She picks a gun and goes to stand next to her mother.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” her mother says coolly, concentrating on the target. Everything her mother does always has a touch of frost to it, like she was blessed by Jack Frost.

“Didn’t have much to do,” she admits. She focuses and fires, hitting the middle of the target with precision. That is why they call her One-Shot Kill, after all. Her mother loads up again.

“And Barry?”

“With his best friend,” she replies tightly. Her mother looks at her and she sighs. “Do not give me that look, mother. Iris is as much of a threat as a kitten. I’m more afraid of Nora than I am of her.”

“You’re afraid of Nora?”

“No.”

Her mother smiles at that and they go back shooting. It’s relaxing, not only because it’s a reminder of what she’s here to do, but because for some reason they’d decided that Patty Spivot needed to be relentlessly, almost aggressively perky. It was nice to not wear that insipid smile all the time; how in God’s name did people not want to shoot _her_?

“I think,” her mother says once they’ve finished, “it should be soon. We’re as close as we’re going to get. We just need a good cover.”

Patty frowns as they cross the foyer. “We’re not going with a sniper?”

“Too suspicious. Who would snipe a detective and her journalist son?”

Patty freezes when all of the windows in the foyer shut suddenly. She reaches for her gun but it shudders in her hand before being wrenched out of her grip. The same thing happens to her mother, and then they see a flash of black and silver before a woman appears in front of them. Patty stares. “You’re…”

“Calamity,” she rasps. “ _You_ are Jesimae and Thalia Thawne…and I believe we can help each other.”

Patty’s still reeling when she gets back home to find Barry taking off his shoes. “How’s your mom?”

“Fine. Boring, but fine. Where were you?”

“I was at home,” he sighs. _Figures_. “Iris has been going through a…lot. I went to talk to her.”

“Is she okay?”

“I think so.” He kisses her on the cheek and yawns, and her eyes fall on a box on the table. “What’s that?”

“Oh, I got you a butter pecan cake.”

“Why?”

He shrugs, smiling. “Felt like it.”

And it’s another moment where she reminds herself that Patricia Jane Spivot was born to kill Barry Allen. So neither she nor Thalia Thawne can keep him.

***

“That,” Chesca declares, “is a terrible idea.”

“It’s not a _terrible_ idea,” Colin says.

“You want us to distract a sociopath so Barry can investigate the secret room under STAR Labs where the sociopath keeps the sociopath toys. It’s not filling me with sunshine and rainbows.”

Barry sighs. Truth be told, he’s kind of terrified himself, especially since he designated himself as the person looking for all the secrets. But he hasn’t been able to get Iris’ face – while she was having the nightmare and while telling the story – out of his head. He has to do _something_. “It’s not the safest. But you’ve distracted Dr Wells before – and it’s just me, she won’t even _think_ about me going down there.”

“And you want me to distract Iris because…”

“I don’t want her to worry. Plus, we might not find anything.”

“We could also die,” Chesca points out. Colin rolls his eyes.

“Chesca, we are not going to die. It’s actually a pretty good plan – you disable the security so Barry can explore, I take Dr Wells to a conference, if we find something, great, if not, we keep looking.”

Chesca looks between them over her coffee. “You’d better not die, Barry, because when Iris finds out I will follow right along with you.”

So a few days after that coffee date in Jitters Barry finds himself exploring the corridors of STAR Labs. He has four hours until they’ll leave the conference, and Iris is out shopping with Linda and Chesca. He messages her to let her know he’s fine, takes a deep breath, and goes in.

It’s easy enough to follow the blueprints to the room, but then he gets to this odd section of the corridor where the door is supposed to be, underneath the building. He frowns, feeling at the walls, before studying the map again. According to the blueprints, the door should be right…

“Whoa!” Barry gasps as the door sort of slides open out of nowhere and he finds himself in a weird room with bumps all over the walls and strobe lights. There’s nothing here apart from a little podium projecting something onto a wall. When he steps closer, he can see that it’s a newspaper. “What the frack?” he mutters. He reads the headline.

_Miss Miracle Is No More, Missing in Lightning Crisis_

His heart seems to stop, and then start again, as he starts reading.

“ _After an epic street and sky battle with Calamity, during which she was defeated, Central City’s Golden Grace is said to have disappeared in an explosion of lightning._

The picture is of Iris being thrown towards the heavens, lightning crackling above and across the sky as far as the eye can see, and then striking her through the chest. “No…” he breathes. “No, she can’t-”

“ _Bartholomew Henry Allen_ ,” a male voice intones, and he jumps. The newspaper disappears.

“Shit! Who – Who is that?”

A 3D image of a disembodied male head appears above the podium. “I am Gideon, an artificial user interface. You are Bartholomew Henry Allen, currently staff writer for Central City Picture News. Most likely to become editor in chief and husband of-”

“How do you know me?”

“Because of your connection to the Mindscape.”

Barry blinks. “The Mind-what?”

But then Gideon focuses behind him. “Dr Helena Amelie Wells. Also known as Calamity.”

Barry’s blood runs cold and he turns to see Dr Wells staring at him with curiously dead eyes. She is out of her wheelchair, and black lightning is crackling around her fists. And she looks like she’s about to kill him. Barry stumbles backwards, against the podium, and then his throat goes dry when he feels the whole room go cold. “You don’t have to k-kill me,” he stammers. “Don’t m-make it…worse.”

But she doesn’t say anything and Barry is about to speak again when Colin, of all people, walk into the room. He looks between them, especially when Dr Wells doesn’t move. And the smile Colin’s wearing isn’t his normal friendly one – it’s got an edge that he doesn’t recognise. “Oh, Barry,” he sighs. “I really wish you weren’t as smart as Iris is always saying you are.”

Barry blinks, his chest rising and falling. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is I didn’t think my plan would go exactly like this, but here we are.”

“Are you working with Calamity?”

“In a way, I _am_ Calamity,” he replies simply. “Although good old Dr Wells does most of the work. I don’t look quite so threatening in the suit.”

Barry runs a hand through his hair. What the hell is Colin talking about? Dr Wells is still standing there like she’s looking right through them both, and there’s a floating head telling him he’s going to be the editor of CCPN…

“I suppose I should explain. I see you’ve met Gideon and his ability to predict the future?”

“This machine knows the future?”

Colin clicks his tongue. “No, it can _predict_ the future. You see, Barry, Miss Miracle and Calamity are much more alike than you think – similar powers, both got abilities through an accident – and both get their powers from the Mindscape. Do you know what happens when you make a decision? Everyone else reacts to it, making their own decisions based on _those_ decisions, and creating a chain of events all stemming from that. The Mindscape knows everyone’s mind and can make accurate predictions based on what people are thinking of doing. Iris and Dr Wells get their powers from there, which is why they can read those minds. Still with me?”

There’s an entity that can read minds and predict the future based on people’s thoughts and decisions. Barry feels like he’s in one Iris’ science fiction books. “So Dr Wells always knew she was going to kill Iris, is that it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Barry. You remember that I told you I was one of those children who visited this place before it became STAR Labs?”

Barry nods slowly. “You annoyed her into showing you her stuff.”

“I believe the term she used was ‘precocious,” he sniffs, his hands behind his back. “Anyway, I stumbled upon a machine Dr Wells had built. She managed to harness this into something that would allow her to predict the future all the time – Gideon. She’d also experimented with tachyon particles – she wanted to enhance her own powers, so she created a machine that could make metahumans, if only temporarily. That didn’t work, so she used them to create devices see whether she could control minds. She put them in rings,” he adds, holding up his own, “which is why she’s so…docile right now. She was in the middle of these experiments when I met her.”

Barry’s hand steals towards his phone but Colin sees it, and the next moment Colin points a finger at him. A blast of ice shoots out of it, so cold that it burns his hand. “Sorry, Barry. You’re not telling our friends just yet.”

He gapes, shaking in disbelief. “You – You’re a-”

“Metahuman? Let me tell you, it’s been hard hiding it.” He pauses. “Where was I? Right, Dr Wells and her many machines. So there I was, precocious ten-year-old that I am. I walk into her labs and go exploring, and discover this machine – _Gideon_. He tells me he can tell the future – or the most _likely_ future, anyway. It was at ninety-seven percent certainty. And here’s what I saw.

Colin nods at Gideon, who starts showing videos of what he’s saying. “Iris West grows up with both of her parents and her best friend, Barry Allen. Because she doesn’t live with him, she can tell him she’s in love with him and they eventually get married. Iris doesn’t spend half her time chasing the impossible, so she actually does some work and soon becomes the Director of the CSI Division of the CCPD. Unfortunately for her, the night she’s getting ready to celebrate this with her husband, a lightning strike caused by Dr Helena Wells and Terrence Chamber’s Particle Accelerator causes her to go into a coma for nine months.

The images flash past him in quick succession – Iris’ promotion, them getting married, the lightning… “She emerges as Miss Miracle. And just so you’re wondering, Barry, you are indeed the first person she tells. She has quite a run, saving the city after the metahumans from the explosion overrun it. Miss Miracle then bands together with Superwoman, Batgirl, Aqualady, Marvel Man, the Martian, the Green Arrow, the Black Canary and Hawkman to form the Justice League, which ends up being fairly helpful during all those pesky alien invasions.

“Eventually, however, there’s a threat that almost kills her. It is the year 2024 and Miss Miracle is faced with her two deadliest foes – Killer Frost and Deathstorm. They take over the city, destroying everything in their wake.” He sighs. “Eventually, however, she defeats them. Killer Frost and Deathstorm are both dead, and everything goes back to normal.”

Barry swallows, still caught on the fact that there’s a future where he and Iris are _married_. “Why do you care? Why do you care about some hypothetical future?”

“Because _I’m_ Killer Frost,” he says, studying the ring on his finger. “And I didn’t want to die, Barry. Can you imagine what that was like? Being told that you were going to die because of some silly little girl who got struck by lightning by accident and went around _helping people_?”

“You help people – you’re a doctor!”

“You’re right. But only because I had to be. See, I told Gideon here I was upset. I wanted a _different_ future. One where I lived. One where I was all powerful. So I asked Gideon and he showed me a different future. One where I – _inexplicably_ – had my own power _and_ Miss Miracle’s power.” He laughs sardonically. “I tell you, Barry, that was quite a lovely surprise. And Gideon, being Gideon, rather helpfully showed me how to get to this future.”

 _He’s a sociopath_ , Barry thinks desperately. _He’s planned this from the beginning_.

He walks around Barry, who’s rooted to the spot. “First, I’d have to get Dr Wells to accidentally kill her husband in an accident, using the tachyon rings she so carefully created. In her grief, she’d be much easier to control with the rings, as you can see. Then I’d get Calamity to murder Joe West, traumatising Iris and setting off a chain of events that would lead to her becoming Miss Miracle.”

“And now what?” he stammered. “You’re just going to take her power?”

“Oh, no. I can’t tell you everything now, Barry, that would be too easy. But this is where you come in.”

“Me?”

“I needed Iris to become as powerful as possible, and I couldn’t figure out how. Everything she did, every improvement seemed to be random. I tried sending metahumans to kill her-”

“ _That was you_?” Barry hisses. “You created them?”

Colin rolls his eyes. “Yes, Barry, pay attention. But that didn’t work, apart from Girder. I tried encouragement. Nothing. I even sent Dr Wells after her – what was it you said to me at Christmas? ‘Fear is a great motivator’. But that didn’t work, it just made her even more afraid. And then Cobalt Blue happened, and I figured it out. She discovered her powers after she saw you. She learned to fly when you were in danger. And she figured out mind control when she thought you were dead. She even came back from Calamity’s attack because of you. So you’re the key to making her better.”

“B-But I’m just…me,” he says. “I can’t do anything.”

“Well, tell that to Iris. She’s always yammering on about how wonderful you are, and apparently the Mindscape seems to agree because it gives her new powers when you’re around. She’s still in love with you, you know. If you broke up with Patty, I’d be done with this plan by now.”

Barry’s heard enough – while Colin is talking, he runs for the door. Colin doesn’t move, but Barry’s limbs lock. Dr Wells is staring at him, eyes still blank. “Bad idea, Barry,” Colin tuts. “We’re kind of a team.”

“Why don’t you just take her power?” he demands desperately. Colin shrugs.

“Dr Wells’ stopped years ago – they won’t develop further than this. Besides, you make Iris much more powerful. So, Barry, here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to go back upstairs and tell our friends that you found Dr Wells’ machine for making metahumans, which will make Iris stop worrying. And then you’re going to go along with the plan I helpfully suggest while we figure out how to stop Calamity. Do you understand?”

“N-No,” he snaps, shaking his head. He would never hurt Iris like that – never. The idea is unthinkable. “I’d never do that.”

“Hm.” Colin considers him. “Nora works pretty regular hours, doesn’t she? And so does Patty. It’d be pretty easy to find her, if I wanted. And Francine, she’s just always in one place. And people die in prison all the time, unfortunately. And as for Iris, well, I’m her doctor. I know exactly how to make her hurt.”

Barry feels the ground rocking underneath his feet and Colin grins at him. “I should congratulate you, though. _My_ future has a pretty good chance of happening, according to Gideon, and you get yourself I front page.”

He frowns up at the problem and gasps when he sees his name on the by-line. And the date… “That’s the day after the policeman’s ball – Colin, that’s _next week_! You – you can’t-”

“Actually, I think you’ll find that I can. But you’ll love this part.” Colin presses a button and the page changes. To obituaries.

“ _Iris Ann West was one of those killed in the battle between Calamity and Miss Miracle_ ,” Colin reads. “ _She was a hardworking member of Central City’s Police Department and is survived by her mother, Francine West. She will be missed_.” Colin shrugs.

“Rote, I know. Kind of boring. They wanted to get her best friend to write one, but he couldn’t handle it. Too destroyed, apparently.”

The image changes again, and then Barry sees himself in a cemetery in funeral clothes, holding a bunch of flowers and staring at a gravestone with a look of utter devastation on his face. _Iris’ gravestone_.

Barry can’t breathe and the entire world is spinning, but Colin just grins at him. “I think,” he says slowly, “we’re going to have a lot of fun, the three of us. Isn’t that right, Dr Wells?”

For the first time, she speaks. “Yes, Dr Snow. That’s right.”

***

Iris bites her lip, studying the device on her wrist as Linda fixes it to her arm. “It’s just practice,” she assures her. “So it doesn’t matter if you get it wrong.”

Iris glances back at Chesca and Colin, who have set the targets and are now waiting by the controls. They’ve driven to Ferris Air and set up the targets on a conveyer belt to see whether she can hit them. “Okay, so explain this to me again?”

“It’s a wristband,” she says. “You press this button, and all the ice comes out in a concentrated jet. Hit hard enough, and you can do some real damage. Okay?”

“Okay,” she nods, and Linda runs back over to the others. Iris braces herself as the conveyer belt starts to move. Colin waves and Chesca gives her a thumbs up. Suddenly one springs up and Iris aims…but misses. “It’s cool, _chica_!” Chesca calls. “Try again.”

She rolls her shoulders back and flies around again, watching for the target. She hits the edge of it next time. “You’ve got a piece of it,” Colin calls. “Keep going!”

The next time, though, Iris hits the target on the bullseye and everyone cheers. “GO IRIS!” Linda whoops. After a few more tries, Iris is hitting all the targets. She floats back down, grinning, and high-fives her friends. “That was awesome,” Chesca says. She shares a look with Colin. “And we have something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t be mad.”

“Chess…”

“Well, last week, Barry and I found out there was this, kind of, secret room underneath the Cortex-”

“And all of you wonder why no one trusts that place,” Linda mutters.

“So we went under there-”

Iris stared at her. “You went under the secret room underneath the Cortex controlled by Calamity?”

“To be fair, it was Barry’s idea,” Colin admits. “You can yell at him. But it was a pretty good one, and he found out how Calamity created the metahumans.”

“So now we have something concrete on Calamity for when we arrest her!” Chesca says. “Isn’t it great? I can’t believe I thought we were going to die.”

“You let Barry under there when you thought you were going to die?”

“Hey!” Linda interjects, seeing the vein in Iris’ forehead. “How about we not talk about that and go over to Nora’s for dinner, since she’s just texted me that we can all come over?”

***

“Barry?” his mother asks. “You okay?”

Barry looks up from setting the table as someone knocks on the door. “Uh, yeah. Fine.”

“Great. I think Patty’s bringing up the wine, so could you make sure we have enough place settings? Wally just got here and Linda’s coming with Iris, Chesca and Colin.”

His breath hitches but he manages to nod. He’s still wrapping his head around it – that Colin is using tachyon rings to control Dr Wells, making her do all this stuff in an elaborate scheme to steal Iris’ power – and he can’t tell anyone. He saw it with his own two eyes, how easy it was to control Dr Wells with those rings, not to mention his own strange power. _Killer Frost_. And if he’s been controlling Dr Wells since he was a child, not only is he a complete sociopath, but he’s much, much more dangerous than her. He’s the most dangerous thing they’ve ever faced.

He has to tell Iris. Of course he does. Iris is Miss Miracle – she can’t be scared of Colin, right?

***

The first thing Iris does when she gets home is find Barry.

Because of _course_ he put himself in danger for her, and of course he found something. That’s so quintessentially Barry that she’s hardly even surprised. So after she hugs Wally and Linda, she drags him out into the hallway. He looks a little pale, but she pulls him into a tight hug anyway. “Colin told me what you did,” she says quietly, her arms around him. “Thank you.”

“O-Of course,” he smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. She studies him, looks at his forehead…but no, she can’t. They are best friends, she promised she wouldn’t read his mind.

“You okay, Bar?”

“I just… wanted to tell you – who’s that?”

Iris frowns as someone continues to ring the doorbell. “I don’t – Ronnie! Did Colin call you?”

“Yeah,” she says cheerfully. “Said I should eat something that’s not pizza. I hope I’m not late.”

“Nope, Nora’s just washing the salad,” she grins, peering into the kitchen. “And I made mac and cheese earlier, if Barry will let you have some. Now, what did you want to tell me, Care Bear?”

“Just, yesterday, when I was-”

“OWWWWWW!”

“Mom?” Barry demands in alarm. Everyone races into the kitchen to see Patty holding Nora’s hand under the tap. He steps forward. “What happened?”

“I could have sworn I was using the cold tap,” she sighs. Her hand is angry red and splotchy. “It’s just a burn, Barry,” Patty assures him.

“Yeah, she’ll be fine,” Ronnie adds. “Just keep doing that and rub some aloe vera on it. You’re lucky, that burn could have been worse. Colin tells me about stuff like that all the time.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Colin tells me _everything_.”

Iris frowns – Barry goes even paler when Ronnie says this, looking at the burn on his mother’s hand again, and she beckons him over. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I just wanted to know whether you were sleeping better.”

“I am now that my best friend used his kickass investigative skills.”

“Good. Great. Uh, I’m gonna go get dessert from the car.”

Iris watches him leave, and then feels an arm tug her backwards. “I love dinners at your place.”

“Stay away from the chicken wings, those are mine,” Iris warns, and Chesca rolls her eyes.

“So…”

“So?”

“Seeing as how we made huge progress in the Calamity thing…”

“Yeah?”

“I think I deserve to know about Becky Cooper.”

Iris sighs. “Will you leave me alone afterwards?” Chesca nods. “Okay. So Barry broke up with Becky because she was using him to make someone jealous. Becky started spreading rumours about him and I…asked her to stop.”

“And by ‘asked’ you mean…”

“I might have blackmailed her a little.”

“Iris West!” Chesca laughs. “Blackmail? You?”

“She hurt Barry,” she says simply. “That’s my limit.”

“And what if someone hurts Barry now?”

“Well…now I have superpowers.”

“Have either of you seen Barry?” Patty asks, walking up to them. But then he spears behind her with a cake dish. “I’m here, just getting dessert.”

“Great, now Dr Frost is here,” Chesca says. “Don’t ruin this dinner with doctor talk.”

“Come on, I love these dinners,” Colin says pleasantly. He smiles at Barry. “Always nice to be among friends.”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “Friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope that was all clear. A note on names: Daphne Dean and Fiona Webb are two of Barry's LIs from the comics, and those people from M.A.I.M.E.D. are all comics speedsters. The name 'Jesimae' means 'wealthy and bitter', which i think fits Eleanor. Like i said, let me know if its unclear, and i'd love to know what you all think.  
> Also: i am a terrible person.


	17. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wolves in sheep's clothing make a big, bad deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just a short chapter about the villains to clear some things up. don't worry, there'll be WA in the next one  
> EDIT: I just got a really nasty review about this, so just letting you know this chapter is pretty dark. No violence or triggers though.

Colin was a child when he noticed the cold.

Not the Killer Frost cold, that came later, after the accident. But he’s always been aware that he isn’t like other people. He’s not amused in the same way, he doesn’t feel the same thing. Apart from Ronnie, he can count the amount of emotional attachments that he’s had on one hand. Well, two fingers. His parents are dull and useless and he stopped returning their calls years ago.

He can pretend, though, he’s good at that. You spend enough time with people and you learn how to fake emotions. Well, apart from Ronnie, that is. His emotions about her are one hundred percent real – which is how he convinced her that going along with his plan would be best option, even if it meant that she was going to be a crazed metahuman for months on end. But then, Gideon had ensured he always knew where she was.

But still, for everyone else, truly, he is cold. He’s cordial to everyone, but he doesn’t really feel that way. He can smile and laugh with Chesca, but that doesn’t mean he cares. And he can look after Iris, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to leave her for dead when he’s done with her. Colin regards all the moving pictures on the screen – different futures and their varying probabilities on one side, and video footage of each of the people he needs for his plan – as he considers his relationships with Iris West and Helena Wells.

His relationship with Iris has been much more benevolent – they went to different high schools and he’s a couple of years older than her, but he has seen and caused some of the most important moments of her life. He was there when she broke her arm (something even he didn’t see coming, but thankfully didn’t interrupt the plan), when she went off to Notre Dame for college and, of course, her father dying. Then there’s the inescapable truth of her never-ending love for Barry Allen, which makes it a lot easier to manipulate her – and him, now that he thinks about it. It’s odd, thinking none of this would be possible without her. While Dr Wells is the one who built Gideon, Iris is actually the one who refined it to its current point of precision. One of the futures, the one with her being a founding member of the Justice League, had her building this machine to the point where it can do what it does now. Of course that has the rather unintended side effect that its loyalty to her is built into its core, as well as to her husband from a future no longer guaranteed.

Colin clicks a few buttons and Gideon takes him back to December 11th of 2013. There is Iris leaving Barry at the precinct, who goes home a couple of seconds afterwards, Patty Spivot watching him. She goes up to her lab, wincing as the metal doors hurt her bandaged hands, and switches on her television to watch Scott Evans report about the Particle Accelerator beginning to destabilise. The storm rages on and leaks water in her lab, so she grabs a stool to stand on so she can close the skylight.

And then she freezes, because everything in her offices starts to lift off the tables. She is rapt, staring…and then lightning crashes through the window, enveloping her in silver light, and then throws her against her shelves where she lies, unmoving. There’s yelling, and then Captain Singh and Patty find her. Deidre checks her pulse and then tells Patty to stay with her. Deidre goes outside and call Barry, who doesn’t hear the phone until the paramedic is the one calling him. Iris’ heart will stop thirteen times before the night is out, and seize eight times before they stabilise her, and tell her family that she’s in a coma.

He picks another video, this one of a few months later. The doctors have decided to take away Iris’ life support because her brain activity is low to minimal (which was a misdiagnosis; Iris’ brain was operating at such a high capacity that the machines couldn’t read it), and they’ve left Barry alone with Iris after he shouted at them for even suggesting it. Nora paces up and down, no doubt debating whether to talk to Francine, when Dr Wells wheels herself around the corner, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Nora will stiffen and glare at her, demanding to know what she wants, before Dr Wells will explain that she can help Iris, that these doctors don’t know what they’re doing, and that the only way to stop that ache in her heart is to let Dr Wells take care of Iris.

All because Colin told her to.

It is amazing, now, that neither Iris nor Nora trust Dr Wells. Nora has always been suspicious, but then, she is a mother. Iris adored Dr Wells from the very first moment, which is understandable since she saved her life, but now she doesn’t trust her in the slightest. He, Colin, is fine, because he had the forethought to make Iris and Chesca think that he was too attached to Dr Wells to want to investigate her, deflecting suspicion from him. Now of course he’s oh so disappointed by her, but honestly. It is far too easy to manipulate them.

He wonders what they would think if they’d known Dr Wells’ true thoughts this entire time. That when she was asking Nora to help Iris, she’d really been thinking that she should run. That when Iris was so determined to help, she had been just as determined to protect her. And when Francine was visiting, Dr Wells was saying _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_. But Helena’s mind is leashed to his now. Those kernels of independent thought are few and far between.

Colin still marvels at it, the genius that it took to create these rings. Helena and Terrence managed it a few years after they got married, manipulating tachyons so they could operate on the same frequency as brainwaves, thus allowing someone to control the brainwaves with a machine. Helena had refined it so someone could control them through metal objects – hence their matching rings, and the little metal molecules under the skin of the people he’d kidnapped to turn into metahumans for Iris to defeat.

It is unfortunate that Barry is so smart; he probably would be safer if he were stupid. But no, he investigated everything, so he correctly guessed that the mind control powers had worn off Wally West so he could tell of his kidnapping, that Linda Park wasn’t a metahuman but was given gloves and powers with a machine that left a brand when it inserted the tachyons into her, that people were kidnapped to make sure they did as Calamity asked. Now he knew the truth – that Colin controlled Calamity through the ring, but her own mind control powers were potent and useful, and would be until he could take Iris’ power from her.

That is, unfortunately, Helena Wells’ own fault. She got her own powers through inhaling odd chemicals during a storm, but she wanted to enhance them. She thought if she found someone like her she could steal their powers, even going to far as to detail a method as to how she could go about it. She discarded it, of course, but not before Colin got a hold of it. It was currently sitting behind the emblem of Iris’ suit, ready to be activated when necessary.

His own powers came from the accident that killed her husband, but he had control of Helena by then. Most ten-year-olds wouldn’t know how to wield that kind of power, but not him. He thrived with it. So when M.A.I.M.E.D. came to investigate she convinced them that no, Colin Snow was not anywhere near the facility, he was with his school friends. And so Killer Frost could grow in peace. It wasn’t enough though, his powers. Firstly, because he knew he needed a heat source to survive, which would eventually arrive in the form of Ronnie. But secondly because he’d never be like Helena, like Iris. He wanted to perform _miracles_.

So now he’s waiting. Waiting for all the plans to come together, for his friends to catch up, for the policeman’s ball. There are any number of ways the plan can go, but the most likely outcome – at ninety-one percent – is one where Iris sacrifices herself defeating Calamity and he absorbs her power. The by-line changes intermittently since any number of things could influence who writes it, but he does see Barry’s name pop up more often than not. Then, as he’s reading the article for the millionth time, he freezes.

The article has changed.

_Miss Miracle Defeats Killer Frost, Master Behind Calamity_

_By Barry Allen_

_Miss Miracle has today defeated the true villain behind Calamity’s reign of terror, a villain by the name of Killer Frost. Warned by what she calls a ‘trusted friend’ in her inner circle, she was…_

Colin had read enough; he took out his phone and called a number. It was picked up on the third ring. “Barry, the good thing about Gideon is that you don’t actually need to enact the decision that changes the future – you just have to _think_ about changing your mind, and he’ll change the predictions accordingly. Now, I know you probably thought you were being clever, thinking you’d just tip Iris off and I wouldn’t find out, but that’s what you get when you doubt me.”

“I-”

“Do not interrupt me,” he snaps coldly. He taps at the screen and makes an interested noise. “Right this minute, your mother and Patty are working late, so they’ll be hard to get to. Iris is out too, trying to catch someone they call Everywoman. But, you know, there’s always Francine. It’s unfortunate that people don’t really care for prisoners – I doubt there’ll be a big uproar if they find her stabbed in the shower or something. Now, have you gotten this out of your system, or will Calamity have to pay Iris' mother a visit?”

There’s only the sound of Barry’s shallow breathing, but the original advert slowly comes back into place, sitting at the comfortable probability of ninety-one percent again. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

Colin hangs up without another thought, sighing. He doesn’t like threatening Barry, Barry’s nice. And he still feels guilty about showing him Iris’ obituary and the funeral picture of him, because they’re from two different futures. Iris’ obituary is from his own plan, but the funeral one is from one where Barry lives…and _isn’t_ murdered by his girlfriend and her mother. Really, the guy’s got a lot going on and he doesn’t even know it. When Colin got to this stage of the plan, he hadn’t been interested in Iris pining and Barry being oblivious and Patty noticing that no, people didn’t just buy their best friends fancy watches and top of the line microscopes without good reason beyond being pettily entertained. But then Calamity, who didn’t have Iris’ reason to avoid reading Patty’s mind for fear of what she’d found there, listened to a stray thought. He’d used Gideon to piece it together from there, and that was when he realised the Thawne vendetta against the Allens would be useful. It’s a shame Nora and Barry had to die, though. And he wants to see Barry’s reaction to the Man in the Iron Mask. Because he is sure that even with everything they’ve witnessed this year, the identity of Cobalt Blue will still shock them.

Also, he kind of wants to see what would happen if Iris found out. She’s proven time and again that she doesn’t fuck around when it comes to Barry. It would be incredibly entertaining.

Colin’s phone buzzes and he picks it up. “Hello?”

“Yo, Dr Frost,” Chesca says. “I’m getting dinner for the metas, you want anything?”

“No, I’m good. What about Iris? She needs to keep her strength up.”

“Quit worrying, she made her order already. She’s there right now, actually where are you?”

“Downstairs,” he says quickly, closing Gideon. “Reading. I’ll be up in a moment.”

He frowns briefly as he hangs up. The probability is now at eighty-six percent. A drop…Not a big drop, but a drop. Still, the article hadn’t changed those were very good odds. He makes his way upstairs to find Iris peeling off her mask and Chesca putting several takeout orders on a food cart. They smile when they see him, and he’s reminded that he’s supposed to be their trusted friend. “Did you get her?”

“In the Pipeline,” Iris said triumphantly, stretching. “I need to call Liv about moving them somewhere they can get a free trial.”

“What’s going on with them?”

“I think Liv got married.”

“ _What_?”

“Yeah, I don’t know either.” She peers among the boxes. “Thai food?”

Chesca readies the cart, avoiding her eyes. “Felt like it. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Iris stares after her, a takeout box in her hand, and Colin frowns. “Problem?”

“Cobalt Blue,” she replies, “likes Thai food.”

“You think there’s something going on?”

“She’s trying to get him to trust her enough to take the mask off, but…I don’t know, I feel something’s off with him.”

“If she thinks she can, I say we let her try,” Colin says firmly. Besides which, he knows there’s only a fourteen percent chance of Chesca getting that mask off him, and he’d like to keep it that way. There’s a reason he’s wearing the mask, and the whole plan will fall apart if it comes off. “Besides, it’s not like he’s itching to go anywhere, is it?”

“Right,” Iris sighs. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, you know how we said ice would trap Calamity, and then we’d put her in the Pipeline at a reduced temperature so she doesn’t have enough energy to teleport?”

Colin nods. They’d come up with that plan the day before – for someone who’s losing sleep over it, Iris is surprisingly clear-headed right now. Though she supposes Barry has something to do with that. “Well, I was wondering how to draw her out, and it hit me – she only turns up when it seems like we’re not afraid of her, like with the task force and when people started looking into her.”

He frowns. “So you want us to stand up and shout that we’re not scared of her?”

“In a way,” she admits, smiling. “The policeman’s ball is next week, right? I say we do something that gets her there straight away, right in the middle of all these people who have sworn to fight her.” She pauses, studying him. “It’s just an idea, but-”

“No, I like it,” he interrupts, grinning. Really, Iris West makes planning her death all too easy. “We should run it by the others, especially Barry. I’m sure he’ll know how to go about it.”

Iris grinned, adjusting her glasses. “You’re right! Thanks, Col.”

So that is how Colin finds himself reviewing footage of Iris as Miss Miracle at his apartment on the big screen, since he’s going to have to know how she fights. There she is at the building bomb, and plane rescue, and with Cobalt Blue… “Hello?”

The door shuts, Ronnie strides in, and his face relaxes into a grin as he pulls her in for a kiss. Immediately his powers flare up, aching under his skin, begging to be released. “Isn’t it wonderful,” he says in a low voice, “that the only woman I can kiss is the only one I want to?”

Ronnie grins. “Well, we’ve certainly been lucky so far. Just ask Gideon.”

“Good day?”

“Martina kept asking to be let out again,” she sighs, sitting on their bed. “And Charles won’t stop emailing. But don’t worry, she’ll give up eventually.”

Colin strokes her cheek gently. “Soon, love. Soon everything will be ours.”

He looks at the screens again, watching as Iris clocks Everywoman when she’s taken on Patty’s form. He smiles. Yes, Iris West versus Thalia Thawne would have been fun.

It’s just a shame Iris will die before that can happen.

***

Eleanor Spivot, real name Jesimae Thawne, is good at watching people.

She always has been, which is why where Henry was the agent that got in people’s lives and learned about them because he was so friendly, she was always the backup that watched for the subtle clues. And now she’s watching his ex-wife. It's the next day, and she watches as Nora goes to the 7-11, then to an ATM, and then calls her son before he goes to sleep, before getting in her car and driving home. From her vantage point, Eleanor puts her binoculars away.

She recognised Nora Allen from the moment she laid eyes on her at the precinct – same piercing green eyes, clear skin, and red hair as it was years ago when Henry first introduced her to all his friends. She couldn’t help the jealousy, not because she was beautiful – Eleanor knew her own appeal, but because M.A.I.M.E.D. agents need to have their significant others vetted. In fact, they’re not supposed to marry outside of the agency. But Henry was the favourite, the golden boy, so they overlooked it. She, Eleanor, followed the rules and fell in love with a man inside the agency, yet she was rewarded with having her husband shot. So she looks at Nora Allen and hates her, and it’s this hate that made her send her daughter in to trap Barry, that won’t ever tell her what really happened to Malina, and will have her killing Nora in cold blood very, very soon.

The problem is _how_.

Eleanor has killed before, of course – she killed her first when she was fifteen and she became a contract killer after the schism, changing names and personalities and nationalities with her daughter so they wouldn’t get caught. But it’s one thing to kill a politician or a prince or a mob boss. A detective and her reporter son, especially one like Barry Allen? A little more difficult.

Eleanor strides smoothly up the path to her house, fishing for her keys. There is, of course, the visitor they got last week. But the idea of working for someone like-

“Calamity,” she breathes. The metahuman is standing there in her costume, black lightning crackling around her form. Even though the mask covers her entire face, she can tell she’s smiling. “Ms Thawne. I believe I know how we can help each other.”

***

Patty glares from where stands, unable to move, in the hallway. Calamity appeared here a few seconds ago, seemingly knowing that her mother was due to arrive, and now here they are. She kind of regrets agreeing to work with the woman. When she came to the house before, she said that they could help each other, but only said to make sure they kept a lookout for her when she wanted them. Patty has no idea why she made them promise that if she’s just going to show up in their house all the time.

She blinks and Calamity grabs her, and suddenly they’re in their living room. “Ms Thawne, Miss Thawne,” she says, as if she isn’t a psychopathic murderer. But then, who is she to judge? Like her mother, she made her first kill when she was fifteen. “I believe I found a way for us to help each other. You would like Bartholomew and Nora Allen dead, correct?”

Patty can’t move, and when she locks eyes with her mother she can see the same is true of her as well. Her head tilts of its own accord. “ _Answer the question_ ,” Calamity orders.

“Y-Yes.”

“Good. I have certain…means of knowing exactly how things are going to pan out, and I will offer you a suggestion. Agreed?” She doesn’t wait. “On the night of the policeman’s ball, Barry Allen will make a speech denouncing me and all I stand for, intending to draw me out. You, Thalia, will then take him to one of the spare rooms in the town hall, saying you want to tell him something, where you’ll knock him out and tie him up. I will arrive, which will prompt him to call Miss Miracle to his aid. After I’ve taken care of her, the two of you can do whatever you wish to Barry Allen.”

Patty just stares at her. Maybe if she pinches herself she’ll wake up. “Oh, I assure you, Thalia,” Calamity laughs, “I am quite real. Besides, wouldn’t you rather Barry and Nora died in the chaos of a Calamity attack, so suspicion is nowhere near you?”

“What if we say no?”

“I would have to kill you,” she replies swiftly, lightning sparking. “Which would be…regrettable.”

“Why are you helping us?” her mother wants to know.

“My reasons are mine alone. I need to motivate Miss Miracle into fighting me, and your helping me kidnap Barry will aid me greatly.”

“Why?”

“Because Iris West is incredibly protective of her best friend, and I don’t think she’d appreciate him being kidnapped.”

“Iris West?” Patty repeats. The idea of tiny, forgetful, dorky Iris being Central City’s saviour is so ludicrous she has to laugh. “Are you joking? Iris routinely forgets what day it is.”

“Quite sure. Oh,” Calamity says, and she can swear there’s amusement in her voice. “Don’t tell me Barry never told you?”

“Barry knows?”

“Of course he knows.”

Patty feels pure, unadulterated rage burst through her like tar. Of course, _of course_ goddamn Miss Miracle is Iris. That’s why Barry was always so hesitant to arrest her, even when she tried to murder them both. And the way he talks about her, and the way she always comes when he calls… Even when Patty was kissing Barry and living with him and – fuck – _loving_ him, she was still the interloper. They are still each other’s whole world, and she never even made a difference.

“We’ll do it,” she says finally, her voice hard, “on one condition.”

“Oh?”

“I want to be the one to kill Barry.”

“Goodness,” Calamity says, taken aback. “You’ve raised quite a daughter, Ms Thawne.”

Patty and her mother share dark smiles. “Apparently so.”

“Well, I suppose we have a deal. You’ll be hearing from me.”

***

And miles away in front of Gideon, Killer Frost clutches his ring.

And smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...i remain a terrible person


	18. Author's Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In case you didn't see this on tumblr.

For peeps who read Say Hello to Miss Miracle, what do you guys think about the length? Because this fic is maybe just over halfway done and I have a lot of ideas on how to adapt S2, but I’m conscious that with everything happening with WA in S3, people might not want to read longer fics about them, especially not AU ones. So I’m just wondering whether to continue until the end with my original plan or cut it short. Let me know. ;) 


	19. Miracle Vs Calamity (AKA The Policeman's Ball Is Never Fun)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five liars, four metas, three bullets, two shooters, one miracle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've tried to edit as much as possible.  
> Also, sincerely thank you to everyone who put up with my confidence crisis this week. I felt really self-conscious about it for some reason, but i think i underestimated this fandom's need for angst and different WA stories. hope you enjoy this ;)

_86%_

***

The policeman’s ball is never fun.

They never have been, at least, they never try to be. All the detectives and the beat cops and the captain get dressed up and eat rubbery chicken and dance to a swing band. Most times the mayor and a few people from the district attorney’s office turn up, but the only time it ever gets interesting is when they hand out the awards. Police officer of the year, most improved, even the joke awards like most likely to lose their service weapon. Barry and Iris go, sometimes, and make fun of the whole thing.

This year, it won’t be fun at all.

Barry has gone around and around it for days, but he can’t find a way to tell Iris without Colin knowing, apparently. His other plan – to tell Iris but warn her not to say anything or let on that she knew – barely lasted before Colin was calling him, speaking in this smooth, cold voice and threatening to kill Francine. The thought of Iris waking up to the news that her mother has been killed in prison twists his stomach into knots. He was at home when he thought that. It’s like nowhere is safe.

And they are pushing full-steam ahead with this plan, Iris most of all, now that they have a way to capture Calamity. Chesca and Iris work at night to make sure that there’s a special cell that will be so cold that she won’t be able to escape. Wally is learning about Iris’ medical files because he wants to know about her physiology in case he needs to help and Colin isn’t around, and Linda is making Iris practice with the weapon they’re going to use to capture her. Chesca is happy that Dr Wells doesn’t seem to be suspecting them, but Barry knows it’s really because Colin is keeping her docile through those goddamn rings.

That’s almost the worst part, he thinks. Because Iris always tells him about how weird it is, that how sometimes she wants to help Iris and is almost as nurturing as if Iris were her own child, but that she knows that this is the woman who burst into Iris’ house and ordered her mother to kill her father. He understands it, too. His PhD research stuff is more of the science that revolves around criminology – psychology, forensics, even neurology – rather than physical sciences. But he read enough of those scientific journals to Iris while she was in the coma to know how, theoretically, tachyons could be used to take control of brainwaves. And then there’s the good Dr Snow.

Colin is a textbook sociopath. He’s faking relationships with everyone to get what he wants, manipulating every living soul that comes into his path and, the kicker, that he’s been that way since he was a child. Only someone who can’t fathom or feel natural emotions when they tell a woman to murder _two_ people could be a sociopath. It’s almost laughable, how easily he fits the mould, were it not for the fact that Barry’s just become the latest person in his prison.

Because that’s where he is, isn’t it? Him and Dr Wells and all those metahumans in the Pipeline. They’re all just pawns in the game that he’s playing. _I am making you better, Miss Miracle_. Because Colin wants her power and he wanted to know how to make her better. He tried cajoling her and sending metahumans after her and – and terrifying her so badly that she has nightmares that have lasted for months. Now she has mind control and flight and god knows what else. And he’s gone around and around trying to figure out how he can stop Colin without everyone in his family ending up dead around him. The images he showed him, with Iris missing in some sort of lightning crisis, her obituary, and then him staring at her gravestone, like that kind of thing is even fathomable…

“Barry?” Iris asks. “Are you alright?”

He notices that everyone is staring at him, Colin included, and he swallows. “I – I’m sorry, what?”

“We just wanted to make sure everyone knows what’s going on,” Chesca answers. She looks at her watch. “Dr Wells will be back soon; we need to hurry.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a project proposal to turn in today,” Linda adds, and Iris nods.

“So the policeman’s ball is on Friday, and Barry, Nora and I will be there,” she explains. “Barry gets to make a speech and he’s going to make one about how brave the people of Central City have been in facing up to threats. He’s going to include a line specifically about not being afraid of cowards like Calamity.” Iris pauses. “I’m still not sure about that line, you know.”

“You’re the one who made me take out ‘come at me, psycho bitch’,” Chesca mutters, and Wally stifles a snort. Iris frowns.

“I just want to make sure she turns up so this part works.”

“Iris, she will,” Colin assures her. “Calamity has proven that whenever someone threatens her or her power, she turns up to threaten everyone.”

“Or me.”

“Or you,” he adds, with just the right inflection of sadness to convince everyone that he isn’t a lying piece of shit. “It must be some sort of power thing – I think Barry was explaining it to me.”

What Barry wouldn’t give to wipe that innocent look of his face… “Yeah, it’s classic sociopath behaviour. Despite how much power they wield they’re extremely petty and insecure, so any threat to them being powerful – or, rather, their perception of how powerful they are – would need to be eliminated. Eddie made that speech about not tolerating metahumans who endanger the city, and he gets captured. Miss Miracle gets a double page spread about how amazing she is because she stopped two huge threats in two days, and CCPN gets a warning burned into their wall.”

“Petty is as petty does,” Chesca adds. “Colin and Ronnie are driving around Central City in the STAR Labs van with satellite and maps so we know where she turns up first. They’ll also be keeping an eye on Barry’s blog, where he’s got that ‘Metahuman Spotted’ feed.”

“How did you do that?” Wally asks, impressed.

“Iris, uh, gave me a book. _Computers for Dummies_.”

“It was supposed to be so someone could fix his computer while I was at Notre Dame,” Iris admits. She grins at him. “Guess it was a little more useful than that, huh?”

“I guess.”

“As soon as someone spots her, Iris will double back to STAR Labs, where Chesca will help her into the suit. Colin and Ronnie in the van will be waiting to help her in the field, I’ll be helping her here. Nora will be on standby to warn CCPD if things get dangerous, and Barry will be around to warn people at the party if anything goes wrong.”

“And keep Patty safe,” Iris adds. “She doesn’t know I’m Miss Miracle, but she could still get hurt.”

“What do we need to do?” Wally asks. “We’re not going to the party; do you want us to be there with Chesca?”

“No,” Iris says firmly. “I don’t need you guys in danger as well.”

“Iris, come on,” Linda laughs. “There was a whole period where I used to shoot light blasts out of gloves, even though I don’t remember it.”

“Right,” Colin adds. He sneaks a glance at Barry. “The more the merrier, right? It’s not like there can be too many people when we’re fighting her.”

“I mean, they can be back-up,” Chesca suggests. “I’m sure I can find something for them to help me with around here. And it can never hurt to have two doctors around.”

“Iris, everything will be fine. Come on, what’s next?”

“Well, once Iris kicks Calamity’s ass, she’ll lock her in the specially-modified Pipeline prison that we’ve created for her. The material is already enough to make sure metahumans can’t use their powers in there, but we didn’t take any chances. The temperature in there is currently zero, but we’re able to go much lower if need be.”

“And then, what?” Linda asks. “You’re going to arrest her? What if she doesn’t confess?”

“We don’t actually need a confession,” Chesca admits. “We just need her unmasked, and then combined with all of Dr Wells’ research on tachyons and the machine that Barry found, we have enough proof that she’s capable of doing it. Plus, she’ll probably confess anyway. She’s a metahuman in the same way Iris is – eventually, the cold will make her so weak it’ll be confess or die.”

“But we’re not going to kill anyone,” Barry adds, seeing their faces. _Apart from Iris_ , his brain adds, but the thought it so abhorrent that he recoils before he can properly complete it. There’s no earth he can live on where that is true. Linda looks around.

“And Dr Wells definitely won’t turn up here, will she?”

“No, she usually keeps to herself around this time of year,” Colin explains. “Family stuff.”

Barry forces himself not to glare at him but thankfully Wally takes the attention away from him. “Great,” he nods, standing up. “Well, keep us posted on everything. I have to get back and study for my boards.”

“You don’t need to study, Mr Skipped Two Semesters of College.”

“Barry did that too,” Iris says, a note of pride in her voice. “It was like an integrated study thing, so he didn’t have to take certain glasses.”

Colin smiles. “Well, it’s a good thing there are so many smart people around, isn’t it?”

Thankfully Iris pulls him away from Colin before he gives the whole thing away, as Wally and Linda are chatting with them before they leave. “So Barry, I know I asked if you could keep an eye on Patty,” she starts, “and I know you’d rather be in on the action and I know you’re perfectly capable of-”

“It’s okay, Iris,” he interrupts quietly. This, at least, is something he can do while he’s trying to find a way to stop Colin and Ronnie from hurting his best friend. He doesn’t want his girlfriend dead too. She peers at him.

“Are you okay? You’ve been really quiet lately.”

“Nothing,” he says carefully. “Just…work stuff.”

“Oh. Okay.” She pushes her glasses up her nose and looks at her hands. “Listen, Barry, I just wanted to let you know that I’m really glad you’re here. This whole thing has been amazing and insane and… scary, sometimes. A _lot_ of the time,” she amends, laughing a little. “And, um, I know for a fact that I couldn’t have done it without you. It feels really good to have you here with the others. Feels good to have my number one fan,” she smiles. She reaches for his hand, a little hesitant, and squeezes. “So, um, thank you.”

“Of course, Iris,” he manages to say. “Any time you need me, I’m here.”

“Great! Well, I should let you get back to work.”

“Don’t you have to go too?”

“In a minute,” she tells him. “I’m been feeling kind of weird lately and I wanted to talk to Colin about it.”

He stares at her. “What? What is it? Are you hurt?”

“Barry, stop worrying,” she laughs. “I’m probably not eating enough or something, but it can never hurt to check.”

Barry clenches his jaw and glances at Colin, who is looking right at him, before smiling down at Iris again. “Of course, sunshine. I’ll see you later, okay?”

He walks out of the room, buzzing with vigour and renewed purpose. Colin can do whatever he wants, but Barry is going to find some way to stop him if it’s the last thing he does. Because there is no way in any circle of hell that he’s going to let Colin lay a hand on a single goddamn hair on Iris’ head.

Barry would rather die first.

***

Iris watches Barry leave, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. They’ve always been able to tell when the other one is worried or distressed or angry, and now is no different. Ever since they found Calamity’s machine, Barry has been a little off. Not mean or distant, exactly…but it’s kind of like he’s avoiding her, and she has no idea why. But then, he seemed perfectly fine just now, so maybe she’s imagining things. It certainly wouldn’t be the only thing she’s worried about, since they’re currently talking about trapping the most dangerous thing they’ve ever faced in prison. The plan is simple enough, she thinks, but that doesn’t mean she’s any less terrified. She meant what she said, though – she wouldn’t be able to do any of it if she didn’t have him there.

“Colin?” she asks once everyone has left. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Sure,” he says cheerfully. “What’s up?”

“It’s a medical thing. Or at least, I think it is.” She sighs. “Or maybe it’s a meta thing, I don’t know.”

He gestures to the medbay. “Why don’t you come in here so we can talk?”

She follows him inside and he finds a stethoscope as she gets herself settled. Then he checks her heartbeat and affixes a blood pressure cuff around her upper arm “Anything in particular?”

“I keep feeling this weird tugging thing underneath my ribs,” she says, pointing to her chest. “And I just feel really worried all the time, you know? But we have a plan, so I don’t know what it is.”

Colin laughs as he looks at the reading. “Iris, both of those are symptoms of anxiety, though the first one is psychosomatic. Does the tugging hurt? Is it uncomfortable?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, then. And yes, we do indeed have a plan, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to be worried about it. It’s totally normal, and so is your blood pressure and heart rate.”

“Anxiety?” she frowns. “So you think I’m going to have a panic attack like the ones Barry gets.”

“Not necessarily. I can prescribe you anti-anxiety medication, but with your metabolism and your powers…”

“You don’t know how it could affect my powers because of my nerves,” she sighs. She takes the cuff off. “Sure, okay. Just a couple more days and this will all be over hopefully, right?”

“Right. Everything will be over.”

Iris heads back to work after that, still thinking. Sometimes she thinks that everything that will go wrong is going to go wrong – she won’t turn up, or she will turn up and she’ll kill them all before she can blink, or they’ll capture her and she’ll die before confessing. She even had a dream where she took off the mask and it wasn’t Dr Wells under there, it was Maggie Smith, but that might have been because she’d been watching Downton Abbey before she went to bed. Other times, though, she can feel a light at the end of the tunnel. Like the deep, frustrating anger that she’s felt since her father died will somehow be lifted. She looks at Barry and Nora and Chesca and Colin and Wally and Linda, and she can actually feel like she can start living her life _with_ them, rather than carry around this invisible burden.

“West!”

“Captain Singh!” Iris says quickly, trying frantically to remember whatever it is that has the captain walking towards her so quickly. “Do you have the forensics report on the robbery at the selectman’s office?”

“I’ll have it down to you in a moment.”

“Good, that means something in this day is going right.”

Iris frowns. The captain looks like she’s about to burst, she’s so wound up. She sighs. “Sorry, West. We – Bobbi and I – are dealing with our wedding guests and it’s getting a little stressful. Bobbi invited her ex and her wife as a gesture of goodwill, but she’s totally insane and keeps making all these weird demands about food…” She sighs again, patting Iris on the shoulder. “Do me a favour, Iris. Stay away from crazy exes.”

The captain turns and leaves, and as soon as Iris turns around she runs straight into Patty, who smiles at her. “Iris! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Just, Captain Singh was… nice to me.”

“Well, she’s in a good mood, she’s about to get married,” Patty laughs. “I can’t say I haven’t been thinking about that myself these days.”

…and that is Iris’ ‘Reminder That Barry and Patty Are a Couple’ quota for the day. “Uh-huh. Well, I have to go, so…”

“You’re going to the policeman’s ball, right?”

“Um, yeah. Got a dress and everything.”

“Great!” Patty seems so happy Iris is wondering what put _her_ in such a good mood. She nudges her. “It’s going to be a great night, I think. Are you up for any awards?”

“Best support, probably,” she admits. “Which will most likely end up with everyone making fun of the CSI assistant who has to handle a whole department by herself because the director is pretty much retired. What about you? You might win best detective.”

“Oh, I wish. That’ll be a miracle, huh?”

Iris blinks at her, her heart beating fast, before remembering that of course Patty doesn’t know who she is. It’s just a figure of speech. But if they keep this up and Barry just gets more serious with her, she’s going to have to tell her eventually. She sighs internally. There was a part of her, especially before Christmas and her telling Barry that she’s in love with him, that had hoped Patty would just go away and leave them to go back to being Barry and Iris. With each passing day that’s getting harder and harder to ignore. “Yeah,” she says after a second. “Miracle.”

Patty leaves and Iris heads back up to her lab, but she’s barely there for a second before someone sends a tip into Iris’ blog that someone stole a tinted Range Rover from a dealership. She catches him and dumps the guy in the back of a squad car, before doubling back to STAR Labs to dump her suit. As she’s walking out, she runs into Dr Wells wheeling into the Cortex. She’s holding something in her hand and…are her eyes red? “Dr Wells?”

“Iris,” she says quickly. She puts the photo on the desk. “Out saving the day, I see?”

“You know what they say, crime never sleeps. Um, are you…alright?”

“Ah,” she says quietly. She takes off her glasses and wipes her eyes briefly. “Today is Terrence’s birthday, which is always a hard day for me. I was looking for something to cheer me up, but it appears that seeing him and Jesse learn how to make batteries out of lemons and potatoes doesn’t seem to have improved my mood any.”

Iris glances at the picture. Terrence is a handsome man, she knows, and Jesse at the tender age of ten is adorable with bright blue eyes and neat blonde hair like his uncle. Helena is there as well; she has her arms around both of them. “That – you-” Iris swallows and musters up a smile. “That’s a nice picture.”

“A…relic of happier times. Anyway, Iris, are you looking forward to the policeman’s ball? I know Central City always throws the best parties for Central City’s finest.”

Iris can’t even fathom how this woman can be her father’s killer, but there’s too much coincidence to conclude otherwise. She has seen the machine – Barry took pictures of it – they have her research and her motives. Still, though, something feels wrong.

But all she says is, “Yeah, Dr W. Should be an interesting night.”

***

Patty watches Iris walk up to her lab, before heading back to her desk. Petty as it was, that was kind of fun. The revelation that Iris – who has to give her spare glasses to Barry because she always loses them, she is that forgetful – is the person who has been saving Central City from every maniac that attacks it is still ludicrous, but her anger has subsided. Anyway, that would be over soon – Miss Miracle is miraculous, she isn’t bulletproof. After all, she did see the Green Arrow shoot Iris with her own eyes. Shame she didn’t kill her.

Patty was raised by a contract killer who used to be a spy, so even though she might be a little scared of working with Calamity, she knows the benefits of what working with someone with the same goals with you are. For whatever reason the woman wants Iris dead and, given the fact that Iris makes her job harder every time Barry puts his best friend over her, she doesn’t particularly care. She _does_ sleep with a gun under her bed, though. The Glock, not the one the CCPD issued her. She looks up when a shadow falls over her desk.

“Patty, dear,” her mother says smoothly, smiling. “I came to drop these off. Blueprints,” she says, her voice lowered. Patty nods. “They’re marked?”

“With what we talked about. Honestly, it’s far too easy to steal blueprints in this city. Gotham was much more of a challenge.”

“Mm,” she smiles, amused. Her mother’s always saying that, but she thinks that’s just because her parents met in Gotham trying to take down Superwoman for the brief period where she was possessed by red kryptonite. The blueprints are easily marked with where they’re going to take Barry and Nora on the night of the party, and how they’re going to secure the area. “Tonight?” Her mother shrugs.

“I have nothing to do tonight, why not break into Central City Town Hall?”

Patty smiles at her mother, before glancing at the door and clearing her throat when she recognises Barry walking in. He grins when he sees them hugging her mother and setting the brown paper bag he’s carrying on the table. “Afternoon, ladies,” he says. “How are we?”

“Fine, Barry,” her mother replies pleasantly. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Yeah, Barry, I told you I was swamped with work, I can’t meet you for lunch,” Patty adds regrettably. She means it, too. Even though she’s trying to convince herself that she doesn’t care about him, that she hasn’t fallen in love with him, it is very hard to feel unaffected by Barry’s face when he’s disappointed, especially when you’re causing his disappointment.

But no, Barry just smiles and shrugs. “I know, I just wanted to bring you cake. I ran into Tyler and he was giving away some of the stuff he made at culinary school.”

“Oh,” she says in surprise. “That was nice of you.”

“What’s a guy if he can’t do anything nice for his girlfriend?”

“I have to say, it’s lovely to see you in such a good mood, Barry,” Eleanor says.

“Well, I recently had a very good idea and I’m excited to see how it pans out.”

“Work thing?”

“Something like that,” he tells her. He glances at his watch. “Anyway, I have to go pick up my suit from the dry-cleaners and find a tie that matches Patty’s dress for the ball on Friday.”

Eleanor tips her head at him. “That’s good to hear. I’m sure you’ll make a very attractive couple on Friday, I can’t wait to see you.”

Barry raises his eyebrows. “Oh, you’re coming too? That should be fun.”

“Mm,” her mother agrees, and he wishes them goodbye after kissing Patty on the cheek. She watches him go, affection threatening to win out over the cold pragmatism that pushed her into this relationship in the first place. She feels her mother’s fingers on her cheek, and she looks into her eyes, which are uncharacteristically soft. “He looks like him, if that makes it easier.”

“What?”

“Barry looks like Henry,” she says. “The eyes and the heart and the smile, that’s Nora. But all that confidence, that bravado, that charm…that’s Henry Allen all over.”

Patty thinks of that night, of coming down the stairs and seeing the blood spread out on her father’s shirt. “You’re right,” she says quietly. “It does help.”

***

_89%_

***

Barry’s gotten so good at doing Miracle Workers stuff at work that no one ever notices when he does it anymore. A couple of weeks ago he managed to help Chesca direct Iris into finding a team of robbers that were hiding in a bakery, all the while doing research for Missy. So it’s nothing for him to figure out how he’s going to get around Colin and his magic machine.

He thinks back to it, the time he was in that room. Colin mentioned that it was all to do with probability – that the machine decided on what people were going to do by reading their minds and then calculated likelihood. The images were flickering because any number of things could affect it, but they usually stayed solid on one, and even though the percentages fluctuated, they tended to stay in the same range. And then there was this past week, where he’d decided that he was going to screw everything and tell Iris anyway.

Barry writes all of that down and muses. When he decided to tell Iris, the newspaper must have changed because Colin knows that Iris would waste no time in locking him up if she thought that Barry or anyone she loved were in danger. And it must have been immediate, because no sooner had the first kernels of the plan begun to take shape in his mind that Colin called him and told him to stop.

So something obvious, like telling Iris or his mother or doing something that will immediately stop the plan, is out of it.

He jots down what he knows about Colin’s plan. He hasn’t spoken to or threatened Barry outside of the group, but with the fact that he needs Barry to act in a certain way, there can only be so many ways that this can go. So far, they have that Barry himself will lure Calamity out so Iris can fight her, and then somehow she’ll sacrifice herself and Colin will take her power, causing some kind of ‘Lightning Crisis’ and killing her in the process. Barry’s fairly certain he’ll be somewhere captured during that point, if only to stop him from telling Iris about what’s going on. After he gives the speeches and goes off to change into her uniform, it will be too late.

Barry sits up suddenly. _It will be too late_. Colin needs time to prepare for this – he’s probably preparing even now. On that night, he’ll be controlling Dr Wells _and_ trying to find a way to take Iris’ power, presumably from that van. Even with Ronnie, he can’t be dealing with him and Iris at the same time, while giving Calamity orders and maintaining his own secrecy (since Barry doesn’t think he’s going to want to reveal himself until he’s won, if at all). So the key isn’t to decide anything, or visualise an outcome when it comes to warning Iris.

No, when the time comes, Barry will have to be completely spontaneous.

He consciously avoids planning anything, and is rewarded when Colin doesn’t call him. He knows that Colin won’t kill Iris (and even thinking that makes him sick) because he needs her, and he won’t hurt Patty or Nora or Francine because he still needs them as leverage. Suddenly, deciding to study criminology all those years seems like the best decision he’s ever made.

***

_86%_

***

“I can’t believe you made me come here.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“I have a perfectly nice dress at home.”

“You need a new one.”

From a lounge chair in the private changing room, Chesca nods enthusiastically, chewing on a power bar. “She’s right, Nora,” she says, swallowing. “That dress looks awesome on you.”

Iris gives Nora a triumphant look and then laughs when Nora scowls back. They usually like shopping together, especially since Iris could never do that with her mother and Nora never got the chance to do that with Malina, but that’s usually because they plan the outings. Unlike today, when Iris dragged her across town on their lunch break so they could get a new dress. Nora looks resplendent in a cream gown, though the glare is ruining it.

“See? You should listen to me more often.”

“I should do no such thing,” she replies, though she does admire herself in the dress. “Okay, so does this one work?”

Chesca studies it. It’s a short-sleeved dress with a sweetheart neckline that comes to just below the knees. “It’s perfect. The comms can go in _here_ -” she gestures to Nora’s side “–where no one will see it. It might be a little uncomfortable, though.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m a woman, I know about hiding things in my bra.”

Iris smirks and Chesca laughs. “Go Mama Allen! Although for real, you’re a total MILF. I’d love to have a body like that when I’m your age.”

Nora gives her a small smile. “Thank you, Chesca.”

“Any time. Oh, I should get this,” she says suddenly as her phone starts to ring. “Dr Frost gets so pissy when you don’t answer the phone. Can I meet you guys at the car?”

“Sure.”

Nora packs up the dress and they head down to pay for it, where they run into a group of women walking into the bridal section of the store. Iris’ heart tightens a little when she sees that the bride is black, like her, and her mother is already fixing her hair as they wait for the attendant. The attendant leads the whole merry group down a corridor, and Iris rubs at her eyes behind her glasses. “Oh, honey,” Nora asks. “Are you okay?”

“Hm? Oh no, yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking about my mom, you know.”

“Soon,” she says firmly, squeezing her fingers. Iris nods.

“I know. But the captain was talking about her wedding, and then Patty started talking about getting married, which obviously was awesome for me.”

Nora raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Patty? Really? What did she say?”

“That she was thinking about it. I got the hell out of that conversation before she started asking me to mention it to Barry. I don’t need him asking me the best way to propose to her.”

“I don’t think Barry’s going to even think about proposing to Patty without talking to his mother first. And if he did, I would probably tell him he was making a mistake.”

Iris blinks. “Why? They’re so happy together and – look, I know I’m the last person to be pleading her case, but Patty is essentially perfect. Why wouldn’t you want him to marry her?”

“Because one day he will wake up and realise he married the wrong person, but he will stay, because he is loyal.”

“The wrong person? Who’s the right…” Her face clears and she sighs, looking at her shoes. “Nora…”

“He has feelings for you, Iris,” she says simply, paying for the clothes. “He may not know how to deal with them and he will run from them forever if he lets himself, but I know him. There is a reason he got a girlfriend when you went into a coma.”

Iris looks around, speechless. It’s true that sometimes, over the years, that she thought Barry could have feelings for her, but then something always happened to change it. But it’s different if Nora is saying it – Nora who figured out that Iris has been in love with Barry when she was five, and laughed kindly when Iris realised that she knew all along, and always gave these knowing smiles whenever there was a Brad or a Becky and either Barry or Iris said ‘You never have any time for me anymore’. “I don’t – He’s not – Jesus, Nora.”

“Hey, just telling it like it is. But for the record, I don’t think you’ll be dancing at their wedding any time soon. Plus, can you imagine trying to plan a wedding with Eleanor? She scares me.”

***

Patty wears pearls to the ball.

They’re ones that her mother gave her, who got them from her dad. They go with her dress, which is a light blue number that Barry says brings out her eyes. Her hair is done up in an elegant updo, so everyone can see the pearls in her ears and around her neck. You’re supposed to let everyone know when you’re wearing pearls, her mother always says. So each shining orb would be on full display tonight.

But that was nothing compared to what they _wouldn’t_ be able to see. Like the fact that the pins in her hair are really filled with a sedative. Or that there’s a gun in her purse. Or that the pearls that everyone will so readily admire are actually a mixture of smoke bombs, poisonous gas, and grenades. She hasn’t decided how to kill Barry yet, but a girl always has to come prepared. That is one of the first lessons you’re always taught, after all.

Calamity’s instructions are clear – capture Barry and Nora, wait until Iris arrives to save Barry, prompting Calamity herself to turn up (apparently this woman keeps tabs on everyone), after which she’ll take Iris away, presumably to kill her, and then they’ll be able to do what they want. They can arrange the bodies to make it look like they were victims of Calamity. She and her mother already have an escape plan, and their identities are fake anyway. Besides which, neither are strangers to disappearing.

Barry is in the bathroom now, doing his hair while she puts on the finishing touches of her makeup. She’s also eating from a bowl of pecans that he got her on the way home from work. That, and the picture of them that’s sitting on her dressing table right now, is making it a little harder to concentrate. Even looking at that stupid plant that Iris got them, the lucky bamboo that she can see from here into their hallway, doesn’t help. Because no matter what, Barry _chose_ to be with her. She asked him out; he said yes. She asked to move in; she said yes. They’ve built a life together, and now she has to throw it away.

Patty sighs and does what she always does – she takes her purse out of the drawer and flips open to the picture of her father. Henry Allen took them from him, so they are just taking revenge. Correcting a mistake. An eye for an eye.

“Hey!” Barry greets her before rootling quickly through one of their drawers. “You look gorgeous.”

“Thanks, so do you. Looking for something?”

“My watch,” he says absently, frowning. “It’s the only one I have and Iris will kill me if I lose it.”

“I’m sure she won’t _kill_ you, Barry,” she points out, laughing. He sighs.

“You’re right, she won’t, and that will make it worse. I like your hair like that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty. _Damn it_ , where’s my watch?”

Patty frowns down at her own dressing table before realising that he’s left it there. She holds it out to him and his face clears. “Awesome, thank you. Okay, so watch, wallet, keys…where’s my – oh, phone…”

“Barry, are you okay?”

He stops running around their room for a minute and blinks at her before laughing. “Oh, yeah, fine. Just, uh, anxious to get to the party, I guess. It’ll be the first time I’m going as a reporter.”

She smiles serenely at him. “Well, I’m sure it’ll be a night to remember.”

Barry smiles hesitantly back, and then tips his head to one side. “You – You know I love you, right?”

“Of course I do,” she says in surprise. And her job is never made any easier by random declarations like that, either. He looks at his hands.

“Sorry, that was weird. Just, uh, with everything that’s happened in the past year, with Iris’ coma and then the jellyfish attack and Cobalt Blue, I guess I’m realising now how easy it is to lose the people you love. So you should say it more often.” He shakes his head, embarrassed. “Look at me, making us late. I’ll go call the cab.”

***

_88%_

***

Iris stands outside of the specially modified prison that they’ve readied for Calamity, running her hands over the bars and glass. She knows it’s working because she’s not even inside it, she’s standing in front of it, and already she feels lethargic and a little woozy. The cold is making her cells stay still, so she knows it will require lots of extra energy to teleport or fly, even move things. She swallows, adjusting her glasses. Fourteen years. Fourteen years of doubt and therapists and chasing women who can talk to fish, or pain and hurt and misery, for this moment. In a few hours, the woman who ruined her life and destroyed her family will be behind bars.

So why is she doubting herself right now?

But Iris knows what it is – it’s the cool voice of encouragement of Dr Wells, when she’d get pounding headaches from the voices in her head in the field, or talking her through all of her missions. It’s her face, so drawn with subdued grief, as she looked at that picture of her now-broken family. And doesn’t that make her more like Iris?

“Yo, Bambi Eyes.”

Iris turns and smiles when she sees Chesca stride in, her usual cheerful grin on her face. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just – thinking.”

“Well, don’t worry about anything, _chica_. Soon your mom will be out and everything will be great and we can all hang out reading free comic books.”

“I’m sure that’ll be her first priority. What are you doing down here?”

Chesca wrinkles her nose. “Dr Frost was being really iffy about the security protocols for the metahumans, so he checked them earlier. You and I both know he’s terrible about computers, so I came to do it myself.”

“Mm,” Iris nods. She studies her friend, a slight smirk on her face. “And how is he?”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

Chesca rolls her eyes and Iris laughs. They know, now, that Calamity was using mind-control on the metahumans, which is why they were so gung-ho about attacking Iris and don’t remember that they were kidnapped. What’s weird, though, is that Cobalt Blue seems to be able to get around it – though he’s still scared enough that he won’t take off the mask. Iris isn’t too worried about Chesca talking to him now, at least. “He’s fine. I’ll probably take them all dinner before Linda and Wally get here.”

“You know, if it helps him to talk to him, you should. It can’t be easy knowing that you’re being used like this and being too scared to do anything about it. I think you’re helping him.”

“Really?”

“You’ve gotten farther than I would have done with him. You’re one special chick, Ramon.”

Chesca laughs. “You know, talking down metahumans from mind control might be a good thing to put on my resume.”

“I could totally use you in the field. If he tells you that Calamity hates chickpeas, let me know and she’s getting a face full of hummus.”

Her friend punches her lightly in the shoulder, before pulling her into a hug. “Everything’s going to be fine, Bambi Eyes. Now don’t you have a shindig to get to?”

“Yeah,” Iris says, gesturing to her hair and makeup. Anton was happy to see that she’s getting out and enjoying herself (he’s the one who did her hair for all her dates with Scott), but he doesn’t need to know she’s actually catching a murderer today. They walk back up to the Cortex, where Chesca has arranged several monitors with tracking information and maps. There’s also a spare workbench and some cots. “Linda might get bored and Wally’s on-call, so he might want to nap,” she explains. “We’re all set.”

Iris smiles. “Thanks, Chesca, for everything. You don’t-”

“I will choose an appropriate way for you to show your eternal gratitude. Now go get em, Miss Miracle.”

***

_75%_

***

 

Iris stands outside Central City Town Hall, which is located in the plaza, about to cross the road to go inside. There’s reporters and photographers gathered outside of it, most likely because the mayor has just shown up in a swanky town car. She swallows, pulling her coat around her as Ronnie carefully affixes the earphones into one of her ears. “The microphone is in your necklace,” she explains. “So we’ll always be able to hear you. Everyone’s got the tracking app on their phones, so we’ll know where everyone is at any one time so long as everyone keeps their phones on.”

Iris nods, trying to commit all of that to memory, as Ronnie continues. “Remember, when you see her, fire the ice gun thing as her until she can’t move, and then get her to the Pipeline as soon as possible. We gave Nora an evacuation plan in case things go south, and we can use Barry’s blog to tell people stuff. Don’t worry,” she adds quickly. “Everything’s gonna go great. Colin will walk you in.”

“Is this why you made me wear a suit?” Colin grumbles, hopping out of the back of the van. Ronnie smiles at him.

“Come on, sweetie. You know how important it is for everyone to stick to the plan tonight.”

“That I do. Ready, Iris?”

She takes a deep breath. “As I’ll ever be. Let’s go.”

The Town Hall is beautifully decorated tonight, with gold chandeliers handing from each of the high ceilings and CCPD signs dotted all around the place. There seem to be men and women floating everywhere with flutes of champagne on trays, and she can already hear the band playing even before they’ve reached the main hall. She sighns in and starts looking around, anxious for everything to just start _moving_ , when she feels Colin pat her arm. “You okay?”

“Not – really. Could you get me some cold water?”

“Of course. I’ll be right back.”

Iris watches him leave and looks around, wishing she were less nervous so she can at least eat something. There is Captain Singh, looking beautiful and actually smiling, so Bobbi must be around here somewhere, Nora is talking to the DA, she can see Scott talking to some friends…and if she doesn’t get this right, if anything goes wrong, all of these people could die. She swallows again, trying to get some moisture down her dry throat, but it doesn’t work. _Where_ is Colin with that water?

“Iris?”

“Oh,” she sighs. “Hey, Barry.” She feels a familiar ache in her chest when she sees him, and it brings back all that talk about who Barry has feelings for. But then she looks up at his bright green eyes and her heart rate slows. That tugging under her ribs is back again, though.

“Hi,” he says, looking her up and down. “You look amazing.”

“Thanks.” She looks down at herself, in a white and gold dress that comes down to her ankles and is adorned in lots of little sequins, and adjusts her glasses. “I just put this on because it can hide things in them, I wasn’t really – paying attention, or…”

“Well, you look great. Are you okay?”

Iris just sighs, smiling. “You remember the day before cheerleader try-outs, where I couldn’t eat anything and I kept making you watch me do handstands?”

“How could I forget?”

“I’d trade tonight for pom-poms and miniskirts in a heartbeat.”

Barry laughs and reaches out to squeeze her shoulders. “Well, you got through that, didn’t you? And you were the best science club president cheerleader on the team, I believe.”

“I was the _only_ science club president cheerleader, Barry.”

“Not the point. Everything’s going to fine, sunshine.”

He pulls her into a hug and she breathes him in, cedar wood soap and cologne and the Barry smell that she knows in her bones and always, always makes her feel at home. Barry, for his part, is trying not to let on that this might be the last time he hugs his best friend if anything goes wrong. He swallows, willing his hands not to shake.

That is when Colin comes back, tapping him on the shoulder. “Barry,” he says cheerfully, handing Iris some bottled water, and Barry feels cold creeping into his fingers. “You look nice.”

“Thanks,” he says tightly. “Are you staying?”

“Of course not, Barry. That’s not part of the plan. Iris just needed someone to walk her in.”

Barry clenches his jaw, but he conjures up a smile from somewhere. “Well, we’re all fine now.” Meanwhile, Iris looks around when someone makes an announcement.

“I have to go take pictures with the crew,” she tells them. She squeezes Colin’s hand. “Thanks for walking me in.”

“Anything for a friend.”

“Fine md later,” Barry tells her quickly before she leaves. “We can dance or something.”

Iris nods and smiles, before walking off to join the support staff. Colin gives him an unimpressed look. “Really? You’re asking her to dance?”

“We always dance at these,” he grinds out. “It’s tradition; she’d think it was weird otherwise.”

Colin rolls his eyes, and then fishes out his phone when it starts to beep. He frowns at it, and then turns those cold, calculating eyes back on him. Barry swallows again. “What?”

“You haven’t told her.”

“N-No!” he says quickly. “No, I haven’t, don’t-”

“Relax, you idiot, it was just a question. Keep not saying anything and you’ll be fine. She won’t, but…”

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says desperately, looking around. “Iris is your friend, she won’t kill you, or-”

“Oh Barry,” Colin laughs coldly. “That idealism may have gotten your blog popular and created Miss Miracle, but that doesn’t quite fly with me. It’s all or nothing.” He steps forward and fixes his bowtie. “Here’s an idea – why don’t you go chat with Patty? She looks very nice tonight.”

***

_79%_

***

“Where’s your head at?”

Barry blinks at Patty as they move around the dance floor to the swing band. The party is about halfway done, and soon they’ll be announcing the speeches. He put his name forward for it at Iris’ suggestion, though he did feel a little sick when she told him that she ran it by Colin first. As the person who writes about Miss Miracle, it makes sense. His hands tighten around her. They’ve had dinner already, which was certainly interesting because he had to sit with Patty and his mother and Iris and Eleanor, as well as the captain, and pretend nothing is wrong. They were, thankfully, distracted by Iris being a little jittery, who said she was just nervous about tripping onstage if she won something.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. He has one eye on the clock and is trying to leash his mind into not planning anything specific – he just has a maybe two-minute window between finishing his speech and Iris going to get into her suit to warn her, but he has to wait until it’s too late for Colin to change things. “I was just worried about my speech.”

“Well, you’re very good at speeches, Barry. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” She regards him, her blue eyes curious, and strokes the back of his neck. “Where do you see us in the future?”

“Is this your way of trying to get me to agree to go camping again? Because I told you I’m not really a nature guy.”

“No, I’m not talking about your need to be near hair gel at all times,” she laughs, tugging on his hair. “You should have been more specific.”

“I’ll do better next time.”

“What were you talking about?”

“I was talking about-”

But then there’s applause because the band has stopped, and the conductor puts away his baton. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’d like to sit for the speeches?”

Patty kisses him on the cheek. “Good luck.”

“Uh-huh,” he says quickly. He lines up behind the mayor, the captain and the DA as everyone takes their seats, checking the tracking app on his phone. Colin and Ronnie are somewhere by the docks, nowhere near Iron Heights – so Francine is safe. Iris, Patty and his mother are all here – he can see them in the audience. All he has to do is wait for the speeches to be over. His eyes flick between the stage and his phone, surreptitiously buried beneath his speech notes, so much so that he almost misses someone calling him up. He walks quickly to the stage and takes a deep breath, blinking against the bright light.

“Good evening,” he starts pleasantly. He glances down briefly. “When I suggested myself for the speeches tonight, I was aware that a reporter with a really good social media skillset might not have won over the multitude of people the mayor could have picked on. But I guess that’s the power of having a friend who can move planes with her mind.” Polite laughter.

“When I was accepted, Mayor Bellows asked me to write a speech about bravery in the face of adversity, and one of the first things I thought of was the way this city bands together when faced with any threat or any danger. I have to admit that, like everyone else, I was scared after the Christmas attacks, and every time there is some new metahuman who wants to wreak havoc. Now, I know you’re all thinking that we have Miss Miracle to thank for that, and we do. But she has told me personally that the reason she does all of this, the reason she puts on that mask, is because of all of you. Your bravery inspires her as much as she may inspire you. And it doesn’t mean you’re without fear, it means that you push past it for something greater. When she sees all of you making sacrifices, sometimes at great…” he pauses and swallows, “personal cost, it enables her to become better, faster, stronger. So I stand before you today and say that even though we have faced and will face all kinds of adversity in the future, the heroes that will save us don’t only wear gold. We’ll stand up to anyone who threatens those we hold dear, Calamity or otherwise. Thank you.”

There’s applause, but Barry barely hears it because that’s the buzzword. He smiles and nods before the mayor comes up to take the podium again, and walks quickly off the stage. He’s looking around for Iris, for dark skin and glasses and a bright gold dress, and then sees his mother talking with Eleanor about going off to see some of the nicer parts of the building. They both smile when they see him. “Wonderful speech, Barry,” Eleanor says, and his mother beams. “I’m proud of you, honey.”

“Thanks. Uh, have you see Iris?”

“Oh, she had to go.” His mother doesn’t let on that anything is amiss, but the look she gives him lets him know that she’s already gone.

He’s too late.

***

“…and, really, this building is just beautiful,” Eleanor finishes, making Iris look up from her salmon. She hates salmon. Actually, she hates everything on this plate because it all tastes like cardboard. “Gotham always had the loveliest buildings, all Greek architecture.”

Nora smiles and nods at Patty’s mother. “Well, this building’s open to police officer’s if you want a tour.”

“That would be wonderful. Maybe after the speeches?”

“Are they starting already?” Iris asks, but she’s right – there’s Barry walking up behind the mayor and everyone clapping. Everything has been quiet, but even from here she knows that Ronnie and Colin in the van and Chesca, Linda and Wally at STAR Labs must be filled with the same restless energy that means she can’t sit still. The mayor talks, and then the DA talks, and then-

**911**

**iris**

**iris we found her, she’s by the docks**

She slips discreetly away from the table, her hand to her ear. “Are you sure? Barry hasn’t given his speech yet.”

“Yeah,” Chesca replies quickly, and she can hear tapping in the background. “Colin just sent me the coordinates, he thinks he saw her.”

“Tell him and Ronnie to get clear – once I have my suit I’ll be there.” Iris hangs up the phone and crouches beside Nora, one hand on her shoulder. “Colin thinks we’ve got her. Are you good here?”

“Be careful,” she says, ignoring the question. “Call us if you need backup, alright?”

Iris nods and slips quickly in the shadows, shuts her eyes, and once she opens them she’s in the Cortex. Wally is in one of the medical rooms, looking over some files, and Linda and Chesca are there to help her with her suit. “Where, exactly?”

“Down by the bay,” she explains, pointing. She zooms in on the video to show a row of boats, bobbing gently on the calm surface of the water. It looks peaceful, but Iris knows that Calamity can wreck the simple silence of a calm night within seconds. Linda checks her wrist for the device, and then squeezes her shoulder. “You good?”

Iris nods. “Yeah.” Chesca looks her over one more time and smiles, before being distracted by a beeping on the terminals. “Meta in distress, go figure. Linda will talk to you through, okay?”

Iris takes several deep breaths and then blinks away to the docks, instantly on alert for any movement. In the distance she can hear traffic driving in the opposite direction; she hopes that Colin and Ronnie have safely gotten away in the STAR Labs van. She reaches out with her mind – Calamity’s always been a blank space to her, but the least she can do is warn others to get clear if need be. Making sure no one can see her, she floats over the boats, senses tuned for anything out of the ordinary. She peers around all of them, taking in their vacant driver’s seats and their sterns knocking together in the gentle wind.

She does a quick sweep of the place with her mind again, broadening her range and ignoring the tugging feeling under her ribs (which she really has to talk to Colin about; it _can’t_ just be stress). But there’s nothing. She can’t hear anyone or anything. She puts a hand to her ear. “Colin? Are you sure she was here? Col?”

“Iris?” Linda frowns. “What’s up?”

“There’s no one here, and Colin’s not answering.”

“That’s weird…Okay, do another sweep of the area and then come back here. I guess Colin made a mistake?”

“I guess. I’d better call Barry and Nora…” She trails off, dialling their numbers.

 _The number you are calling has been disconnected_.

***

_50%_

***

 

“Shit,” Barry mutters as he walks quickly away from the main hall. “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

His phone isn’t working.

The party has resumed and his phone isn’t working – he can’t get signal. Barry’s not sure whether it’s his phone or all the people or just goddamn bad luck, but he can’t contact her. He slips into one of the smaller rooms, away from everyone else and all the noise, and tries to get to a place where he can get signal to call someone. Nothing. Then he looks at the app again and – yes, thank God, Iris’ icon is still there, the ‘MM’ emblem still hanging over a map of the city. But…wait. _He’s_ not on the map. And neither is his mother.

 _Goddamn it_.

“Barry!” someone calls cheerfully. It’s Patty, wondering where he is as everyone’s giving out the awards. She pulls one of the pins out of her hair and twirls it around in her fingers. “There you are, I was looking for you.”

“Patty, where’s my mom?” he demands. “Did you see her?”

“Your mom? Oh, she’s with my mom. She’s taking her on a tour of some really old boring buildings – you know what she’s like about architecture.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, Barry. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, no, I – can I have your phone?”

Patty blinks at him. “My phone? Barry, what’s going on?”

He sighs. “Patty, I promise I will explain everything later, but I need to make a call.”

She stares at him for a second, and then gives him a sly smile. “Not until you answer my question from earlier.”

“Your question?”

She slides her hands around his neck and he feels the pin lightly touching the nape. “Yes. Where do you see us in the future?”

“Oh,” he frowns, a little confused. “That’s easy.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. I see us together.”

“Really?” She leans close to his ear and whispers. “I don’t.”

And she stabs him.

***

Iris frowns, trying again, trying to will away the panic that’s growing.

 _The number you are calling has been disconnected_.

“Where _are_ you?” she whispers, trying the numbers again. But it’s not use – neither of them are working. She debates just teleporting there to check on them, when instead her phone practically explodes with a series of messages from Chesca.

**911 911 911**

**911 IRIS GET HERE NOW OMG**

**911 911**

**IRIS**

**IRIS WHERE ARE YOU**

**HURRY UP!**

Iris teleports to the lab to a sight so confusing it takes her at least a couple of seconds to make sense of it. Wally and Linda are standing by the terminal, Linda at the terminal – she must have been sending the texts – and Wally pointing a cold gun prototype at Chesca. Chesca, who is holding two halves of an iron mask in her hand and trying not to look scared of the gun pointed at her. Chesca, who is standing next to…

“Eddie?” Iris splutters. “Eddie Thawne?”

He looks horrible, nothing like the put-together ADA that walked around CCPD before Christmas. He hasn’t taken the mask off in at least a month, so his hair is longer and his face is coated in stubble, but his blue eyes are the same. And when she sees them, and he  takes two steps before her, she remembers the weeks of living in terror because of the task force and thinking they would take her while she was sleeping, or throw her in a bunker, or-

Before Eddie can even finish the third step, Iris has flown across the room and has him pinned to the wall, her arm across this neck. “You trying to kill Barry,” she snaps. “Aren’t you? _Aren’t you_?”

“Iris, let him go!” Chesca tells her, but she ignores him.

“No way in hell. I should give him to Waller and have M.A.I.M.E.D. deal with him. Or that Eobard Thawne guy, show him what reformation looks like.”

“I…” Eddie coughs, straining against her elbow at his throat. “I’m not…I _work_ for them, Iris. Waller is my boss.”

“ _What_?”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you; let him go!”

Iris does as Chesca asks, rather unceremoniously, since he collapses onto the ground, coughing. “Linda, Wally, find out what the hell is going on at that party – I can’t get Barry or Nora,” she orders. Then she turns on Eddie. “You, start talking, and do it fast.”

Eddie wheezes a couple of times and Chesca rubs his back (and they will _definitely_ be having words about _that_ when this is all over), before sitting up. “I told you, I’m an agent. I was working in the ADA offices as a cover, _way_ before you met me. I was…” He looks up at her face, blue eyes searching for…what, exactly? “Looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“An agent. Let’s call her Agent M.”

“Agent M?” Iris repeated. “What is this, James Bond?”

“Iris, I have been in that organisation my entire life; I am not about to give up the name of an agent, no matter how many scary metahumans have captured me.”

“Fine. You were looking for Agent M.”

“She was here investigating strange appearances by metahumans that we didn’t know about – this turned out to be Calamity. The accident that happened here years ago could have created a metahuman, or hundreds – it was similar to what happened to Victoria Stone in the eighties. Or, as you know her, Cyborg.”

“And it’s probably why M.A.I.M.E.D. showed up and redacted the police report,” Iris realises. “Your boss is a real asshole, you know. He could have just asked.”

“Spies don’t ask things.”

“Whatever. Keep talking.”

“Well, Agent M went off the grid. She didn’t reply to any messages, she didn’t seem to see the cyphers, nothing. It was like she disappeared. So they sent me in to go find her. I got a job as an Assistant District Attorney, like your friend Laurent Lance, and I was working out of there to try and see what had happened to her. She was posing as a graduate student at the university, so I figured I could start there.” He pauses and sighs. “And then, the week before you attacked Barry and his girlfriend, Calamity found me. She took control of my mind and when the task force came up she made me push it like crazy.”

“Why?” Wally frowns. “It’s not like Iris being captured helped her.”

“I don’t know. Then she made me break into your house and steal the watch for her so she could lure you into a trap. But after that…it was like her powers didn’t work on me anymore, but it’s not like she could let me go, so-”

“She gave you the mask and made you Cobalt Blue,” Iris realises. She stares at him and a surprised laugh makes its way out of her. “So you _are_ reformed? Is Eobard Thawne your cousin or what?”

“No, he’s my dad,” Eddie replies, but for some reason he can’t quite meet Iris’ eyes when he says that. “Well, adopted. My real dad was Emmanuel Thawne.”

“The agent that Barry’s dad killed?” Iris says, clenching her fists, and Eddie sighs impatiently. “Iris, if I were going to kill your best friend, would I be telling you this stuff? But he is in danger, just not from me.”

“And why are you telling me this now?”

“Because when Chesca came down to check on me, she mentioned that right now you’re at a party with the guy you’re in love with, his girlfriend, and her mother.”

“I was rambling,” Chesca explains apologetically. “It usually calms him down.”

“Usually,” he agrees. “But Iris, I need you to listen very carefully to me. When I got here and I was meeting you all for the task force, I recognised Barry’s girlfriend.”

“Patty? You _recognised_ her? How?”

“Because,” he says quietly, “she’s my cousin. Her real name is Thalia Thawne, her mother is Jesimae Thawne, and they’re both here to kill Barry and Nora.”

Iris is frozen in place. She gets that feeling, the one where you’re walking up the stairs and you miss a step and you’re all disoriented. “No, that…” she gulps. “That’s impossible.”

“Chesca,” Eddie says, not taking his eyes from Iris’. “Go to the computer and search for any record of Patty Spivot before 2012.”

“Are you insane? She loves him, she’s not trying to kill him.”

“I never said she doesn’t love him, but I do know that my organisation has been looking for the two of them for twenty years, and it’s no coincidence that she _and_ her mother turn up in proximity of Henry’s ex-wife and son.” He shakes his head. “I saw her at CCPD, but I had no idea her mother was here too. When Chesca mentioned her, I knew.”

“Iris,” Chesca breathes. She turns to her friend. “Iris, he’s right. I’m using the technology that Freddie left us, and…Patricia and Eleanor Spivot didn’t exist until two years ago.”

It takes seven seconds for Iris to take all of this in, and five seconds to decide that Calamity will have to wait.

But it takes less than two seconds to decide that by the time she’s done with these two women, they’ll both be breathing through tubes.

“Wally, give Eddie a medical check and make sure there’s nothing wrong with him,” she orders. A strange calmness has come over her – everything seems a lot clearer. “Linda, track all four of their phones and tell me where they are en route, we must be able to find some of them. Chesca, find Colin and Ronnie, wherever they are, and tell them to get back here as soon as possible.”

All of them hop to action apart from Eddie, who went strangely pale when she mentioned Colin (but Iris is too busy trying to figure out the easiest way to drop a truck on Patty’s face to notice), when several klaxons go off. “Okay, what the hell is that?” Wally demands, digging in the medical bag.

“CCPD police are getting about a dozen calls a minute,” Linda explains. “Robberies, break-ins, fights…God, they’re even cancelling the party to get everyone to help.”

Iris shuts her eyes briefly. Truly, she’s not going to give a fuck about anyone else until Barry and Nora are safe in front of her and ‘Eleanor’ and ‘Patty’ are far, far away. Preferably on Lian Yu, if she gets her way. “I can’t deal with them right now. First Barry and Nora – have you found them yet?”

“ _No_ ,” Chesca says, frustrated. “Something must be blocking the GPS signals – they’ve all disappeared from the map.”

“Then I’ll find them as well,” Iris says quickly, trying to imagine where Barry could be and wondering what the hell is going on. “I just hope Calamity hasn’t gotten to Colin and Ronnie first.” Eddie looks at them all.

“Iris, what were you doing tonight?”

“We were planning to trap Calamity; they were helping.” She pauses. “We’re not doing that now, alright? I need to find Barry and Nora.”

“But Iris, you-”

“ _I need to find them_!”

She doesn’t hear Eddie’s protestations – she teleports to the town hall, so she doesn’t hear him explain about what’s really going on with Calamity. As is her habit, whenever Barry is in danger, she’s blocked everything out. That tugging feeling is back under her ribs, sharp and relentless, as she runs around the place that was so full not twenty minutes ago, trying to find him. From outside, she can hear sirens wailing and people shouting as they try to get all of the complaints under control. The beginnings of a storm rumble in the distance. “Barry?”

This place is huge – it could take forever before she finds him, and then it might be too late. _Patty is trying to kill Barry._ It’s like something out of a movie – girl meets boy, they fall in love, he’s actually a target. But those end when the credits roll, they don’t leap from behind the screen and become your real life. Iris pauses. Barry is going to be utterly devastated when he finds out, if he doesn’t already know. Black, boiling anger rolls in her stomach.

She flicks between rooms at breakneck speed, but she still can’t find him. Finally, she stops, closes her eyes, and casts her mind out far, wide, high…and she feels him. Not hears him, exactly, but there’s some semblance of him up there. And someone else – Patty. She runs up to that room and, sure enough, she can hear her moving around the room, though that’s only because this place is deathly silent as everyone else has gone. She presses her ear to the door, gratified because – yes, those are Barry’s thoughts she can hear through the door. They are messy and disconnected – he must be asleep, or knocked out. But he’s still alive.

Iris concentrates, trying to pinpoint Patty’s location and then waiting for her to stop. And when she teleports inside, stopping right in front of her face, the look on her face is priceless. Patty tries to lift the gun she’s holding, but Iris freezes it in place, grabs her by the black T-Shirt she’s wearing (she supposes that kidnapping and murder can’t happen in fancy ballgowns), and pulls her close. “Even if you give me a dozen reasons why I shouldn’t _beat your face_ _in_ with a _tire iron_ ,” she snarls, “none of them would be good enough. Where’s Nora?”

“You think I’m going to tell you that?”

“You think I won’t dig it out of you?”

“Please,” Patty laughs, even as Iris grips her shirt tighter. “You’re _Miss Miracle_. You couldn’t hurt me even if you wanted to.”

“Watch me, Thalia,” Iris snaps, and then throws her roughly across the room, flinging the gun in the other direction, before turning to Barry. He’s strapped to a chair, bound by his hands and legs, but breathing. The back of his neck is bleeding. She pushes his hair out of his face, cradling it in her hands. “Barry. I’m really, really sorry about this, okay?”

And she draws her hand back and slaps him as hard as she can across the face. Barry gasps awake, his cheek turning red, and looks around frantically. “Iris? What’s going on? Where am I?”

“It’s okay,” she says frantically, trying to work on the rope binding your hands. “I’m here. We’re going to find your mom, okay?”

“Iris, you have to be careful! Colin is-”

There’s a short bang and blinding pain sears across the surface of Iris’ right arm. The bullet embeds itself in the wall behind Barry’s head. Iris lets out a choked gasp and twists, but not before Patty has kicked Iris in the stomach. “ _Patty, what the hell are you doing_?!” Barry shouts, straining against the rope. Iris rolls out of the way before Patty can do anything, but then there’s a flash of black and silver, and Calamity is towering over her. She grabs her by the front of her suit. “Miss Miracle, you’re early,” she rasps. Iris frowns even through the pain.

“Early? What are you talking about?”

But she doesn’t reply, instead throwing her headlong into the far wall, where the resulting crash makes her see stars. She doesn’t know what pain is worse – the bullet wound, being kicked in the ribs, or hitting her head on the wall. “IRIS!”

“I’m… _ah_ …I’m okay, Barry,” she manages, struggling to get to her feet. “I’m…f-fine.” She blinks a few times, and then looks between Patty and Calamity. Patty has recovered, apparently, and Calamity is looking at her with that amused tilt of the head.

“Goodness, you don’t look it. Does she, Thalia?”

“She’s looked better,” Patty replies, and Iris and Barry look between the two of them. But Iris’ heart cracks when Barry speaks first. “Why is she calling you Thalia?”

Calamity shakes her head at them. “Now, Thalia. You know how important honestly in relationships is. Even if you are a Thawne.”

Barry’s brows furrow in confusion. “W-What? You’re a Thawne?” He looks down at his hands, dejected, and Iris’ heart twists when she sees his face fall. She can practically feel the pain as if it’s her own. “But you – we were in love. Weren’t we?”

“You were in love, Barry,” she says coldly. “I wasn’t.”

Patty’s lying, Iris knows she is, not just because she knows it’s impossible not to love Barry, but because she can’t look at him when she says it, instead preferring to study her gun. But Barry – Barry believes her, she can see it on his face, and she would give anything, _anything_ , to make that pain go away. Calamity clears her throat.

“As it stands, Miss Thawne and Ms Thawne’s vendetta was very helpful for me,” she tells them, striding around the room. Iris can’t move, not because Calamity is keeping her there, but because she’s very aware that Barry is strapped to a chair in front of her and he’s the one vulnerable here. She eyes her warily, trying to look for her opportunity, as the sound of rain pounds on the tiles. “You really are quite predictable, Miss Miracle.” She walks over to stand behind Barry, who’s shaking, pale, and unable to breathe. She grips his shoulders “Isn’t she, Mr Allen?”

“Iris…” he gasps.

“Barry, it’s okay,” she assures him. She doesn’t take her eyes from his. “ _Hey_ , look at me, focus on my face. Keep your eyes on me, understand? Just keep your eyes on me, everything will be fine.”

“I wouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Miss Miracle.” Calamity stares at her. “I told Jesimae where Nora’s unit is stationed about ten minutes ago. It will take a while to find her, but not, I imagine, very long to tell her that she cannot find Barry or Patty and that they need to look for them. Worried mothers are all the same. You’ve gotten better since Christmas, but let’s see how you do with a time limit.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“When are you going to learn? To make you better.”

Barry’s head snaps up at that. “Iris, she doesn’t mean that, it’s not-”

“Shall we play a game? Miss Miracle is going to try to defeat me. Patty, if she tries to come back here to help dear Mr Allen…shoot him.”

“NO!” Iris screams, and leaps towards him. But then Calamity has taken them both outside, to the abandoned town square, where the storm is picking up. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” she says. Iris stands, slowly, painfully, flexing her fingers. “Me too,” she says, and launches herself at her.

***

This is a dream; it has to be. He’ll wake up and Patty will be laughing at him, telling him that he was talking in his sleep and that he was convinced she was a spy out to kill him. He even closes his eyes a few times, willing it to be true, but it isn’t. So he has to contend with that roiling in his stomach, and the rocking under his feet. He looks at her. She’s standing by the window, alternating between checking the outside and her watch.

“Why did you do it?” he whispers. She looks at him – god, she even _looks_ at him differently now, all cold eyes and pursed lips – and looks back. “Your dad killed mine.”

“But _I_ didn’t, and neither did my mom.”

Patty just shakes her head. “Sometimes I love how idealistic you are, Barry, but sometimes it’s just naiveté. An eye for an eye is how the world works. It’s not all woman running around in gold leather saving the day.”

His mouth wobbles. “But you can’t have been lying about everything, right? Like the time we went to the zoo, and we had candyfloss? Or the thing with the donuts? Or-”

“Barry,” she interrupts. “I have been lying since I was eleven. I’m flattered that you were so convinced, but what we had was a means to an end. Nothing more.”

She turns back to the window, unmoving, and Barry stares at the ground, wondering how he could have been so utterly stupid.

***

Iris is losing.

They are fighting each other, chasing one another across the inky black sky of Central City as the thunder starts above them and chaos reigns below, punching and kicking and throwing each other into things. She’s trying to use the device, but she can’t get far enough to aim accurately; Calamity won’t let her. For every punch Iris gets in, Calamity gets three. She gets far, she reappears behind her. She flies down, Calamity drags her back up again. And the worst part? Her comms aren’t working, so she has no one to guide her, no one to tell her how to change tactics.

She’s alone, and she’s losing.

Iris sees an opportunity and aims but the shot goes wide, making Calamity laugh, the sound grotesque as water slides off her suit. “Smart girl,” she laughs into the rain. “You’ve learned.”

Iris lets out a shout of frustration and shoots again, but she just disappears. That tugging feeling is a distraction too, seeming to want to pull her away from this face, but she clamps it down. Thunder booms and cracks, practically shaking the buildings. Sirens beat through the air, almost becoming one with Iris’ own pulse. “You’re running out of time, Miss Miracle.”

She lets another desperate shot fly and it misses again. She circles her, cruel and mocking. “How far will you go? What will you do to save him? _What will you do to save your Barry?_ ”

That does it.

Something deep within her, like her heart or her brain or something even deeper than that, seems to crack like the lightning threatening to crash down on them at this very moment. She launches herself at Calamity again and lightning arces out of her, green and glorious, crashing into Calamity’s own black lightning, and she crashes into a row of cars. That tugging feeling pulls taught and then snaps and then – and then she can hear him.

_I’m sorry, Iris, I’m so sorry…_

_…Barry?_

_Iris? Where are you?_

_I’m outside, I’m fighting her. What’s happening? I shouldn’t be able to hear you – you’re across town._

_I don’t know, but you have to listen to me. That’s not Calamity._

Iris eyes the woman as she gets up, and the black lighting crackling over her grey suit. _What are you talking about?_

_She’s being controlled – Colin used tachyon particles to manipulate her brain waves._

_Colin? Our Colin?_

_It’ll take too long to explain! Is she wearing gloves?_

_…Y-yeah._

_It’s on her ring finger – take off her ring and destroy it_.

Even as Iris watches, disbelief colouring her thoughts, Calamity falls to her knees, letting out a shriek of pain, and the lightning races over her. When it’s over she kneels, panting, and Iris takes her opportunity. She slams straight into her, ripping off her glove, before locating the ring and yanking it off. “Dr Wells,” she says desperately, because she’s gone very still. “Dr Wells?”

Then, quick as a whip, she slaps Iris across the face and pins her to the ground. “Helena, don’t do this!” she shouts. She casts around for something to convince her. “Remember…Remember Terrence? And Jesse? Remember when they used to visit you? Do you remember?”

Iris truly thinks she’s lost her, …but then she reaches down and rips her emblem off her chest. “He was going to use it,” she whispers. “Use it to…hurt you. That was his plan.”

Iris has no idea what she’s talking about, and she doesn’t care. She looks around at the destruction, at the raging storm. “My powers are gone. What have I done?”

And Iris sees it, the look of a woman waking from one nightmare to another, and makes a split decision. “Run.”

“What?”

“ _Go_. We’ll…We’ll figure it out, and then you can come back. _Run_ , Helena.”

She hesitates, blinking, and then backs away, zipping through side streets. Within seconds, she’s gone.

_Barry, I did it._

_Good. Good, I’m glad. You-_

_Barry? BARRY!_

But she has no time to go back, no time to think, because that’s when she sees them. Ronnie looks different, all in black with the stabilising matrix fixed to her chest, and Colin is in dark blue. Ice crystals float around his hands. “Miss Miracle,” he grins as they approach. Lightning is crackling fully now. “Ready for the fun part?”

***

Barry doesn’t think he’s ever happier to see Eddie Thawne in his life.

He doesn’t question it, doesn’t wonder why a man who went missing months ago is here aiming a gun and surprising his girlfriend. Patty ducks out of the way but Eddie knocks the gun out of her hand, and then they’re fighting. Barry looks on desperately until Chesca slips in after Eddie, making a beeline straight for him. “I’ve got you, big guy.”

“Where’s Iris?”

“Fighting, I think. Damn, these things are tight.”

“Chess,” he says carefully, “about Colin-”

“I know. Eddie told us.”

“Are you okay?”

She shakes her head, chin wobbling. Eddie has Patty pinned to the floor. She gets his legs free and they stand, facing the door…and freeze. “Nobody move,” Eleanor says calmly, a gun pressed to his mother’s throat. A choked sound escapes him. “Gun down.”

Eddie doesn’t hesitate – he drops the gun he’s holding on the floor. Barry watches, horrified, as Eleanor makes Nora go and stand next to Barry and Chesca. She does so, shaking. “Thalia, get your gun. The rest of you, don’t move.”

Then he notices Eddie looking in their direction, at Chesca, specifically, and he feels something pressing into his hand behind his back. She’s just given him a gun, and the idea of her with one is so ridiculous he’s momentarily frozen. But then he sees his chance, and fires at the space next to Eleanor’s foot. In the shocked second that follows, Eddie scoops his off the floor and shoots Eleanor twice in the chest, earning a scream from Patty that he feels in his bones. “NO!” But maybe it’s her father’s blood in her, because she takes one look at the room, at Eddie with the gun, that she runs out of the room.

Nobody says anything for a moment, and then his mother has her arms around him. Chesca walks over to check Eddie, and then frowns at the window. “What is that?” Eddie asks. Chesca face goes ashen. “We have to get outside. _Right now_.”

***

Killer Frost and Deathstorm.

That’s what her friends called themselves before they started attacking her. He launches blocks of ice and blasts of hail and snow; she launches fireballs. She dodges the mindlessly, aimlessly, only caring about surviving instead of how to defeat them. Because the truth is she is still reeling from this betrayal, and her mind doesn’t want to believe it.

“I was so close,” Colin tells her, his eyes alight with power. “But it wasn’t even Barry who messed it up.”

Iris dodges a fireball. “No,” Ronnie agrees. “He was very well-behaved. Such a good puppy.”

“And Helena did her job very well. But she did leave me something…” He snaps his fingers, and lightning flickers between them. Iris gasps. “You stole it. You stole her power.”

“She would have wasted it,” he shrugs. He fires one at her, idly, like he doesn’t care whether it will reach her or not. “But you…Well, you surprised me. Mind control I expected, but lightning? Think of what you could do.”

“I’m not like you.”

“We could be great together. All three of us, if you learn how to use it properly. You could stop crime, if you wanted to. Tell them to let your mother out of prison.”

Her heart slams wildly in her chest. “Shut up.”

And then Colin drops his bomb. “ _You could make him love you, Iris_.”

The punch comes out of nowhere, snapping his head back and making lighting shoot out of her body, but his own stolen lightning fights back and jumps into the sky, merging with the lightning already flickering from the storm. Lightning steals and cracks across the clouds, turning everything green and white. As she watches, a hole opens up, swirling and monstrous, and grows bigger and bigger. The ground starts to shake, the wind rushes, and cars and parts of buildings are sucked towards it. “ _What did you do_?” she shouts at him.

“A singularity,” he blinks. He backs away as it increases in power but – but not before Ronnie is sucked into it, scrambling helplessly against the power of the storm. “RONNIE!”

Iris watches in disbelief as she and other things are sucked into the huge hole. Colin looks at her with pure, unadulterated rage, and pulls his hand back. She thinks he’s going to hurt her, but he punches the air and a sort of bubble opens up – he steps through it and disappears. She looks around desperately and her eyes fall on Patty, who’s running out of the town hall. They stare at each other for a second, before Iris turns back to the wormhole swirling in the sky. The complaints must have stopped, because people have come to gape at it. Then she hears her name.

“Iris!” Chesca slams into her. “Are you okay? Where are they?”

“I…” she shakes her head as everyone gathers around. “They’re gone.”

“Where did that come from?” Nora wants to know.

“It’s a singularity. All the lightning must have opened it up. How do I stop it?”

“ _Stop_ it?” Chesca splutters. “That thing has an energy level of at least sixty-seven terra electron volts – you can’t _stop_ it!”

“Chesca,” Iris says forcefully. “I have to try.”

As if by instinct she looks at Barry, who nods at her, and that’s all she needs. Chesca looks up at it again. “Okay, you have to disrupt the motion. Um…Teleport. Teleport around it in, like, five-point star. Like the tornado, like Chloe Mardon.”

Iris nods. “O-Okay. Everyone get clear.” She pulls on her mask and backs away. “I’ll be back.”

It’s like the first time she teleported up a building, at first – big jumps, twisting leaps, and then she’s in the singularities centre as it rages around her. She teleports quickly, so fast she can see the lightning creating the star itself. Impossibly, it starts to slow down and she pauses, wanting to see it. Then she spots a figure in the middle, floating. “Ronnie?”

But she’s – struggling with herself, and Iris’ realises she’s trying to separate out of sheer panic. “No! Ronnie, no, you’ll fall! You and Professor Stein will fall!”

But she can’t hear her or doesn’t listen, because there’s a _whoosh_ noise and Iris barely sees Ronnie before she’s burned up in an explosion of light. She shoots out of the singularity as it closes, watching for Professor Stein. She catches her just in time, and the two of them tumble against a wall. And Iris looks up and around, at her city, all her lost friends, before the Professor. “Miss West? What happened?”

“Don’t worry, Professor. You’re safe now.”

***

Iris doesn’t know whether Linda always helps Wally or not, but she ends up being the best thing that’s happened to them when they get back to STAR Labs. She bundles them into blankets and gets them all soup, not asking why Iris has a bullet wound, Barry has rope burn, and no one will say anything. Eddie is the same, and she takes back every bad thought she ever had about him. Barry sits next to her on the bed in the medbay and she almost leans into his warmth, but everything is still too raw. “You okay?” she asks.

“Tired.”

She knows that’s a lie, that what he’s gone through will leave him more scarred than anything they’ve ever gone through, but she squeezes his hand anyway. Chesca frowns when she hears the sound for an intruder. “After the day I’ve just had, I’m not in the mood for trespassers.”

“Don’t worry, it’s me,” Eddie assures her. “I called some backup to help deal with it.”

Chesca buzzes them in and goes back to her soup. “Who’d you call?” Iris asks, but then the two men themselves walk in. And Iris doesn’t notice it, but Nora goes pale. “Oh, you called Waller. And your dad.”

“His dad?” Barry repeats.

“Yeah, that Eobard Thawne guy I was telling you about.”

“I met that guy,” Barry counters. “He told me his name was Jay Garrick.”

“He lied,” Nora breathes. “That’s not his name.”

“It’s not?”

Nora looks at him, eyes like green chips of ice. “Hello, Henry."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to make everyone a hero in this. Because everyone's been so positive about more, I've set up some stuff for a longer story. The next chapter will be fallout from this one, but after that it's S2 stuff. let me know if there's anything you want to see and I'll see what I can do.


	20. She's Leaving Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris has to leave to heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get ready, because even I was surprised by the angst in this. I got the title from an episode of Grey's Anatomy, which itself was taken from the Beatles song 'She's Leaving Home'.

The words hang in the air like the echoing peals of a bell, and Chesca’s eyes dart between the two men in the doorway and the rest of the group gathered in a circle on beds. “I’m sorry,” she says slowly. “That’s Henry? Barry’s dad, Henry?”

Nora’s face is cut from stone, and Barry stiffens beside Iris. “Yes. It is.”

“But he and Waller broke in her two months ago and he said his name was Eobard Thawne-”

“That _is_ my name,” Henry says, and Iris gets a chill because, God, that is Barry’s voice in twenty or so years. And he even looks like Barry, she can see it now. The way he moves, the way he’s studying her…No wonder he seemed so familiar when they met. He and Waller are dressed in exactly the same way, in immaculate suits and ties, like he really is an insurance salesman. “One of them.”

“You mean like Jay Garrick?”

Iris knows without seeing him that Barry is stiff as a board beside her, and she gets up to stand between her friends and Waller and Thawne. “Someone, start talking,” she snaps, before Henry can answer Barry’s question. “Now.”

“Iris-” Waller begins.

“Miss West or Miss Miracle. We are not friends. Pick one.”

“Miss West,” he says evenly. “You know that our organisation thrives on secrecy, but it seems that two of our investigations have collided with yours and caused…this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I trust that Agent Thawne has told you what he was doing here?”

Nora and Barry both stare at Eddie, no doubt because between Barry being kidnapped and Colin being evil and then the singularity, no one has explained it. Still, he saved their lives. She lifts her chin. “He said he was looking for an agent who went off the grid and was then captured by Calamity.”

“Yes,” Waller says calmly. “We had reports of someone that looked like Calamity running around the city, and sent someone to investigate it. She went in under a false name several months ago, and when she went missing we sent in Agent Thawne. When he _also_ went missing, we came to investigate.”

“Is that why you broke in here?” Chesca asks. “You wanted to find out whether we knew anything?”

“That’s right, Miss Ramon,” Henry says. He steps towards them and Iris feels Barry cringe backwards even though she can’t see him. “Because of the accident that happened here years ago, we thought that you all might know something about it.”

“And you said that your name was Eobard Thawne because you wanted to see whether we’d tell you anything about Eddie,” Iris finishes. “So you just walk around with three names now? Why did you tell Barry your name was Jay Garrick?”

“I think we’d all like to know that,” Barry adds, his voice able to hammer rivets. Iris thinks she sees something like pain in Henry’s eyes, but then it disappears. Before he can answer, Waller speaks up.

“It would be best if we take you in, we need-”

“You are not taking any of these people anywhere,” Wally interrupts, speaking for the first time. Iris turns to him and sees that he’s taking things out of a medical kit. “Not until I’ve checked them first.”

“Mr West-”

“Dr West.”

“Dr West, we are in the middle of a decades-long investigation, and these people, including yourself, are all key witnesses.”

Wally looks like he couldn’t possibly care less, checking the injuries on everyone as he talks. “That’s very nice. I do not care. These people may be witnesses, but they’re also a woman with a gunshot wound that may be infected, a man with rope-burn and a sedative in his system, and two more women in what could be severe shock. And even if he’s standing there looking like a hurricane couldn’t knock him over, I’m sure there’s something wrong with Eddie as well. I am a physician, which means I took an oath, which means I have to help people who are injured. Since I am more afraid than the AMA than you, I suggest you do your questioning here.”

“It’s alright, Amadeus,” Henry says calmly when it looks like Waller is about to object. He turns to Barry, who is pale as chalk and just as stony-faced, so Iris knows that he is truly, truly angry. And she almost completely forgot about Patty shooting her, but now that she’s reminded, there is a throbbing in her arm, and she feels hot. Which might be why she’s less than pleasant right now. “You are right, I contacted you, but that was to see how you were doing. I had been watching you and Miss West for some time when I saw that Eddie went missing, and that was when I realised who you were dating.”

“And you couldn’t just warn him then?” Linda wants to know. She hands Wally bandages and he cleans blood from Chesca’s arm. “If you thought his girlfriend was dangerous?”

“Because there was every chance that she was harmless. Not _every_ Thawne is dangerous.”

Chesca looks at Eddie, who swallows but keeps his hands clasped behind his back. Iris really is going to have to talk to her about that. Henry continues. “I wanted to see what you were writing about Calamity or anything that could help, but I couldn’t give you my real name.”

“Because then I would realise that you were the man who walked out on us.”

If Barry ever gave her the look he is giving Henry right now, Iris isn’t sure she’d recover. Even Waller looks taken aback at the venom in his eyes. But Henry just nods. “That’s right. Jay Garrick was the name of a metahuman that helped the organisation decades ago – she’s dead now, so I just used the name. She was killed by Edwina Carliss.”

Iris regards him. “That was one of your agents.”

“Unfortunately, yes. Thaddeus Thawne assisted the Joker in the murder of the first Robin twenty years ago. Jesimae Thawne killed one Green Lantern and maimed the other. Jacob Carliss, Edwina’s husband, helped capture a quarter of the people in Aqualady’s army, and almost killed the woman herself. None of this was a joke.”

“Which is why we came here,” Waller continues. “While we have found most of the people responsible for what happened twenty years ago, we are always on the lookout for more. Jesimae and Thalia were two of the last people. Henry feared they would find you, and it appears that they did.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” Nora says. She winces slightly as Wally rubs antiseptic on her arm. “There are a million Allens in the world, and Henry hasn’t been with us for years.”

Waller looks at them, and then turns his eyes on Iris. “Miss West,” he says calmly. “Ten years ago, you and Barry were admitted to Central City Memorial West. Is that right?”

The question is exactly what Colin used to ask her whenever she hit her head and they wanted to check her memory, so her throat becomes tight and she has a sudden flashback of him throwing a ball of ice at her. She shakes her head to clear it. “Um, yes.”

“Barry was admitted for a concussion and you for an open compound fracture of the left radial bone, is that right?”

Iris, Barry and Nora all share a confused look, while Wally stares at him. “That’s a very serious break.”

“It is,” Waller agrees. “Iris was very lucky, there’s a high chance of infection with that kind of injury, lifelong problems – she could have died. Barry, you were driving the car, weren’t you?”

“That was an accident,” he says desperately, and Iris wants to hit Waller because she knows that Barry has carried the guilt of that since they were teenagers, even though she made a full recovery. “We weren’t – I didn’t mean-”

Nora interrupts him. “We know, Barry. It’s okay.”

“Why are you bringing that up?” Iris demands. “And what does that have to do with anything?”

“The police listed it as an accident, correct?”

“Yeah,” Barry mumbles. “The brakes weren’t working or something.”

Iris has been looking at Henry this entire time, and when Barry said that the brakes weren’t working, his jaw tightened. “It wasn’t an accident,” Chesca says. “Was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Henry replies. “Your brakes were cut by Ashley Zolomon, another rogue agent.”

“ _What_?” Barry explodes, leaping out of his chair. “You mean – we almost died! _Iris almost died_! I thought I almost killed us! You mean someone tried to kill us on purpose?”

“Not her,” Waller tells him, “you and Nora. You remember what was supposed to happen that night?”

“The policeman’s ball,” Iris remembers. “Barry, you were going with Nora, and I was going to visit my mom, remember? No one was supposed to use that car until your mom got back from work.”

Iris’ hands are shaking, and as she speaks she removes her gloves to glide her fingers over the spot where the bone was protruding from her arm. She stitches dissolved and the scar faded years ago, but she remembers everything – the paramedics had to cut her out of the car, and they kept saying they only had a few hours to get her into surgery, and she remembers Barry even through that haze of pain, pale and shaking, saying he was sorry, over and over again.

“Exactly,” Waller says. “But the two of you got in, and it crashed. It was then reported as an accident, which meant an investigation into the people who sold you the car, which meant-”

“Our names and pictures went in the paper,” Nora says slowly. “And that’s how they found us? Why wait that long?”

“If there’s one thing we are, it’s patient,” Waller tells her. “And besides, Jesimae likely knew that with what Ashley had tried to do, we’d be watching for anything suspicious, especially because we captured Ashley very soon afterwards. She was busy being an assassin for other people, and she was training her daughter to do the same thing.”

Barry closes his eyes and exhales through his nose, and she sees what he’s seeing in his mind – himself tied to a chair while Patty coldly tells him that she never loved him. “Well, they’re gone now,” Iris says roughly. “Eleanor – Jesimae – is dead, and her daughter’s gone. You can leave.”

“It’s not quite that simple, I’m afraid,” Henry disagrees. “Eddie came here for Calamity, and we got held up because of the Thawnes. You’re right, Jesimae is dead, but what happened to Thalia?”

“I don’t know where she went,” Iris replies. “I didn’t catch her.”

“Why not?”

“I was a little preoccupied with the giant hole in the sky.”

“Right. And Calamity? Did you let her go too?”

The objects in the room start to shake and Linda puts a calming hand on her arm. She unclenches her fists and everything goes still again. “Calamity was being manipulated by someone else – she isn’t responsible for what happened. And anyway, her powers are gone.”

“How?”

“Magic,” says sardonaically.

Waller glares at her. “Miss West, I understand that you have been through quite a lot tonight, but cooperation would be in your best interests. Don’t forget, there is a written police report that says you tried to kill a civilian and a police officer. We have brought in metahumans for much less.”

Iris takes a deep breath. “A different villain, Killer Frost, was using tachyon particles to manipulate her brainwaves, and then stole her power. She is gone, but she’s powerless, and with everyone likely looking for her, I doubt she’ll be coming back any time soon.”

“And this other villain – this Killer Frost,” Henry says. “How likely is it that he comes back?”

Iris thinks of Colin’s face when Ronnie was sucked into the singularity. “I have no idea. He got what he wanted, but he knows we’ll be after him too. And there’s nothing left here for him.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Waller mutters, and Eddie clears his throat.

“She’s right,” he says evenly. They all turn to look at him. “Everything Iris just said is correct – I’ll sign an affidavit saying so, if I have to.”

“The problem is that we don’t have either of those people,” he explains. “We can look for Thalia, yes, but Calamity terrorised this city for weeks. Our investigation is closed, and yet we have no one in custody. And unfortunately, that means that we can’t, legally or in good conscience, solve any of the crimes she’s been accused of.”

“What does that mean?”

It’s Nora who answers this time, her voice soft and aching with sadness. “Your mother, Iris. They’re saying… There’s no one to arrest and there’s no confession… I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

The thought hits Iris like a freight train, followed by the sensation that she’s fallen into a very deep black hole. Her breathing comes, fast and shallow, and she feels her throat start to close up. Her mother will never get out of prison, because she let an innocent woman go and couldn’t defeat the real culprit fast enough. She’s only aware that she actually is stumbling when Chesca takes a step forward to catch her. She can hear them all talking around her, but it sounds like she’s underwater or something.

“…going to have to sweep the apartment for any trace of her…”

“…see if she can remember anything about where Calamity went…”

“…remove Eleanor’s body…”

_Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God_

“Iris?” Chesca says quietly. “Can you hear me?”

Her mother will never find justice. Or the missing people on Barry’s list – they’ll never be found. Even the people being controlled by Calamity. None of them will ever find justice, because Miss Miracle failed. _She_ failed.

“No, Iris, you didn’t _fail_ …” Chesca says desperately, and that’s when she realises that she had spoken aloud. She looks around. “I think it’s best if you all leave now.”

“We need to question-”

“Then do it,” Barry snaps roughly. Wally has put something on his rope burns, but his shirt is still rumpled and his tie is missing. He pulls out a set of keys from his pockets and throws them at Waller. “Here, search my goddamn apartment if you want – maybe you’ll find my girlfriend hiding in my gym bag. Talk to whoever, do whatever you need to do, and then get the hell out of our lives. Henry or Jay or whatever you want to call yourself.”

“Look, I know it must be hard, son-”

“ _Don’t call me that_.”

If Barry had shouted it at him, it would have been less forceful. Nobody says anything as Barry stands slowly, his head tipped to the side. “Do you know how I found out that you had gone? That you weren’t coming back?” He pauses. “I was at kindergarten, and nobody came to get me after school. I sat there for an hour with my backpack, thinking that my dad was hurt or-” He stops. “I was four, and _nobody came to get me_. I don’t have a father, he died that day. So remember that when you start calling me ‘son’.”

Barry turns on his heel and walks out of the room. Iris wraps her arms around herself, her eyes shut, and Nora clears her throat. Wally has fixed them up as much as he can without taking them into private rooms. “I think we’re done here,” she says quietly and, like Barry, there’s more power in her words despite the fact that her voice is barely raised above a whisper. “You say have you have to question us, and then I have no doubt you have to do a million things to make sure that no one knows that there were two assassins living in Central City, one of whom was working for the police. After that, I am taking these children home.” She pauses, regarding them. “Because that’s what they are, you know. Or did you forget that when you burst in here?”

They both have the good grace to look ashamed, and Nora straightens her dress as best she can despite the blood and dirt. “Like I said, do what you have to do. And then I am taking my children home.”

***

The month after that pass in a mixture of fast and slow.

This day, for example, goes slowly. Slowly when he kneels in front of Iris and it takes an age for her to look at him and really _see_ him, she is so devastated. Slowly when Waller and the man who looks too much like him for comfort give them instructions and then Waller questions him, rapid and relentless, about his relationship. No, he didn’t think anything was suspicious when he met her. Yes, he met her through his mother. No, of course he doesn’t know where she might be headed, what kind of question is that? Waller asks if he loves her and that’s when his mother interrupts, and he knows she truly is about to shoot the man. When Linda, Wally, Iris and Chesca walk out of their own interrogations, he knows they feel the same way. But finally the interrogations are over and Eddie says they’re moving Eleanor’s body today and searching Barry’s apartment in the morning.

(It’s a little hard to talk to Eddie at the moment. He knows that he helped save his life and Chesca seems to trust him, but still. The resentment is there. And it isn’t helped by the fact that Eddie is calm, capable and genial, not too invasive. That’s a contrast from the asshole ADA persona he was playing before, but then he supposes that’s mind control for you.)

Slow is going back home and not being able to sleep, waiting for what happens next. Listening as his mother turns listlessly in bed and Iris cries, and he cannot comfort either of them. Because everything is playing in his head slowly, so slowly, like a movie being played frame by frame. The shock of pain that jolted across Iris’ face when Patty shot – _she shot her, she shot her in the arm_ – her, and the horrible, horrible sound when Iris’ tiny body collided with the wall. His mother’s face when Eleanor had the gun pressed to her neck. The feeling of Iris fighting Calamity, because he _could_ feel it, feel her pain and terror, and then Killer Frost and Deathstorm. Everything is slow, slow like molasses, slow like watching his mother’s gardenias wither and die.

Some things make it go a little faster. He learns things. Chesca says that Eddie told her his father used the name Eobard Thawne because Henry Allen was too dangerous, and to rehabilitate the Thawne name. He stops her because she referred to him as Eddie’s dad, and he actually wants things slow after that. Eddie’s powers wore off when he stopped using the gun. One of the agents searching his apartment very helpfully tells him that Patty and her mother were watching them all for months, and it was only a matter of time before _something_ happened. Or that the spontaneous calls of criminal activity were all Colin’s fault. Or that Iris has moved back to her apartment and is helping with the clean-up, but that she isn’t actually saying anything to him.

But, like before, most things are slow. Everything becomes frame by frame. Realising that everything, even that first time they kissed when he was working late, was a lie. Her saying that she loved him, and wanted a future with him, and wanted _him_. Every moment of him loving her and her lying to him, that plays slowly in his mind in the month afterwards. Every excruciating detail. He sees it like he sees it, and hates himself for being so easy, for being so unravelled by his best friend being in a coma that it was this easy to trick him. That is slow as well, the descent of falling in love with someone who was tricking him, until finally that night at the Policeman’s Ball is all he can see when he closes his eyes. The feeling when she stabbed him with her pins, and then waking up to being strapped to a chair, and then watching and waiting desperately in case everything and everything he’d ever held dear was about to die because he had been so very, very stupid.

Barry would give anything for everything – _anything_ – not to be so slow.

***

Everything hurts.

She’s hurting, bleeding from a cut on her arm, and the mugger is hurting because his arm is twisted behind his back. But she doesn’t care. Everything hurts, it hasn’t stopped hurting since the singularity, why should this be different?

“Please,” he begs, a far cry from the sight she came to when she heard it on the police tracker, but she doesn’t care. She twists his arm tighter, gritting her teeth.

“No,” she snarls. “You don’t get to beg. I protect this city, that’s my job. _You’re getting in the way of my job_ , you piece of crap. Now you can pay for it.”

She teleports to the precinct and dumps him there quickly, before doubling back to her apartment to change because she has to go to work. Her lounge has a mannequin for her suit, the police scanner and a few monitors, and a corner where she keeps the first aid stuff. Iris can’t work out of STAR Labs – none of them can. In the two months since the singularity, she’s been working out of her apartment by herself, with a few visits to Wally to make sure she isn’t suffering from an injury she can’t see or treat by herself. But he’s starting to get that look, that ‘worried about Iris’ look, so she’s avoiding him. And Linda.

Iris gets to work and isn’t surprised to see the long line of criminals waiting to be booked – she put them there, after all. Besides which, they are the least of her problems, because after they finally stopped asking her so many goddamn questions and she went home, she woke up to Chesca calling her and screaming about something. When she got to STAR Labs, ready to see Colin – no, Killer Frost, a man who tried to kill her is not her friend – in that outfit of his, ready to hurt her again, but it’s not that. Apparently not content with ruining her life for fifteen years, he put in something that meant all the metahumans would be released overnight, probably to further distract her and weaken her chances of winning. By the time she got there, Chesca was lying on the floor, confused and hurt, because Woodward had knocked hit her on the way out of the Pipeline.

So that’s her other problem, trying to hunt down the metahumans that escaped. Of course, the vast majority are lying low because they know she’s after them, which makes it that much harder. She walks upstairs and her heart tightens, just a little, at the amount of work she has to do. But then, she works for the CCPD. _A Fair and Just Society_. Or something.

“Iris West?” she mutters into her phone. And then she recognises the voice, and she can’t breathe.

“Hey, Iris.”

“Bar,” she says, the phone between her shoulder and ear as she sorts through some case files. “What’s up?”

“Chesca said that you went up against another metahuman. Are you okay?”

Iris decides not to tell him that going up against Woodward – again – earned her a couple bruised ribs and an almost-concussion. But still, she is back in the Pipeline, and once Iron Heights become equipped to deal with metahumans, she can go there. “Yeah,” she replies. “Um, yeah, it – I’m fine, Barry. Everything’s fine.” She pauses, dreading it. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Cool.”

He’s lying, and she knows it, but she’s a coward. Because she promised she would protect him, promised Nora and him and herself, and she failed in the most spectacular way. So she doesn’t push him even when she knows he’s not okay because she failed at the most important promise she ever made. A beeping from her desk interrupts her before she can change the subject. “ _Armed robbery in progress, Baldwin Towers apartments_ …”

Good. Catching some armed robbers will make her feel better, she thinks. She hopes. “Bar, I have to go. I have a…thing.”

“Aren’t you at work?”

He’s right. She glances towards the door. After everything happened – and everyone found out that Iris and Nora had been injured – Singh had tried to get them to take some time off work. Is still trying, in fact, every time Iris yawns or rubs her eyes or pauses when people celebrate Miss Miracle finally defeating Calamity, since the only footage people have is her slamming Dr Wells. But she can at least do this, she can at least protect _someone_ so she isn’t completely useless at her job. “Yeah, but you know. Miss Miracle calls. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Iris hangs up when he replies, wondering whether this will hurt as much as the last robbery. Or watching Nora drift off and then start when you surprise her. Or watching Barry flinch whenever someone mentions Patty’s name (or Thalia or whatever the fuck her name is). Or having to see her mother and explain that she’ll never get out because the woman who killed her father is gone, but that it wasn’t even her fault. But no, nothing will hurt as much as all that, but she still needs to go out and fight crime, fight _something_ , because even the pain of fighting feels better than the pain of failing. Everything hurts.

She doesn’t care.

***

Barry thinks work will be better, and it usually is, because it moves so fast. Erica and Scott and even Missy say he can take some days off, but it’s the third month since the singularity and really, he should be over it by now. A strong person would be over it by now. He lives at home and M.A.I.M.E.D. have gone through all his stuff, determining that nothing there will help them find her. Barry could have told them that. Thalia Thawne managed to convince everyone that she was sweet and cheerful and harmless, when she was actually there for revenge.

So he takes a million assignments and cases, even the boring ones, to make everything move faster. Maybe if he moves faster it won’t hurt so much. But the sympathy sucks too, because it isn’t just about him. Yeah, it sucks that Patty left, but her mother did die in the Battle of Calamity (Barry didn’t come up with that name). No, they don’t know what happened to his friends Colin and Ronnie. Can we not talk about it? No, he’s not offended, he just has to get home. And on and on and on, until Scott subtly changes the subject every time someone brings it up. Barry gets him coffee to say thank you.

The first time he goes back to the precinct isn’t in that third month, but it’s the first time he goes there without feeling a thrill of fear run through him. His eyes widen at the sight that greets him – a long line of criminals stretching out of the door, waiting to be booked into the system. He spots Rose at the desk, talking to Captain Singh, and walks over.

“What’s going on?” he asks. “Was there a breakout, or…”

“Nope,” Rose replies. “Just Miss Miracle at work again. Someone must be paying that woman over time, because this is the most we’ve had from her since we started.” She shakes her head, looking through the notes. “We had one girl come in reporting an assault in an alleyway – you know. Barely finished talking before Miss Miracle dumped the guy in here.”

Barry open’s mouth to speak, but then there’s a blur of green and gold and Iris is there in her suit, holding someone with her mind briefly before dumping him on the floor, already cuffed. The criminals in the line shrink back from her, and she turns to Singh. “Carjacking on Fifth.” Her voice is low and distorted.

They nod and she nods back before disappearing. Singh whistles. “You know, that’s been happening all week. You’d think after everything with Calamity, she’d take a break.”

Barry thinks of the way Iris had been standing, or the way she dropped the carjacker. “You’d think.”

“You know, after things like that night, all the chaos and the robberies, you usually get a huge spate of crime because everyone’s resources are stretched so thin,” she continues. “But this is the lowest crime rate we’ve had in half a decade.”

Barry thinks about that when he heads back to work, and realises that the captain is right. Iris is always busy, yes, but the stats that the mayor’s office just released indicates a large drop in violent crimes, robberies, rapes and even murders. Apparently everyone knows that Miss Miracle isn’t tolerating anything untoward.

Everyone except the people closest to her.

Because they haven’t had a proper conversation in months. She comes for dinner occasionally, but they are either heated, loaded dinners where everyone is too wired to say anything, all falsely cheery dinners where they only talk about things that aren't important. She asks him whether he’s okay and he does the same, but she won’t let him in for whatever reason. She probably blames him for that night, for the bullet wound that Wally had to reopen and clean because they didn’t want to risk an infection, and for the nightmares that he knows she must be having.

But he can’t help her – he can’t even help himself. He makes himself smaller, invisible, so then maybe nothing can hurt him. It doesn’t work, but he tries anyway. But then he’s at home with his mother and the doorbell rings. They both look at each other in alarm, even though it’s been months and Eddie promised they’re doing everything to look for Thalia, before someone calls his name. “Barry? Nora?”

“It’s okay,” he exhales. “It’s Wally, I think.”

He’s right. Iris’ cousin has just come from work, by the looks of things, and Linda and Chesca are with him. He frowns in alarm – but no, if something had happened to Iris, he would know before now. He invites them all inside. “What is it?”

“It’s Iris,” Linda says quickly. “I – we’re worried about her.”

Nora sighs. “I know, but it’s been hard, she-”

“No, Nora,” Wally shakes her head. “I mean, really worried. Like, she’s going to get herself killed if she doesn’t slow down kind of worried.”

“What do you mean?” Barry frowns. Chesca swallows.

“Barry, in the last weeks, she has gone up against seven metahumans, six murderers, and countless other dangerous people. Today she took on four of the hitmen from the Sartini crime family. She survived, but-”

“Barely,” Wally interjects. “She showed up at the ER with a broken rib – she was lucky I was on duty at the time.”

Nora pales. “Oh, God. She’s angry. She’s mad and she’s going to get herself hurt.”

“That’s what I thought,” Linda agrees. “But there’s the angry that throws darts at your ex’s picture, and there’s the self-destructive metahuman angry.”

“Have you tried talking to her?”

“We all have,” Linda replies helplessly. “She either doesn’t listen or brushes us off. And I’m worried that next time she won’t be so lucky with any of it.”

“Barry?” his mother tried gently. “Have you spoken to her?”

He shrugs, his arms wrapped around himself. “I think I’m the last person she wants to talk to, mom. She barely even looks at me anymore.”

There’s a pause while they digest that, and Chesca clears her throat. “I have an idea,” she says tentatively. “But it’s a last resort.”

When she explains it to them, Wally objects straight away. “No. No way. She’ll – she’s going to hate us. She will _hate_ us.”

“We don’t have a choice!” she counters. “Iris is stronger and faster than most people, and what she can do is incredible, _but she is not invincible_. And if we don’t get her off this streak, then I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“And even if she hates us, at least she’ll still be alive,” Barry says quietly. He shakes his head. “Look, I don’t like it any more than you do, but it may be our only choice.”

“Well, someone should still talk to her first,” Nora says quickly, looking around, but Barry looks at her.

“Yeah, but not us, mom. I don’t think she’ll talk to us, not when she’s like this.”

“I’ll do it,” Chesca volunteers. “And if it doesn’t work, I’ll um…We’ll do it.”

So there is that, that awful plan that they all agreed to even though none of them wanted to, but the thought of Iris suddenly dying because she’s too mad to be cautious. But this must be her lowest point, he hopes. It can only get better from there, right? Ironic, then, that his own comes a few days later.

Barry blames his father and whatever else caused Thalia Thawne to walk into his life. When they finally finished analysing and going through all of his stuff, they sent it back to the house. It’s sitting in his living room right now. So he has to sort through all this stuff that belonged to him and a woman that never existed. And Barry is fine with that, because he’s going to give most of it to Goodwill anyway, but then he sees something.

On one of their first dates, they went to the county fair, because she said she’d never been before. He made a big deal of saying that it was really fun and showing her everything, and now he knows that she didn’t even care about it, and laughing at him while he enthusiastically explained all the rides and attractions and even the horses, even though he’s always been afraid of those. She was probably laughing when they took this picture, thinking he was so stupid and this job was so easy. He picks up the picture, the frame and glass cold despite the clear warmth in his eyes, and the next thing he knows he’s flung it across the room at a wall so it shatters. The glass cracks, the pieces scattering all over the floor, and he marches across the room to pick them up and throw them away. But then the glass cuts him and blood blooms across his skin, the pain sharp and ruthless, but for some reason he just grabs them more roughly and-

“Barry!”

His mother has opened the door and sees him standing there with his bloodied hands and the red smeared over the glass, and grabs his wrists. She looks down at the floor, at the picture, and sighs. “Oh, honey…”

“I was going to throw it away,” he mumbles. She looks at his hands again.

“I need to take you to a hospital.”

“I can drive myself.”

“Barry, your hands-”

“ _I can drive myself_!” he snaps viciously at her. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m an idiot!”

His mother flinches back at that, at his voice, and then his throat is sore and his eyes are filling up with tears. “Sorry,” he says, his voice already thick. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

She pulls him into a hug and he’s a little boy again, wondering why his father didn’t pick him up from school that day, and he’s sobbing into her shoulder. “I didn’t know, she seemed-”

“I know.”

“Everything’s my fault…”

“Nothing’s your fault, Bar,” she says firmly. She takes his face in his hands, repeats the words, but he just shakes his head and sniffles.

“I thought she – I thought she loved me, mom.”

“I know, honey. I know, I did too.”

***

The one time Iris goes to STAR Labs just to happens to be the one time Chesca is there, and she’s waiting for Iris. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

“Oh,” Iris shrugs. “Well, I was just checking something – I thought I left my spare boots here.”

That is a lie, but she doesn’t care. Barry explained to her, before it became too hard to talk to him, about something called Gideon, and that it was what Colin used to manipulate them all. So a few weeks ago she came down to see what it was about, and it was the worst mistake of her life. Because the first thing the machine did was greet her like they were friends, because apparently it was created with specs from the future. Then when she asked what that was about, it cheerfully explained that Colin had looked into the future, seen how he was built, and then built him the same way. And then said they were living in one possible future, but not the one that was supposed to happen.

“What was supposed to happen?”

And Gideon told her.

Where she grew up with both parents. Became Director of the CSI Division at the CCPD. Founded something called the Justice League.

And became Iris West- _Allen_.

How many times had she dreamed of that, even from when she was small? And now she finds out that this what meant to be, that all her feelings of Barry being perfect for her were not for nothing, but that it was supposed to happen. But Colin took it from them, because they are different people with different histories, and they can barely look at each other. Iris is here to ask it more questions, because apparently she lives to torture herself.

“Did you?”

“Nope. Guess that’s another thing I forgot.”

Iris moves to walk past Chesca, but her friend stops her, her expression tentative. “Iris, I – are you okay?”

She shrugs, pretending she doesn’t know exactly what she’s talking about. “Little hungry, but fine.”

Chesca stares at her. “No, you’re not, and I’m sick of you pretending you are.”

“Who’s pretending?” Iris snaps. “Or are you the mind-reader?”

“Because none of us are!” Chesca explodes. “Nora almost got shot by her police partner. Barry’s girlfriend knocked him out, tied him up, shot his best friend, and almost killed his mother. _You_ have been fucked with and terrorised by a two metahumans for fifteen years, and then _everything_ with a gun or metahuman powers tried to kill you! You’re not fine, none of us are _fine_ , not Barry or Nora or Wally or Linda – _we are not fine_!”

Iris lets out a breath through her nostrils, her fists clenched. “Well I guess we’re going to have to get over it, aren’t we?”

“Iris, you’re mad, I get that-”

“No, you don’t. You don’t get it, not even a little. Of course I’m mad, but guess what?” she laughs bitterly. “I’m Miss Miracle, I have to tuck all of that in and throw myself into burning buildings and in front of bullets and through moving trains to save people. Do you want a turn?” Chesca doesn’t say anything. “That’s what I thought.”

Iris strides out without a word, relishing the guilt because even that hurts less than the failure. Olivia calls her while she’s on patrol for her help and she savours that as well, because maybe the Green Arrow’s violence will match the raging grief that seems to be running her these days. She meets her on the roof of STAR Labs later that night, clad in her suit and facing the city.

“You know,” Iris calls into the night, her breath coming out in little puffs, “you don’t have to have all your meetings on rooftops. Coffee shops are a thing.”

“I thought it would be better this way,” she intones. Iris frowns, drawing closer to her.

“Liv? You okay?”

Her friend sighs. “I’m sorry about this, Iris.”

She frowns. “Sorry about what?”

Then Liv pressed some sort of remote and there’s a _whooshing_ noise, and a starburst of pain in her back. She’s too shocked to register it, and then her legs wobble. Her knees give out and everything goes black, the pinpricks of stars in an inky black sky the last thing she sees.

***

Nobody’s happy when Olivia brings Iris’ still body down to the Pipeline, laying her gently in a cell. Very carefully, she takes the arrow with the sedative in it out, before stepping out so Chesca can close the door. She lies on her side, like she really could be sleeping, and Barry has a sudden flashback to her coma. He flexes his fingers beneath their Band-Aids and bandages, and puts them in his pockets. “How long?”

“I gave her enough for five minutes,” Wally answers. “That’s what…that’s what his notes said.”

“You did the right thing,” Olivia says. She had been strangely willing to help, especially since Iris always gives the impression that the Green Arrow considers Miss Miracle more annoyance than friend. “She wouldn’t have survived if she kept going like this.” She straightens and looks at his mother. “Detective, about everything that’s happened-”

“Thank you,” his mother replies quietly. Olivia nods and stands next to them, waiting for her to wake up, and Linda makes a noise.

“Guys, she’s waking up.”

Barry’s heart twists, because she’s right. She moans in pain and confusion, and then her hands go to her face to find her glasses, but she doesn’t need them because of her domino masks with lenses. Then she looks around and her frown deepens. “What… _ow_ ,” she whispers. She gets up, looking at each of them in turn, and cold realisation dawns on her face. “What are you doing? Why did you put me in here?”

“Because you’re too angry right now, Iris,” his mother says gently. “You can’t go around protecting the city if you don’t care about getting yourself killed in the process.”

Iris glares at her. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“Barely,” Wally tells her, and Iris rolls her eyes.

“Keeping me in here is a mistake that’s going to get everyone killed.”

Olivia shakes her head, removing her mask, and that’s when Barry realises how serious this is, because Wally and Linda now know exactly who she is. “Iris, acting this way – reckless, angry – is no way to be this city’s saviour.”

“ _That’s not your decision to make_!” Iris shouts, banging on the glass, and Nora steps forward.

“It is this time.” Iris lets out a frustrated noise and turns away. “We all made it, together.”

Iris turns right back around, disbelief reverberating through her features. Her chin wobbles. “What – All of you? You all decided to…put me in here?”

“We didn’t _want_ to,” Chesca says desperately, practically near tears. “But, I mean, we thought you were going to hurt yourself…”

Iris turns away again, pressing her head to the wall. “Iris…” Olivia says. “Iris, this is for your own good.” She moves towards the panels to close the door.

“Don’t – don’t do this. Guys, _come on_ – Barry?” she begs, and the look she’s giving him, all hurt and desperation and confusion, hurts more than if she’d punched him in the face. He’s so wracked with grief he can’t even reply. “Chess, come on…”

The door starts to slide shut and Iris starts banging on them, her face a mixture of grief and anger. “No, no wait! You can’t leave me in here! Barry? Bar, _please_ …”

The door shuts and suddenly he can’t be in that room anymore, not when all he can see is Iris’ face when she realised he agreed to this plan. The others come out slowly, and his mother is the one who approaches him, a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t think it would be that bad,” he whispers. Olivia nods.

“It always is.” She looks down. “When my friend Tommy died, I was like this. But Laurent and Freddie and Dig pulled me out of it. That’s all she needs, is time and you guys. I have to go, but if you need anything…”

“We’ll call you,” Chesca finishes. “Thanks, Liv.”

She nods and then leaves, and Linda looks around. “Who wants to stay? I can help, if-”

“No, I’ll do it,” Barry tells them. He holds up his bandaged hands. “It’s not like I can go to work, and you’ve all got stuff to do. I’ll let you know if…if she calms down.”

Everyone but Chesca leaves, and Wally checks his injuries again, so they stay there together. He sees Chesca open up a _The Walking Dead_ comic book, and he looks up. “I never asked you.”

“Never asked me what?”

“How you were doing. Colin, he… He was your friend.”

She thumbs the pages absently. “Linda’s a better friend,” she says finally. “Better at contouring.”

He hesitates. “I could be your friend, if you want. I know I’m not a science nerd, but…”

She stares at him. “Barry, you _are_ my friend.”

They smile tentatively at each other, and the next couple of hours pass in a peaceful way, occasional bits of conversation about Barry’s articles and Chesca being a consultant for the CCPD. Finally, though, he gets up. “Iris has been mad at me enough times that I know the longer we leave it, the worse it will get.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

Barry puts his hands in his pockets and takes a deep breath, before walking down to the Pipeline and opening up the doors. His mother, she told him once, knows what happens when they get angry. Barry goes very pale and starts shouting at everyone. Iris, who talks a mile a minute about science, goes very quiet, very still, and very stony-faced. As it stands, she is sitting in the Pipeline with her arms folded, and if it weren’t for the fact that he knows how furious she is, the expression on her face would be comical. Her gaze slides to him, and then back to the floor. He sits cross-legged in front of her, and takes a deep breath.

“Iris Ann West, I am just as stubborn as you are,” he informs her. “So don’t try waiting me out.”

He’s trying for a light tone, but he knows it doesn’t work because she’s never given him that look before. Her eyes are like stone and her expression is nothing like his Iris. Maybe it’s the mask and the suit, how it reminds him that she isn’t just his best friend anymore, she’s a metahuman that people look up to and criminals fear. She pins him with a look, and he doesn’t know if she knows this, but she’s always had very arresting eyes. “You let them put me in here,” she says harshly, drawing each word out. The guilt hits him in another wave.

“I know.”

“You’re supposed to be my best friend, Barry. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am on your side.”

“So why am I on the other side of this glass while all of you decide what’s best for me?”

“Because you were going to get yourself killed. No, Iris,” he interrupts. “Mob hitmen? And murderers? And metahumans by yourself? It’s like you were trying to get yourself killed!”

“I wasn’t-”

“ _Then what_?” he demands. “What is it? What are you so angry about?”

“What am I not angry about, Barry?” she shouts back, rising on her knees. “I was so convinced Dr Wells was responsible for my dad’s death, I didn’t notice it was Colin. All of these metahumans have escaped and I have _no idea_ where they are. My mom will probably die in prison and-” She breaks off, looking at her hands.

“And what?” She doesn’t answer and he presses. “Tell me, Iris.”

“And my best friend was almost murdered by two sociopaths and I was too fucking self-absorbed to notice anything was wrong.”

Barry blinks and then sighs, shaking his head. “Iris…”

“No, Barry, don’t. Don’t try to make me feel better about this.” She runs a shaking hand through her hair. “They almost killed you – both of them, _they almost killed you_. How could I have been so stupid?”

“Iris, that wasn’t your fault.”

“See, that’s the thing, Bar. When you’re a superhero it’s _always_ your fault. You could have been better, or faster, or _there_ …And I keep thinking if I catch more criminals and save more people, it won’t be that bad, and it’ll cancel everything out.” Her breath comes in heaving gasps, tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. “But it isn’t working, and Colin and Patty could come back at any minute, and I’m so scared and tired, Bar, it’s been months and I’m _exhausted_ …”

Barry doesn’t wait to hear anymore; he opens the door and Iris reaches for him automatically, and then she’s crying into his chest, and he gets the feeling this is the first time she’s actually cried since that night. So he lets her get it all out, no matter how long it takes, with his arms around her. “I want my mom,” she whispers.

“I know. I know you do, sunshine,” he said quietly. She shifts and it hurts his hands, so he winces. “Ow.”

Iris sits up and looks at him. “What? What ‘ow’? You – _Barry_ , what the hell happened to your hands?”

He stares at them. “Oh. I, uh, got a little mad.”

“At what?”

He shrugs helplessly. “At everything.”

Iris drops her head. “Barry, we can’t protect each other from everything anymore, can we?”

“No,” he sighs. “We can’t.”

Because of course they still remember that promise they made to each other and themselves and Nora when they were teenagers, that they would always protect each other. But that was when they had to protect each other from Lance Burke and Becky Cooper and geometry tests, not power-hungry metahumans and revenge-obsessed spies. Maybe that’s the growing up part of all this.

Iris shifts and lays her head on his shoulder. “Singh left for her honeymoon today,” Barry tells her after a while.

“Really? Cool. They’re going to Barbados, you know.”

“They’re letting someone as grumpy as Singh in there? She’ll ruin the mood.”

“Nah, Bobbi’s a sweetheart. It’ll cancel out.”

They smile at each other, because at least they know they won’t judge each other for trying to be happy. Iris rubs her nose. “I think I might be done for a while. Miss Miracle, I mean. I might take a break. Be Iris West for a while.”

“I like Iris West,” he agrees. “She’s a little dorky, but…”

“Shut up. I’m terrifying, haven’t you heard? Criminals flinch at the sight of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Because I’m not one of things you’re afraid of. Like vampires or horses or strawberries.”

“Vampires are weird,” he informs her. “Horses are too unpredictable, and I’m allergic to strawberries.”

“Exactly,” she counters. “If I dressed up like Dracula and sold strawberries from a cart pulled from a horse, you’d be running screaming in the other direction.”

He stares at her. “Iris, that sounds like the beginning of a Stephen King novel, of course I’d be terrified.”

“Asshole.”

“Nerd.”

Iris rolls her eyes just as Chesca walks in, her expression timid. “Um. Not that I was eavesdropping or anything, but…”

“God, I’m gonna kill you,” Iris says tiredly, getting up. She holds her arms out. “C’mere, _chica_.” They hug and Iris steps back. “Olivia? _Really_?”

“Look, there weren’t many options.”

“This is the sixth time she’s shot me! I’m gonna get a complex.”

“Olivia seems to enjoy it.”

Iris bites her lip. “Chess, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she shrugs. “Even Captain Picard fell off the wagon a little, right? Now, who’s hungry?”

“Oh, me,” Iris says. Barry stands up. “Also, I get what Hailey was complaining about – that was uncomfortable as hell.”

“You’re Miss Miracle, and you can’t handle a couple of hours in a cell?”

“I’m telling you, it killed a nerve in my left asscheek.”

***

Iris apologises to everyone, a lot, even Liv, but she doesn’t take time off work. She does, however, hold off on the Miss Miracle shenanigans. But when she’s there one afternoon with the others, talking about what they’re going to do about STAR Labs while they take what they need from it, the visitor alarm goes off. They all look at each other.

“We’re all here,” Barry confirms, and Nora pulls out her gun. Chesca gets a prototype cold gun, and Iris gets into her suit. But none of them are prepared for who they see walking in. Mostly because they aren’t used to her walking.

“Dr Wells?” Chesca splutters. “What are you doing here?”

She looks good, Iris notices. Clear-eyed and rosy, and strangely at peace. She smiles. “I had some things to do.”

“Like what?” Iris wants to know. “Is Colin after you?”

“No, he isn’t. But there’s something I have to do.” She pauses. “When I became a metahuman, I wanted more. More power, more abilities, _more_. But in doing that, I set the stage for Colin and everything he’s done. Which is why I have to take responsibility for my actions.”

Iris doesn’t understand until Barry says it. “Oh my – You’re confessing. Aren’t you?”

She nods and Chesca shrieks. “No! You didn’t do anything!”

“I did enough,” she disagrees. Her eyes slide to Iris. “And other people need to stop paying for my crimes.”

“I – no. No, my mother won’t leave prison so an innocent woman can take her place!”

“One less innocent than her?”

Nora, though, lowers her gun. “Guys, she isn’t asking. You’ve already called them, haven’t you? You’ve already called Waller.”

Dr Wells smiles. “Detective Nora Dawnette Allen,” she laughs softly. “Always so perceptive. Yes, I believe Agent Thawne should be on his way right…ah, that must be him.”

Iris, Barry and Chesca look desperately at each other. “We can talk to them,” Iris says quickly. “Tell them about Colin, explain-”

“No. They won’t release your mother if they think he’s the problem – it has to be this way.” She pauses. “I’m leaving STAR Labs to both of you. All my research, the grants, the patents. The minute they take me away, it all becomes yours.”

“I don’t want it,” Chesca says immediately, and Iris can see she’s already crying. “It won’t – _I don’t want it_.”

Dr Wells just shakes her head. “You will do brilliant things, Francesca Ramon, some normal and some…not so normal. I’m just sad I won’t be around to witness it.” She turns to Barry. “Barry, I consider it a pleasure to have known such a brilliant young man who has so much compassion.”

He nods, numb, and she turns to his mother. “Nora, I really do wish we had been friends. I haven’t many in the way of those over the years.”

“Thank you, Helena.”

“And Iris,” she sighs. “Your mother will never know how sorry I am. But try to tell her, will you? And tell her that she raised a brilliant young woman.”

Tears prick at the edges of her vision and Eddie appears, confused at the sight he sees before him. “What’s going on?”

“I believe,” Dr Wells says, “I am making your career, Agent Thawne. Listen carefully, now. I, Dr Helena Amelie Wells, being of sound mind and body, freely confess to being the metahuman Calamity, and therefore responsible for the murder of Joseph West…”

Chesca lets out a choked sob and Iris reaches for her as she confesses, and Eddie looks as shocked as they all feel. When she finishes, he looks around. “Was that real?”

“Yes,” Iris says. “It was.”

“That – You know that means I have to arrest her, right?”

“Aren’t you people supposed to be intelligent?” Dr Wells wants to know. Eddie sighs.

“Dr Wells, I have to ask you to come with me. Please do not struggle or draw attention to yourself.”

Before anyone can say anything, Chesca runs into her arms and hugs her. Eddie gently moves her hands when it’s gone on too long, and Dr Wells straightens. “I feel very lucky to have known you all,” she says quietly. Eddie leads her out and Chesca starts to sob again, so Barr hugs her and Iris runs after them. “Eddie, wait?”

“What – what’s going to happen to her?”

“She’ll be remanded in custody. She’s a metahuman, so there’ll be some questioning, and she’s useful, so…” They won’t kill her. Not yet. “They won’t release her name, either.”

“Oh.”

“Iris,” he says quietly. “As early as tomorrow, a directive will be released to the District Attorney’s office ordering the immediate release of your mother. Do you understand?”

Iris gapes at him. After all this time, and this is the cost? One innocent life for another? “I’ll get you out,” she decides. “I don’t know how, but I’ll do it. I’m getting you out, Helena.”

“Iris, don’t worry,” she says. “I have had a good last year. Teaching you saw to that.”

Iris doesn’t know what to say to that. “We have to go,” Eddie tells her. He hesitates. “Chesca. Make sure she’s okay.”

“Of course,” Iris says. There must be a question in her eyes, because he shrugs. “She was nice to me.”

And isn’t that always the way? Helena nods. “Agent Thawne, I’m ready.”

“Goodbye, Helena Wells.”

“Goodbye, Iris West.”

***

Iris has imagined this day for years. What she’ll be wearing, the time of day, how she’ll get ready. But then her mother is being led out, and handed her belongings, and she knows there is no way she could have prepared for the feeling that came over her when she was allowed to hug her mother and there was no glass, no guard, and no handcuffs. For the first time in months, her tears are happy. “Hi, mom. I missed you.”

And her mother’s smile must be the only one that’s bigger than hers. “I missed you too, baby girl.”

Later they’re all having dinner – them and the Allens and Linda and Chesca and Wally, and Iris can’t stop grinning at her. “I just wanted to say,” she says, after everyone’s eaten enough, “thank you to all of you. I know everything that you’ve done in getting me here, and I appreciate it. And the food, Linda,” she adds playfully, and everyone laughs. She leaves Linda explaining all the television she needs to watch to get the dessert, and Barry comes out to help her, grinning. “So.”

“So.”

“How does it feel?”

She shrugs helplessly. “Amazing. I keep waiting to wake up.”

“So what’s next?”

“Well, she wants to get a job in publishing again, maybe not like she had before, and we want a house, or an apartment, it depends on her settlement, but, um…”

“What?”

“Well, she wants to leave.”

“Leave?” Barry frowns, and she nods.

“Not forever,” she amends. “But, you know. A while. Maybe a month? She wants to see her mom and travel for a little bit, and I don’t know-”

“You should go,” he says immediately. When she looks up at him he says, “I don’t want you to go, of course I don't. But I think you need to stop thinking about me or mom, or anyone else, and look after yourself. You deserve this, Iris.”

She pauses, and then smiles. “It would be cool.”

“Yeah. Just don’t stay gone too long, okay?”

They don’t go immediately. Her mother has stuff to sort out with the prison, and Iris has to figure out her rent and her holiday time, and there are more dinners with all of them or them and Barry and Nora, but it happens. They go to an airport and everyone sees them off, and it’s bittersweet to have them all there.

“Buy me things,” Chesca says, without room for negotiation, and everyone laughs. “Hey, I’ve never been to New Orleans. Ooh! Something haunted.”

“I’ll try,” Iris promises, and Nora turns to her after she’s hugged her mom.

“You call me, alright? Everyday, don’t forget.”

“Okay. Thanks, Nora.”

And then it’s just her and Barry, and Nora clears her throat. “I’ll give you guys a minute.”

Her mother goes off to get them food before they check in, and Iris looks up at this person who’s been everything to her for years, and has no idea what to say. Everything seems too insignificant for what's happened. Barry doesn’t seem to either, but then he takes her face in his hands and kisses her very gently on the forehead. And it’s not romantic because too much has happened and they don’t know whether they can be that to each other, but it makes her world a little steadier. He smiles at her. “How about a smile for me, sunshine?”

She grins at him and then hugs him, and then she needs to go. Iris walks away but she knows she’s coming back, because she knows that the biggest part of home that she’s leaving is him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I hope everyone liked that. A few things:  
> This marks the end of S1, and S2 will be a lot lighter. That said, there's some stuff I'm probably going to cut out, and I won't do the whole season.  
> For people impatient for WA, I have a specific plan for them, and it may not be exactly when you want, but I have to tell the story as it works for me, so i hope you like it.  
> the next chapter may be a while because I need to wrap up the other one and plan this season in EXTREME detail, and i also have school.  
> finally, thank you. you guys rock fr.


	21. All The Broken Hearts in the World Still Beat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're a little bit down, but they're not dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it would be cool to do a little background on what peeps were like before Iris woke up and then linked it to the present. Hope you like.

**Nora – December 2013**

On most days, Nora loved her job.

She never forgot why she became a cop – her grandmother Dawnette was one, and Nora always wanted to be as tough as her. But she was more suited to being a detective, working cases, looking for clues, asking people questions. She had a good job, a beautiful son, and a good life. She also had Iris West, who was a kind of surrogate daughter since hers was never allowed to exist. Iris moved out years ago but she still had dinner with them on Sundays, fixed everyone’s computers, and rambled to them about nuclear physics way past the time they’ve stopped pretending to be interested. She had always been grateful to have her in her life.

Days like today, however, tried her patience when it comes to her not-daughter.

She walked into the precinct and looked around for her – they had been looking for the Mardon sisters and Iris was the CSI on the case. Well, the only CSI, since their Director essentially only came in to check she was still doing her job since their budget wouldn’t stretch to hiring another one. She spotted Singh by the booking desk and walked over to her. “Have you seen Iris?”

“West? Oh, she called in sick this morning. Food poisoning, apparently.”

Nora paused and then sighed through her nose. Iris and Barry had gone to dinner the previous night, and knowing the two of them, they’d gotten different meals and then split them. And she knew for a fact that Barry was at work right now, definitely not sick. Given the fact that she’d heard Iris telling Barry about a woman who could apparently bend steel in Star City, Nora had a sneaking suspicion that she knew where Iris was. And it was not home sick with food poisoning. Only one way to check – she took her phone out and dialled a number. “Hello?”

“Barry?”

“Oh, hey mom. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she said, leaning against the desk. “I was just wondering where Iris is.”

“Oh,” he said, and his voice jumped about an octave. “Is she not at work?”

“No, she says she’s got food poisoning.”

“Well, then, um, if she says she’s got food poisoning, she’s probably got food poisoning. You should probably just leave her be.”

“Because I was thinking, you guys got dinner together, right?”

“Yeah, but, um, you know, maybe she had something else? Like, maybe her milk went bad or something.”

“Hm. Maybe I should go visit her.”

“No!” he said quickly. “I, uh, I’ll go see her. Later. Since she’s at home with food poisoning. And all. And then you can go see her tomorrow.”

Nora sighed. “Bartholomew Henry Allen-”

“Gotta go, mom, morning rush!” he said quickly, cutting her off. “Love you, bye!”

She pinched her nose. She loved Iris like a daughter, but there was one aspect of their relationship that had always been strained – this idea of something impossible being responsible for her father’s death. Now, she had adored the Wests. Francine always used to get Barry books from the publisher she worked at, and Joe West never failed to patch Barry up when he inevitably fell from a tree or jumped off the jungle gym. So she was devastated, to say the least, when it turned out that Francine killed her husband in front of her kid. She remembered telling Barry that Iris was coming to live with them for a while, and how he helped to clean up the guest room, and led her to the room and made sure she got settled. But there was still the fact that her mother was a murderer and Iris refused to acknowledge it. Then came the arguments, and the therapists, which caused more arguments, until finally they’d reached some sort of wary compromise where they simply didn’t acknowledge it.

And Nora was grateful for Iris. There had been a time, when Henry had left and Malina had died, when she wondered what would happen to them, her and her boy, with all the sadness that was in the house. But Iris had brought a light with her that she never thought an eleven-year-old so beaten down by tragedy could, and it transformed their family. And aside from the constant chatter about the marvels of particle physics, science experiments that ended up with nougat all over her kitchen, and her penchant for eating brownies, she didn’t think she could imagine life without her.

The running off to find the impossible _did_ get a little tiring though.

Nora would yell at her when she got back. And then at Barry for covering for her, even though that was a habit they’d had since they were children. Usually their habits were harmless, even adorable, like the way they went to the movies together all the time and brought each other lunch at work – she just wished that those habits weren’t in danger of getting Iris fired. Or worse, sending to another therapist.

 “Good morning, detective!” a bright and cheery voice greeted her, jolting her out of her thoughts. Nora turned to see their newest hire, Detective Patty Spivot, smiling at her and holding out a cup of coffee. Nora took it. “Spivot. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you,” she smiled pleasantly back, and Nora resisted the urge to shake her head. Spivot was new, she had only started five days ago, but she already knew that the woman was top of her class for marksmanship at the academy, could speak several languages, and actually kept scores of her arrest. Nora took one look at her and started calling her ‘Model Behaviour’, which Iris thought was a little mean, but honestly, it was true. And did she have to be so damn _perky_?

“Do you need me for something?” she continued, walking to her desk. She needed to find Faye. Patty brightened.

“Well, I just wanted to talk to you about an arrest you made last year – Kyla Nimbus?”

“The mob enforcer?” Nora frowned. She moved things around on her desk, looking for something on the Mardon sisters. They were at large again and truthfully, she wanted them brought in. She was getting sick of seeing them in the news. Beside her, Patty nodded.

“I wanted to know how you brought her in, since she was probably incredibly well-protected and remarkably intelligent. I’d like to learn about that, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me ‘ma’am’, Spivot,” she said absently. “Um, Nimbus? Six months of planning, three gallons of coffee, and one very bullet-filled Tuesday night.” She started organising her desk a little more, picking up the picture of Barry and Iris that sat next to the one of her and Barry. “One day when I know you a little better, Spivot, because that story requires some really good whiskey.”

She studied the picture, smiling faintly. “They’re very close,” Patty said warmly, and Nora nodded.

“Yeah, they are. Been inseparable for two decades.”

Inseparable, and incredibly oblivious. She didn’t know which was worse – Iris not telling Barry how she felt about him even though it was completely obvious, or Barry not realising that the only woman he never got bored with was his best friend. She hoped one or both of them got their heads out of their asses soon; she wanted some damn grandkids before she was grey. Still, though, she loved their little family. They had been through a lot over the years.

And then came the lightning.

Nora was shaken when she got back to precinct, shaken and distracted. Her hands, stained with blood and leaves, were pale as they gripped the while.

Faye Chyre was dead.

Killed by the Mardons, right in front of her. A coroner had come, but Nora had wanted to get away from that place as soon as possible. Now she couldn’t breathe, and someone kept calling her. The only two calls she didn’t ignore when things like this happened were from Barry and Iris. And on a night like tonight, with the lightning storm and the explosion and the Mardon sisters getting away, why would Deidre be so impatient to call her?

She accosts her when she finally makes her way inside, her face uncharacteristically worried. “Dee,” she said tiredly. “I already gave the report-”

“Nora,” Deidre said, and her heart stopped. She didn’t know, at that point, not exactly, but there was something in her face that told her something was very, very wrong in her world. That was how she found herself at the hospital a few minutes later, running through the corridors shouting at someone to tell her where Iris was. She found Barry sitting with Iris’ broken glasses surrounded by a couple of nurses. “Barry? What – What happened? The hospital said-”

Barry opened his mouth but no sound came out, and then a nurse stepped forward. “Nora Allen? ”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Miss West was struck by lightning an hour ago, and it’s making her brain seize and her heart stop.”

Nora’s entire world seemed to tip, and Barry looks up, his eyes rimmed red. “She’s going to be okay, right? She – you have to save her.”

“I can’t say until she’s out of surgery.”

“But you have a plan, right? People survive being hit by lightning all the time.”

Nobody said anything, and then – “ _CLEAR_!”

She looked, and then her vision constricted to see Iris’ small form jerking up and down as they tried to start her heart again. Barry reached for her blindly, his voice shaking. “Mom?”

And Nora did the only thing she knew that always worked – she wrapped her arms around him and told him everything would be fine.

Even if she didn’t believe it.

***

**Nora – Present day**

“Barry, you’re going to make us late!”

“I’m not!”

“Bartholomew Henry Allen, if I get down there and see you’re _still_ doing your hair…”

He doesn’t reply and Nora rolls her eyes. Honestly, she will never understand Barry’s fascination with his own hair. He spends ages crafting it every morning, coating it in so much gel that it barely moves. She glances at her watch, biting her lip. Iris and Francine will be back from the airport soon, and they promised they would be there to pick them all up. Actually, everyone will be there – her, Barry, Chesca, Wally and Linda. That was their new normal, after everything.

Things got a little bit easier, after that first month. It is still jarring to have everyone talk about Patty as if she is the victim, because her mother died in the Battle of Calamity and then she had to move away. It’s also weird having Chesca come in and consult on the metahuman task force they’re starting up and giving information on how to make Iron Heights able to keep metahumans locked up. The weirdest thing, however, is not seeing Iris there all the time. She has been gone for a little under a month, using up some holiday time and compassionate leave, since according to the precinct she was shot in the Battle of Calamity and then her mother was released from prison. It’s ironic that the version they know is actually watered down of what really happened.

She is getting back to herself, Detective Nora Allen. She can sleep without staring at her walls, can go to work without staring at her former partner’s desk. The partner that came into her home and almost destroyed everything she held dear. The city is rebuilding too – repairing the buildings that have been destroyed, nursing the people who were injured.

And waiting for Miss Miracle to return.

Nora even has a new partner, who she met today. Julio Mendez, a handsome young man who transferred from Coast City. Thankfully he’s not as overly eager as Patty. Or Thalia.

Whatever.

Nora picks up her watch, and her eyes fall on her jewellery box. She knows that if she opens the false back, she’ll find the gold wedding band and the diamond engagement ring (she’s always wondered how a grad student could afford a diamond ring, but now she knows), neither of which she could ever bring herself to throw away. It’s funny, looking back. All of that stuff – finding out Henry wasn’t who he said he was, then finding out his actions had put them in danger – all seems like it happened to someone else. After those first interrogations, Iris had refused to let either Waller or Henry talk to them directly. Not that Nora wanted to, and she’s still fairly certain Barry would have destroyed him with a look if they were in the same room.

He looks the same.

Same way of moving, same curious eyes, same steadiness – though she has no idea how much of that is pretend and how much is natural. He kept trying to look at her, kept trying to gauge her reaction, but she couldn’t do it. Because if he did it would have all come out, twenty years of hurt and anger, of raising Barry and then Iris by herself, of watching her little boy wonder why his father never loved him enough to stay. But he is gone now, Iris promised. She hasn’t told them about the specifics of what she agreed to with them, but they left them all alone and are now concentrating on finding Thalia. She’s not sure if she cares, though. She just wants her family to be whole and healthy and safe again.

Nora makes her way downstairs where Barry is indeed fixing his hair in front of a mirror. She declines to mention what it means that Barry got up early this morning to remind her about Iris coming back from the airport every five minutes, spent ages picking an outfit, and is now doing his hair. It’s partly because she’s supposed to be letting them figure things out on their own, but mostly it’s because she knows he isn’t ready yet.

She doesn’t hate Thalia Thawne for almost killing her. No, what she hates her for, apart from shooting Iris and then making sure Wally had to reopen the healed wound to clean out any infection, is what she’s done to Barry. For a while, too long, her brave, beautiful, loving boy was a shell of his former self. He talks less, goes out less. She sometimes catches him staring at nothing, and then when she taps him on the arm or shoulder he jumps, and she catches the sliver of fear in his eyes. He hangs out with Linda, Chesca and Wally (as much as someone _can_ hang out with a surgeon, anyway), but he is still more subdued than he’s ever been. And she has no doubt that dating someone else is the last thing on his mind.

“How many times can you put gel in your hair before it starts to repel the stuff?” she asks, and he laughs.

“Funny, mom. Are you ready? Because we could hit traffic, or her flight could come in early, and we have to get Chesca-”

“It is a Sunday in the middle of September, and when do flights _ever_ get here early?”

Barry shrugs, turning away from the mirror. “Yeah, I guess. But it’s Iris, you know? I…I miss her. With everything that’s been going on, it feels weird not having her around.”

“I know,” she sighs. Being Barry and Iris, they Skype and text and call each other every day, but there’s nothing like physically talking to your best friend. Nora knows it was for the best – Iris completely burned herself out as Miss Miracle this year, and even though she’s seen a golden blur running around when a metahuman made an appearance in the last few weeks, she has mostly stuck to taking a break while her mother travels. She rubs his back. “I’ve missed her, too.”

Barry’s eyes stray to the boxes in the corner, which came from his apartment after Waller’s agents searched it. They’ve been there for a while, and she knows he can’t quite bring himself to go through them. “I’ll move those,” he says quietly. “When we get back, or-”

“It’s okay, honey.” And Nora pulls him into a hug; after a second, he reciprocates. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

And this time, as they get in the car on the way to get Chesca, she knows it’s true.

 

**Chesca – April 2014**

Chesca Ramon had done some insane things in her twenty-three years. One time, she built a toy car out of spare parts. Or the time she hot-wired her father’s radio to receive broadcasts from Central City Airport. But her favourite was probably the time                         she’d managed to modify her remote-control helicopter so that it dropped water balloons on Danita. She didn’t even care that much that she got into trouble. But this?

Running through a STAR Labs facility with a masked maniac chasing after them with a sword?

This was new.

It hadn’t started out that way. She and Colin had come here to clear out what they could from their storage facility in STAR Labs, since nobody really trusted them anymore. They would be taking some stuff back to Dr Wells, and then they’d leave everything else to be sold so they could at least run the place while they figured out what to do next.

“This,” Chesca breathed as she walked around the starkly-lit warehouse floor, “is the combined inventory of every scientist that’s ever worked at STAR Labs. All housed right in here. I hereby christen this building ‘the bomb’.”

Colin gave her his trademark sceptical look from the computers. “Nobody says that anymore.”

“I say it, Dr Frost. I define my own cool. I still can’t believe Dr Wells is shutting this place down.”

“STAR Labs blew a hole in the city – it’s not surprising that Star City want to kick us out of this place. It’s not like we’re the poster children for ‘let us store our prototypes in your warehouses, we promise they won’t explode’.”

Chesca sighed. “That was an accident.”

“Try telling that to the families of the people who died. Try telling that to _Barry_.”

She didn’t have a reply to that. She was sad about everyone who had died, of course she was, but there was something about Iris West that made the whole thing even sadder. Perhaps it was because Dr Wells had taken it upon herself to help the young CSI. Or maybe it was Barry and Nora, who came by to visit every day in the hopes that she would wake up. The West-Allen family were probably the most broken about this whole thing than anyone she had ever seen, maybe because their pain would not end. Iris wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t alive, either. She’d been in a coma since Christmas, and while they had ensured that the hospital didn’t withdraw life support, she didn’t know when she would wake up. _If_ she would wake up.

“Or maybe,” she tried, thinking of Ronnie, “you can try telling that to yourself?”

Colin pursed his lips, his button-brown eyes the only hint of any sadness. “Look, Chess, let’s just finish this inventory so we can go home, okay?”

She nodded and then frowned as they heard a clanking noise. Colin gave her a confused look. “I thought we were the only ones here…”

They approached the source of the noise cautiously, careful not to make too much noise. Chesca breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was just a security woman eyeing them as they approached. “Hey, we’ll be done soon,” she assured her kindly. The woman didn’t move, and a strange gurgling noise came from her throat. She frowned. “You getting a bad vibe off this guy?”

Colin stepped forward, his hand ghosting her arm. “Chess…Chess!”

She let out a little shriek as blood bubbled from the woman’s mouth, staining her face red, and she collapsed. Then a figure stepped out from the shadows – a woman, clad in black armour with a mask that was half orange and half black. She seemed to be wearing several weapons, from daggers to guns, and as they watched she unsheathed a large sword from her back.

Neither waited. “Run,” Colin ordered, grabbing her arm. “Chess, _run_!”

The masked woman growled something as she strode towards them. “What was that?” Colin wanted to know, and Chesca pulled him along behind her.

“I don’t know, but it probably wasn’t ‘Hey, it’s just an early Halloween costume!’”

They kept running but the fact that the woman was just stalking slowly was scarier than if she’d been running. They came to a set of containers behind a chain fence and Colin pulled her inside. “Help me,” he said shortly. “All of this stuff? It belonged to Alice Light. Wells fired her two years ago.”

Chesca had never heard of her before. “Why?”

“Because she was a psycho.” He pulled out what looked like a large gun. “Please tell me you know how to work this.”

So that was how Chesca found herself watching Colin carefully, waiting for his signal as they heard the woman coming around the corner. It was an energy blaster, albeit a very powerful one, and she had probably done the craziest thing ever in that she had reprogrammed it. But it was hot and heavy in her hands, and she kind of wanted to drop it and run away. Then she felt the woman approach – her presence seemed to disturb the air. “I take back what I said,” she growled, unsheathing her sword with a _snick_. “I’ll make this quick.”

“ _Now_!” Colin shouted, and he ducked out of the way. In the same second, Chesca leapt out and shot the gun at her, the pulsing energy slamming her back into the wall. But the gun sparked and chirped, and she dropped it. “You okay?” Colin demanded. She nodded, speechless, and he dragged her off out of the warehouse, not letting them stop until they got to the Star City subsidiary of STAR Labs. He looked after her, getting her some water and a power bar from somewhere, and the next time she looked up, there were police swirling around them asking questions. After a while, she saw a familiar face and both of them stood.

Freddie Smoak, tall and blonde and in his blue-rimmed glasses, approached them, a worried look on his face. A tall, brown-skinned woman was with them, and they navigated everything with ease. “Freddie?”

“Chesca, Colin,” he sighed in relief. “Are you okay? She didn’t hurt you, did she?”

Chesca raised her eyebrows at the thought that Freddie knew of this woman. Colin, apparently, had the same idea.

“You said ‘she’ twice. Do you know who attacked us? The lunatic with the mask and the _sword_?

Freddie’s mouth opened and closed. “Um,” he said intelligently. Colin gave him an unimpressed look, and Chesca usually tried to avoid that look coming from him. “Um, see, because I heard, on the – radio – that the person who attacked you had lady parts, so…”

“Ahem,” the woman said. She like Chesca, seemed barely able to hold back a laugh. “I’m Joanna Diggle, I work security for Queen Consolidated. Do you have any idea what the masked woman may have taken? An industrial centrifuge, by any chance?”

Ooh. Not gonna happen. “No,” Colin said shortly. “It’s a secret.”

“What kind of secret?” Freddie asked.

“The kind I have to keep.”

“Does Chesca have to keep it, too?”

“Yes, she does.”

Freddie seemed to give up, and she had no doubt he’d find his way somewhere else. “Anyway, I’m just glad you guys are okay. How’s Iris doing?”

The slightly hostile look dropped off his face. “She’s the same.”

Freddie’s face fell and he turned to Joanna. “Iris’ condition deteriorated, so they moved her to STAR Labs to look after her. That’s where I met these two. Well,” he said, “I’ll come visit, again, as soon as I can.”

Chesca grinned. “That’d be cool. Don’t worry, though, Iris gets a lot of visitors. Barry’s there, like, all the time.”

Freddie turned back to him. “Barry?”

Too late, Chesca remembered that Barry himself told her that Iris was kind of maybe dating Freddie when she got hit by lightning. “He’s…” she turned back to Colin, who gave her a look like, ‘you’re own your own, honey’. “…her, um…” Because it was weird. Detective Allen was kind of like her mom, even though hers was still alive. But Barry definitely wasn’t her brother. Iris’ iPhone wallpaper was a picture of the two of them, and the way he spoke to her even in the coma, his voice soft and low and tender, was the reason she kept asking whether they were a couple. And he _sang_ to her. “… _something_.”

Later, when they were in the van on the way back, Colin looked at her. “So when Iris wakes up she’s going to have to deal with the mess you made of her love life?”

“Look, I was being friendly. Besides, isn’t that detective interested in him? The really tall blonde?”

“The incessantly happy one?”

“I think that’s because you’re allergic to joy.”

“Who is that perky _all the time_?”

They checked on Iris when they arrived, with Colin checking her blood pressure, vitals and brain activity. She had become a little like Barry, hoping that every time they came in to work or arrived from their lunch break they’d find Iris sitting up and wondering why she was in this lab. But no, she was still sleeping. Colin went to the terminals and went over his plans to get her to wake up, and Chesca walked back to her workroom. They worked in silence for a couple of hours, the only sound the beeping from Iris’ heart monitor and Chesca’s _The Walking Dead_ podcast.

It hadn’t always been like this. Before the explosion, there would be half a dozen people flitting through the Cortex alone, all anxious to get time with Dr Wells. There’d be experiments in every room, computer screens in all the theatres, and people excitedly boasting of what they were working on in the corridor. Her first day, she’d almost thrown up all over her dress, she was so nervous.

That was until she met Colin, of course. She was about three seconds away from looking for some duct tape to shut Hailey Rathaway up (a reaction, Colin later assured her, that was completely normal), when he walked up with a cheerful smile and introduced himself. It was the eyes, she noted. Warm and friendly and open, despite the nickname that Ronnie, his fiancée, gave him – Dr Frost.

But that was a long time ago. Now, there was only silence.

“What are you working on?”

Chesca jumped. “We’re getting you a bell, you know.”

He smiled a little, and she was grateful that at least he was doing that a little more often. Back when Ronnie died, his expression barely changed at all. “Sorry.”

“It’s a modified version of firefighter outfits,” she explained. “I’ve updated the material from Aramid, so it’s more heat-resistant and durable – I used the stuff from what everyone wore when they investigated…you know, the Pipeline. And I’ve even got gloves and boots.”

“Why the colour? Why gold?”

Chesca shrugged. It had just jumped out at her when she was putting the outfit together, really. “It was pretty. If I ever get to present it to the CCFD, I’ll change it back to firefighter red.” She paused and then grinned. “You think the Green Arrow ever has to think about this? Like, making her outfit heat-resistant?”

“I’d hope so,” he snorted, “since she likes to jump out of buildings and into fires and in the way of bullets.”

“Right,” she sighed dreamily. “But seriously, how cool would it be to work for a superhero?”

“Well, you never know,” he shrugged. “Central City could get its own version of the Green Arrow, and who knows? Maybe she’ll take requests on her costume.”

“Colin Snow, as I live and breathe,” she said in surprise. “Optimism? Hath hell frozen over?”

“Whatever,” he laughed. “Listen, I’m not done here yet, but do you want to get dinner afterwards?”

“Ooh, great idea. Korean?”

“You read my mind. You almost done?”

“I have to go see Dr Wells,” she told him, “but after that, I’m all yours. Or more importantly, I’m all Mama Choi’s.”

Dr Wells was in her office downstairs when Chesca found her, her modified wheelchair facing away from her. She was still getting used to the fact that the woman could no longer walk; she was used to the doctor striding around this building, her building, with purpose. Now, like the rest of the building, she was still and usually silence.

“Miss Ramon,” she said pleasantly, without turning around. “Everything alright?”

“Peachy,” she said. “I just, um, wanted you to look at the suit I was designing, because I feel like I’m sacrificing aerodynamics for durability, you know?” She paused and rubbed one of her bracelets. “I know it’s just a side-project, and I’m sure you’re busy, but-”

“I will never be too busy to see what you’re working on, Miss Ramon,” she said, turning around. “After all, you never know when that might come in handy.”

“For the Fire Department?”

“Yes. For the Fire Department.”

Chesca studied her, trying to work out how to feel about this woman. Before the explosion it had been simple – she was someone to admire, to follow, and someone to protect her from her family’s rejection of her scientific mind by nurturing it after STAR Labs. But then after the explosion it was like their roles switched: now Chesca and Colin were the protectors, defending her as the lawsuits and the controversy and everything shutting down got worse and worse. Chesca defended her to all the people she knew, defended her right to keep her job, her right to keep believing in something, Sometimes, though, she looked at Iris, small and alone in her hospital bed, and wondered whether it was worth it.

But then Dr Wells was small and alone, just in a different way. She had no family, her friends had abandoned her. Colin did her physical therapy, she had lawyers, and they all had patents to fill, but that was nothing. All she had were Colin and Chesca. So even though she had caused all this trouble, she was still a victim.

Wasn’t she?

“Well, I appreciate it,” she continued brightly, back in the present. “Sometimes you just want some direction, you know?”

“Yes, well, I have no doubt, Chesca, that you will achieve great things with or without my direction,” she smiled. Chesca looked at her, her blue eyes and wavy dark hair, and decided that she did not care what everyone said. Nobody deserved to be abandoned. She nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? We have a Godfather marathon.”

Chesca left her then, chuckling to herself, and found Colin in the corridor. He handed her the jacket she’d brought and her bag, before helping her get into it. As he did so, his hands brushed up against hers and she recoiled. “Okay, no,” she said. “We are not getting you a bell. _We’re getting you mittens_.”

Colin laughed.

 

**Chesca – present day**

Chesca hates the coffee at The Bean Palace. She also hates their muffins – half of them are healthy and the other half have no variety. Actually, she hates everything about this place, because it’s not Jitters. There is no Iris scrambling to get her Americano and dash out again, there’s no Barry working on a story in the corner in his headphones, no Linda and Wally sharing a mint cocoa and a plate of cookies. There’s none of that, because there’s no Jitters, because it was destroyed in the singularity.

Still, Chesca orders her mocha and a panini, before settling in her usual booth to sort through some admin stuff. Oh yeah. As the co-owner of STAR Labs, she has _admin_ stuff now. Even though neither her nor Iris have stepped foot in that building since the day Dr Wells was arrested. She has to get through at least some of it before Linda gets here, because she wants to swing by the paper and check on Barry. Iris is handling the bills and stuff, since the whole photographic memory thing actually lends itself pretty well to that kind of thing, but Chesca is the one who writes to their developers and the people to whom they own projects, as well as deciding what to pursue next.

Chesca works diligently, sending emails and marking letters for discussion with Iris for when she gets back, trying to will away the feeling that this is _wrong_ , that there should be two other people here with her. But she can’t have that. She never had that, she corrects herself bitterly, because those people never existed. It still hits her, even months later, that her entire friendship with the two most important people in her life had been a lie. One of them had been using her, and the other hadn’t even been herself. The thought makes her shiver, but the worst part is how _good_ at it he was. Barry explained everything to him, how manipulative he was and how he did it, and there had been real fear in his words that she connected with, because it was _Colin_. He had a pocketsquare and allergies. He was grumpy and boring. And he was an utter psycho.

She doesn’t know where he is or if he’s watching them (‘I don’t know any other way to describe it,’ Iris had said a few nights before she left, ‘he literally vanished into thin air’), but that barely makes her feel better. Because he got away, the people he kidnapped to manipulate the metahumans are still missing, and Dr Wells is in prison god knows where. Sweet, kind-hearted Dr Wells who’d been destroyed by greed and someone else’s obsession with power. It still makes her cry, alone in her apartment when she gets home from work.

(Also, she misses Eddie. A lot. Except she hasn’t told anyone that yet.)

“There she is,” Linda says, sitting down with a flat white and a cronut. “What’s up, Chess?”

She lifts a shoulder ina half-shrug. “Same old, same old. You?”

“Got a new boss, finally.”

That’s right, because Eleanor had been Linda’s boss. That didn’t make the whole ordeal more terrifying, or anything. “And she’s a little more generous with her lunch breaks, so hit me with your best shot.”

“Well, I think _this_ should be the design for each cell, and the north wing would be perfect for that,” she explains. “It has enough space for the generator, since we need that to power the cells – it keeps them from using their powers.”

“Awesome. And the metahuman task force?”

“All the stuff you guys will have to make is right here,” she answers, handing her a file of specs. Linda raises her eyebrows at the size and Chesca clears her throat. “I like,” she says primly, “to be thorough.”

“I can see that,” Linda laughs. These are just two of things keeping her busy – working with Wayne Industries to outfit Iron Heights with cells that could take metahumans, and working as a consultant for CCPD on the metahuman task force they’re coming up with. It’s well-known that STAR Labs have expertise on metahumans, given that they created them, so it makes sense for Chesca to help. Plus it makes her forget that her best friend did this whole thing on purpose to fuck with Iris’ life so badly she’d become a metahuman whose powers he could steal. Linda rifles through everything and a flyer floats out.

“Miss Miracle Day,” she says quietly. She fingers the glossy surface, biting her lip. “Is she going?”

But Chesca shakes her head. “Don’t think so. With everything that’s happened…I just don’t think she’s up to it, you know? I asked, but…”

Miss Miracle Day has the whole city excited, five months after the singularity. One of the only images of the night is Iris defeating Dr Wells, and then when Barry reported Miss Miracle saying that Calamity was gone for good, everyone went into celebration mode. There’s going to be a parade and a speech, where the Mayor wants to present her with the key to the city. Chesca knows that Iris must know about it, since she comes back when a metahuman has been spotted so she can put them back in prison, so she must have seen the posters and the flyers and the hashtags. Anyway, they’ll find out tomorrow, when she comes back from New Orleans and wherever she and her mother have been travelling.

A lot of things have changed in the month that Iris has been gone, Chesca thinks as she makes her way to the paper. First of all, her parents and sister are actually being nice to her, which is the biggest indicator that she still must be seriously depressed. Her father calls her every night to make sure she’s alright, and her mother keeps making her quesadillas. Also, the weirdest thing? Danita. She keeps taking her shopping and watching movies with her and coming over to clean her apartment. Finally, she had to tell her that she’s fine, even though she’s not. Danita’s still cleaning everything anyway.

More things have changed. She’s working with Barry to develop a metahuman alert app that works in conjunction with his blog, since he’s still the only person in Central City with any authority on metahumans to whom anyone will listen. There’s Nora’s new partner, Julio Mendez (and Chesca got Freddie to do a thorough background check on him and he’s clean), who’s nice and capable and really, really hot. Except Nora keeps muttering that no one better fall in love with this one.

CCPN is the same, though. And Barry, who has always been so kind to her, is almost back to normal. Because as badly as Colin betrayed her, betrayed all of them, what Patty did was worse. Because she made Barry love her, and she almost killed him. And it’s not even anything to do with her thinking that Barry and Iris are completely perfect for one another, either. She just hates the woman who hurt her friend. But he’s smiling now as she walks in, looking up from his work as she sits down at his desk.

“Hey, Chess,” he says pleasantly. “How’s your day?”

“I was just at the Bean Palace.”

“Ouch. Their coffee _sucks_.”

“Right? Linda and I were there and I almost cursed the waitress in Dothraki for whatever the hell she gave me, because it wasn’t coffee.”

Barry chuckles. “Never change, Chesca Ramon.”

She laughs as well and her eyes fall on Barry’s desk, which is neat and organised, with one side of it filled with pictures of postcards from Iris. He sees her watching and turns back to her. “Hey, are you free tomorrow?”

“Barring any stupid emails I have to send, free as a bird. Why?”

“Well, Iris is coming back tomorrow and we’re going to meet her at the airport. Want to come?”

Chesca nods, grinning. “Sure! I can’t wait to see what she got me. Do you think she remembered?”

“You called her every day to remind her,” he points out, “I don’t think she forgot.”

“You’d be surprised. You know how many times she almost walked out of STAR Labs still wearing her costume? Anyway,” she says, shaking her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Barry gets up to hug her, and that’s when it happens.

Everything goes eerily silent – no, not silent, like she’s hearing everything through a tunnel. And it’s dark, not pitch black, but the only light is unsteady, floating around the room like the ground is tipping. A voice disturbs the air, one familiar to her.

_…much weirder things in this city, Mendez, believe me…_

Chesca has no doubt that Nora is somewhere in the precinct talking to her new partner, but as quickly as it comes, it disappears. Barry, green eyes curious, peers at her. “Everything okay, Chess?”

“Yeah!” she says brightly. “Yeah, I just remembered something. Call me about tomorrow, alright?”

She leaves quickly after he wishes her goodbye, stopping on the pavement to catch her breath. It started a few weeks ago, while she was visiting Linda at work. One minute they’re talking, and the next she’s tapped Linda on the shoulder and she can see Wally telling his surgical residents how to do something. It happens sporadically, but always the same, always touching someone and seeing somewhere _else_ , and it’s the biggest change of all.

 

**Iris – October 2014**

“… _I love you like ‘XO’, you love me like ‘XO’_ …”

“What are you doing?”

“She likes this song.”

“It came out _after_ she went into the coma.”

“Barry says she likes Beyoncé. And really, who doesn’t? I’d come out of a coma for-”

That was the moment, Chesca Ramon told her later, Iris Ann West gasped awake after nine months. “Where am I?”

The first thing she saw was a pretty Hispanic woman with a headset and a serious man who was holding a doctor’s light like the one her father used to have. Or at least, that’s what she was guessing they were. Without her glasses, they both looked like blurs. “She’s up!” the woman grinned. The man walked towards her, trying to get past her flailing arms as she tried to orient herself, while the woman called someone on an intercom. “Who are you two?”

“…pupils equally reactive to light. Hey, look at me. _Look at me_.”

“I can’t _do_ that, jackass,” Iris snapped, fear making her rude, “ _I don’t have my glasses_.”

“Ah.” The doctor-man handed her the frames and she wiped them before putting them on. He came into sharper focus then, and she sighed in relief. “Better?” he asked.

“Better.”

“Good. I need you to urinate in this.”

“ _What_?”

“COLIN.” The woman hit him in the arm and took the cup away from him. “Not this second! Honestly.”

“Okay,” Iris said shakily. “This is no longer cute, so the two of you better tell me what’s going on. Where the hell am I?”

And when Iris heard the answer, and the woman who gave it, she knew her life would never be the same again.

“STAR Labs,” Dr Helena Wells answered, wheeling inside. “Welcome back, Miss West.”

Dr Wells – _Dr Helena Amelie Wells_ – told her everything then, how the Accelerator exploded, how that put dark matter in the air, and how that turned into the lightning bolt that struck her. And she was all willing to ask more questions and marvel at the fact that Dr Wells saved her life, but then-

“Detective Allen and her son gave me permission to move you here, where we were able to stabilise you.”

All other thoughts completely left her head as she thought of her best friend who happened to be the love of her life even though he didn’t know it yet. “Barry?”

“Yes,” she replied. Dr Wells gave her an amused smile. “He came to visit you…quite often.”

It was Tuesday, right? Barry always worked Tuesday. “He doesn’t talk much,” Colin mused, and Chesca rolled her eyes.

“His best friend was in a coma, Dr Frost. Besides, he always brought us coffee.”

“True.”

Iris could barely hear them. Red dress. Barry liked red, it was his favourite colour. And she had to do her hair, even though apparently they’d managed to maintain it while she was asleep. “I have to go,” she said quickly, looking around for her stuff. As she stuffed her keys and phone in her pockets, the other three shared frantic looks.

“Wait, we still have to do some tests on you!” Colin told her.

“He’s right, we don’t know what could have changed,” Dr Wells added, but Iris was looking for her shoes.

“I feel fine – really, just, um…I’ll call you if there’s any problem.” She looked around, not seeing her close, and bit her lip. “I can keep the sweatshirt, right?”

“Yes. You can keep the sweatshirt.”

So about an hour later she was walking through the doors to Jitters, her heart thundering wildly in her chest and her face breaking into a helpless grin at the thought of seeing Barry again. Because that was the first thing she thought of when they said his name, since she was still kind of in December, when she’d decided she was finally going to tell Barry she loved him. But then – lightning. She’d tell him soon, though. She’d almost died, according to Dr Wells, and nine months was more than enough time to wait.

Iris grinned wider when Barry recognised her standing there, moving towards her with his arms out, and she leapt into them, breathing in his Barry smell as he lifted her off her feet and hugged her close.

“You’re awake,” he breathed, looking her up and down, and she smiled how happy he was. “They didn’t – No one called-”

“I just woke up,” she said, smiling up at him radiantly.

“Wait, should you even be walking? Why are you on your feet?”

“Barry, I’m okay,” she shrugged. He frowned at her, his brow furrowed.

“They- They said that your brain might have…deficits,” he said quietly. “That you could forget how to walk or forget your life or forget me…”

Because Barry was worried; he always worried about her, even though he usually tried not to show it. Iris placed her hands on his face (wow, did the lightning make her brave?), tilting it down slightly so she could study it. “Green eyes, big smile, goofy hair,” she said in a mock-serious tone, and smiled, her heart lifting. “How could I ever forget you, Barry?”

That was the time of the first miracle.

Nothing seemed to change, and nothing looked different, but it _felt_ different. Because her brain seemed to buzz in her skull and it felt like she had a million arms, and it was telling her she could grab the cup that Tyler dropped, even though that wasn’t possible.

Was it?

But it was fine after that. Maybe it was an adverse reaction to the lightning or something, because didn’t lightning affect your brain? It had certainly caused the coma. But then came the second miracle, when she saw that girl trying to go for someone’s gun, and she was _certain_ she moved it that time, certain she moved it with her mind somehow. She left it like it was another limb. When she left Barry in the precinct, promising that she’d see him tomorrow, the third miracle happened.

She teleported.

One minute she was outside by a car, and the next she was on the other side of the street. She patted herself down, checking for injuries, and looked back to where she once was. Then she did it again, back to the alley behind the precinct, and a slow smile spread across her face. “ _Cool_.”

Iris then took two steps forward before her mind started to explode. Everyone was talking, conversations shooting through her mind at top speed, coming from all different directions. It wasn’t long before she realised that they were people’s _thoughts_ , flitting around their brains, only now she could hear them. They hit her like ping pong balls, and it wasn’t long before her head was pounding with all the noise. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, trying not to whimper with the pain and confusion.

“Um, Miss?” someone asked. It was a laundry worker, lightly touching her shoulder. “Are you okay? Is there someone I can call?”

“I – I don’t…” _Barry_. Barry was the first person on her emergency contact list, and his face was the first that came into her mind. But he wouldn’t be able to help her with this. She was about to say that, but then she realised that the voices had stopped. “…no. No, thank you.”

Iris walked quickly away, fishing in her pocket for her phone while trying to keep Barry’s smiling face in her mind. Apparently it kept the voices at bay. She dialled the number for STAR Labs and waited. Colin picked up. “Dr Snow? I think I need you to help me.”

 

**Iris – present day**

Luckily, Iris is much better at blocking out the voices. And she’s nowhere near as trusting – what a difference a year makes. Which is good, because she’s walking through the French quarter farmer’s market in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday, and it’s loud as hell. She doesn’t need to hear everyone’s thoughts as well as their voices as they shop for food. Her grandmother wants to make Shrimp Creole and pound cake (one of the reasons she loves it here: her grandmother makes enough food for ten people and is gratified that Iris eats all of it), so she is going to meet her mother, right after she finishes visiting her sisters, so they can shop together. Because they can do that now.

It wasn’t like that when they first came, when they swapped Central City’s summer breezes for New Orleans’ sweltering heat. She had been nervous about meeting the grandmother who had all but disowned her after her mother went to prison, which was probably made easier since she had three other children. However, after a few days, and a _lot_ of food, they warmed up to each other. Mama Ida (because that’s what Iris is supposed to call her) has this wonderful habit of greeting her with biscuits and honey or crab cakes whenever she sees her, but it’s not because she knows Iris is a metahuman. She’s just Southern.

Iris takes a swig from the iced tea her grandmother packed her and looks around. New Orleans is beautiful, she’s realising, with all the old mixed in with the new, and yes, it’s supposed to be haunted and she’s gotten Chesca souvenirs from all those places, but still. She’s sorry to be leaving in a few days, and Barry would love it here.

“Hey, baby,” her mother says, coming into view, and Iris reaches up to hug her automatically. Her mother smiles at her, pushing her dark curls out of her eyes. “Is that ever going to get old?”

“Nope,” she replies simply, and her mother laughs, before linking arms with her and walking through the market. It is times like this Iris treasures, because whereas anyone else in their mid-twenties would probably be more than a little embarrassed at holding their mom’s hand in the middle of the street, Iris doesn’t care. She never had this, growing up, so she’ll savour this for the rest of her life. It has been weeks of this, of shopping and cooking and talking with her, eager to spill all the details of her life that she never could because of the Plexiglass. They went on a road trip last week to Washington, D.C., playing her dad’s old records in the car, which is the kind of bittersweet she can swallow, at least.

Still, it hasn’t been easy. That first couple of weeks, she was a mess. Everything with Calamity and then Killer Frost and losing her mind to the rage, before everyone locked her in the Pipeline, still catches up with her. She had a nightmare in the first week, crying and whimpering in her sleep, and she is grateful that it wasn’t so bad that the shutters didn’t start shaking. Her mother burst in just as she had shaken herself awake. “Iris? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it – yeah,” she’d said, sighing. That time it was Firestorm, burning her from the inside out. That was new. “I’m fine. Sorry I woke you.” She’d rubbed her eyes and found her glasses just as her grandmother had ambled up, a fresh cup of cocoa in her hands along with the cookies she’d made at lunch.

“You okay, baby?”

“I’m fine, Mama Ida – you didn’t have to-”

“Shush,” she’d admonished, laying them down on the bedside table. She’d kissed Iris on the forehead, careful not to disturb her wrapped hair, before wishing them both goodnight and giving her mother a meaningful look before she left. Her grandmother knows that she was in the Battle of Calamity and that’s why she had so much time off, but she doesn’t know she’s Miss Miracle. Her mother does though, and that was why she’d pinned her with that look.

“I can call someone, if you-”

“No, it’s okay.” The only person who can help her is locked up in a bunker somewhere, so she’d promised to drink the cocoa before her mother when back to sleep. She did, however, call her go-to for cheering up. It had been just after midnight in Louisiana so it was still ten in Central City, and if she knew her best friend, he was still awake.

“I don’t get it,” Barry had answered without preamble.

“Barry, I don’t understand what you’re not getting.”

“These people,” he’d said, “just stand around baking things, Iris. I’m quitting.”

“You’re on the first episode,” she’d said, “you’re not allowed to quit. I watched all of _The Sopranos_ for you, you can watch a few episodes of _The Great British Baking Show_.”

He’d huffed. “Okay. Jesus, who’s the guy with the icy eyes? ...Okay, chocolate brownies, that’s what I like to see. God, these comedians are hilarious, they keep making dirty puns.”

“Told you. Besides, it’s just until _Downton Abbey_ comes back and I can get my British accent fix somewhere else.”

“Hm, that wasn’t a good idea, decorating them like that. Wait, what the fuck is a Bakewell tart?”

Iris had sat up excitedly, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Barry, they are _so good_ , it’s like almonds and frosting and pastry. I got one from the international food market.”

“Are you sure?” he’d said sceptically. “Because it sounds like a prostitute who bakes.”

She had laughed at that, and they sat in comfortable silence until he’d asked, much quieter, “Nightmare?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yesterday, but it wasn’t that bad, that’s why I didn’t call. What happened?”

She’d picked at her bed linens. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Should we talk more about cake? I think they’re making pie.”

“Pie is good.”

Iris is grateful for those calls in the middle of the night, because they both needed them. Sometimes Barry would call her, and they rarely talked about it because there was nothing much to say, but it’s comforting to have someone on the other end of the phone. Especially since they’re going through much of the same thing. At first it was almost every day, but now it’s a little less, perhaps only once or twice a week. She supposes this is what recovery looks like. Plus, he is her Barry. He’s always been her lifeline.

“We need paprika for the seasoning,” her mother says absently, and Iris goes to retrieve it. Just as she’s putting it in the basket, her watch starts to beep insistently, and her phone shows an alert. _Metahuman spotted – Water Tower_. She looks at her mother, who’s already nodding. “Ladies room on the left next to the vegetables.”

Iris nods and strides quickly away into the bathroom. She has exactly five minutes to do this, but after almost a month away from home, she has this down to a science. She just hopes this isn’t a new metahuman. She teleports home to her apartment, and uses a new trick she learned to get into her outfit within seconds, before getting to the scene of the crime. She smiles to herself, despite all the people running away from Kyla Nimbus, because she knows how to defeat this one. Apparently the metahumans that escaped from the Pipeline think that Miss Miracle is gone for good.

Fat chance.

It’s the same as last time – rapidly teleporting in a five-point star around her to create a vortex that starves her of oxygen, knocking her out, and then Iris takes her to the precinct. Everyone’s mostly used to this, but the novelty of a masked woman in a golden costume casually dropping off a criminal is hard to shake. Captain Singh, back from her honeymoon, is the one who sees them, her eyes widening when she recognises the criminal. “Nimbus?”

“That’s her,” Iris confirms, and she nods.

“Someone get Ramon on the phone.”

“She’s been asking for a badge, ma’am.”

“And when she goes through ten months of academy training, she can get one.”

Iris smiles behind the mask and then spots Nora, rifling through some files on the desk. She nods slightly at her, before teleporting. She is back in the farmer’s market in about seven minutes (maybe all the rice at lunch made her sluggish), and re-joins her mother so they can continue with the shopping. “So have you talked to the real-estate agent?” she asks. Her mother nods.

“She’s very enthusiastic, but I guess that’s because of the size of the settlement,” she admits. That’s true, at least. Wrongful convictions came with a pretty big settlement, especially because her mother would have made quite a lot of money as a publishing director in the fourteen years that she’d been in prison. “She has some appointments set up for us, but we have to get the criminal record expunged first, so I can get a bank account.”

It’s little things like that, Iris is realising, that will help them get back to normal. The conviction was overturned, but her mother went into prison under a different president, before 9/11, and in a completely different time. She has to re-enter society. Iris has to take her to counsellor meetings as well as go to some herself, they have to get her a passport and a driving license… But this is good, she knows it is. It’s everything she’s ever wanted.

They go back home eventually, and Iris sits in the kitchen by the fan as her grandmother cooks and her mother helps. “What are your plans for tomorrow, baby girl?”

“I was thinking I’d just walk around the city again,” she answers vaguely, wiping her glasses. “It’s really beautiful and I need to get souvenirs for everyone.”

“You sure you don’t want to come with us to visit your uncle?” her grandmother asks, but Iris shakes her head. She’s still a little wary of them, the people who abandoned her when her father died, so she’s still keeping her distance. “No, it’s cool. I’d probably just freak them all out with all my CSI talk anyway.”

As they speak, a breaking news segment comes on the small television on the counter, and Iris sees herself fighting the Mist as people run away, before she teleports him back to the station. Her grandmother shakes her head as she stirs tomatoes and bell peppers. “I don’t know how you did it, living in that city.”

Her mother gives Iris a small, knowing smile as she peels shrimp. “It’s a lot safer than you think, mama.”

“Are you going to that party? That Miss Miracle Day thing?”

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” Iris shrugs, not looking at either of them. “I’ll probably have work that day, anyway, and I have a lot to catch up on…”

Her mother is looking at her, but she pretends not to see it. She knows about Miss Miracle Day, of course she does. Not only is everyone on her social media excited about it (she keeps seeing #MMDay everywhere), but Nora, Chesca and Wally have all asked her whether she’s going or not. But she doesn’t deserve a day. Not when Dr Wells is still locked up and all the people Killer Frost kidnapped are still missing and Central City is still rebuilding. She helps, when she can, but…That’s what anyone would do. That’s what a hero is _supposed_ to do. She doesn’t deserve anything for doing what she’s supposed to do.

The next day, Iris sees her mother and grandmother off before locking all the doors in the house and shutting all the windows, giving the appearance that no one is home. Then she goes up to her room and looks for the address book. She’s been there a few times already, but she always wants to be sure. She closes her eyes and feels everything shift around her, and wakes up in a suburban kitchen. Freddie Smoak, dressed in an apron by the stove, jumps. “Iris, god, do you always do that?”

“Yes,” she answers simply. She peers over his shoulder. He’s dressed in a checked shirt and jeans, the picture of a former vigilante support who’s taking a vacation with his vigilante girlfriend. “What is that?”

“It’s an omelette.”

“When is going to get there?”

“Shut up, I’m mad at you.”

“Why?” she enquires. “What did I do?”

Freddie reaches over and taps a few keys on his laptop. “ _Miss Miracle recaptured the metahuman the Mist yesterday, who was immediately detained in the makeshift metahuman prison being used before Iron Heights completes work on their own version. While some people have argued that she has cut down on crime fighting, it appears that Central City’s Golden Grace is as attentive as ever_.”

“So?”

“You’re supposed to be on vacation!”

“I am on vacation! I’m eating all this Southern food, I go shopping all the time – look!” She points at her wrist. “Holiday jewellery.”

“You’re not supposed to be doing the superhero thing until you’re better.”

“And _you’re_ not supposed to have wi-fi,” she points out. “Where’s Liv?”

Freddie goes back to his omelette. “She went out to get another tea cosy.”

Iris stares at him. “A _tea cosy_?”

“Ours ripped.”

“Olivia Queen,” she splutters, trying not to laugh, “ _knows what a tea cosy is_?”

“She’s being suburban,” he says simply. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” Iris says. “I guess it is. Look, why don’t I save your omelette and you can give me a report?”

Freddie switches places with her and he grabs a file from the table. “I don’t know why you check every day, she’s pretty boring.”

“I’m checking,” Iris says, cracking eggs in a bowl, “because she shot me. And she almost killed Barry.”

Freddie shrugs. “Same as before. She got up and went to work, then the post office, then grocery shopping, and then home. Nothing out of the ordinary. Beverly Lewis of Opal City is the same as she’s been for the past three months.”

Iris will never believe that, because Beverly Lewis was Patty Spivot a few months ago. Now she’s in Opal City working as an accounting clerk for Kord Industries, possibly the most boring job in the world. “And she’s not running?”

“Not that I can see. She seems pretty settled. Is Waller still looking for her?”

“I think so, but I don’t know how they haven’t found her yet.”

“Well, don’t forget that she and her mom did this for years,” he points out. “She knows how to hide. Besides, I only found her because of luck and because you called me the night she left. If I’d waited, I would have lost her.”

Iris hands him back the omelette and studies the pictures and reports. Patty looks the same as she always did, but she was always a murdering sociopath, so that hardly means anything. Freddie is right, she just goes about her life like she’s completely normal. Like she didn’t almost ruin her life. She teleported there once, just to watch Patty go about her day as normal. She came back before the woman noticed.

Patty is another regular in her nightmares, for obvious reasons, so it seems weird that Iris is keeping her alive, given that she’s known Patty was working in Opal City for three months. But she knows what will happen if Waller finds her. Eddie killed Eleanor without a second thought, and she has no doubt the same thing would happen to Patty. And she can’t do that to Barry; despite himself, and even though he’s never told her, Iris knows he still loves Patty. Which is understandable, given that they were together for a year.

So Iris is leaving her be. For now, that is. The minute she starts moving or becomes a danger to the people she loves again, she doesn’t care what happens, she is calling Eddie Thawne to put a hot one in her. Just as she’s putting the pictures down, Olivia walks in, a smile on her face. That is, until she sees Iris, who grins. “Hey, Liv.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Is that the tea cosy?”

“Freddie, what is she doing here?”

“I want to see the tea cosy.”

Liv puts the groceries on the table, and scowls at her when all the objects start floating out of it. “Remember when you told me you were going on vacation?”

Iris is studying the tea cosy. “Remember when you shot me? Relax, Liv. I’m fine. I just came to check to see whether Patty has moved.”

“I told you I could put a security detail on Barry and Nora if you wanted.”

“They don’t want a security detail, because your security detail tends to be big burly men who don’t let people do their jobs. Huh. Didn’t know you were a tea cosy kinda person, Liv.”

“I will shoot you again, you know.”

“Ugh, see if I ever save you guys from Ra’s al Ghul ever again,” Iris says. Freddie offers her some omelette, but she shakes her head. “No, thanks. My grandmother is trying to fatten me up.”

“How’s your mom?” Olivia asks, and Iris smiles.

“Awesome.”

“Good, I’m glad.” Iris knows that Olivia’s own mother was killed by Sloan Wilson (Deathstroke, she thinks her name was), while she herself was in the coma. “Well, I guess you should be getting back, right?”

“Yeah, I should. And I checked on things in Star City. Everyone’s fine.”

“I know,” Freddie says, before he realises. Olivia stares at him. “I thought you weren’t supposed to have Wi-Fi.”

Iris takes that as her cue to leave, back in her room in Louisiana before she’s even thought about it. She’s better at them now, with things that she considered impossible last year everyday stuff right now. Her telepathic range is wider, she can lift heavier things, and teleporting is like breathing. She’s even coming to terms with the mind control, but she’s holding herself back. It was an accident, the first time – she was getting ice cream and someone shoved in front of her and some kids. Before she knew what she was doing she’d snapped ‘ _Dude, watch it_ ’…and then he did. He stopped in the middle of the parlour and started watching the floor. Thankfully she told him to stop, but still. That power is coming easier and easier, but it’s not something she wants to pursue. In all honesty, she’d rather have the lightning, which she hasn’t gotten back since that night, even though she has no idea what good that will do.

***

HOW DOES A BASTARD ORPHAN

_Omg barry wtf_

SON OF A WHORE AND A SCOTSMAN

_It’s early why are you awake_

DROPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF A FORGOTTEN

_Why did I let you listen to this god why_

Of course, Barry takes the opportunity to call her, but in lieu of a hello, she growls, “If you start singing ‘Alexander Hamilton’ over this phone I will teleport into your bedroom and strangle you.”

Silence. Then, “ _But no one else was in the room where it_ -”

“Or that one.”

“GUNS AND SHIPS-”

“I will _murder_ you,” she snaps, rubbing her eyes, but Barry just laughs.

“I told you that musical would be awesome,” he says. “And besides, you love it too.”

She does, actually. And she’s already planning something Hamilton-themed for his Christmas present, if Olivia will help her. And since she plans on milking the whole ‘you’ve shot me six times’ thing, she’d better. Nora was slowly being driven crazy by Barry singing the songs all the time and, never one to make her feel left out, Barry sings them on the phone to her or texts them to her. “Whatever. How’s work?”

“Cool. Missy actually paid me a compliment, and not a backhanded one, either. And anyway, shouldn’t you be up already? You have a flight to catch.”

“Ugh,” Iris groans. “Don’t remind me. Six hours with a layover? I’ll be exhausted when I get back.”

“Can’t you just teleport?”

“And freak out my grandmother? She’d probably drag me off to church. I wish I could, though,” she admits. “I miss home.”

“Home misses you too.”

And there it is, that sensation that something is wrong, that this isn’t how things are supposed to be. She’s supposed to be able to say what she really means – _I love you_ – and he should be able to say it back. They should be together, and her father shouldn’t be dead, and Barry shouldn’t have a dead sister, and Dr Wells shouldn’t be in a bunker with a dead husband and fifteen years of being controlled (the jury is still out on the Justice League thing, because if she ever met Superwoman, she’s fairly certain she’d faint). But Colin took that from them, that perfect other life, and she keeps feeling that there’s a hole in her heart that she’ll never be able to fill because _this isn’t how things are supposed to be_. And she knows it.

“Iris?”

“Still here,” she says quickly. Iris doesn’t know how Barry’s feeling, except raw from the whole Patty ordeal. In fact, she’s not sure he’ll ever get back to that confession on the bridge, not after everything that’s happened. The weird thing that happened in the storm, where she could suddenly hear his thoughts from miles away…she has no idea where it came from. She can access, she thinks, but it feels too intimate, especially for how fragile they are right now. But there is one thing she’s been trying to do.

Colin manipulated metahumans by kidnapping their loved ones, and those people are still missing. As soon as she gets back to Central, she’s going to find a way to track them down and return them to their families. _And_ get the metahumans exonerated. _And_ get Dr Wells out. Still, one step at a time.

“But I have to go,” she continues, getting out of bed. “Last-minute packing.”

“ _My name is Alexander Hamilton_ -”

“I will throw your present in the Bayou, so help me god-”

“Okay, okay,” he says easily. “See you soon, sunshine.”

The goodbye at the airport is sadder than she would have thought, given that this is the first time she’s seen Mama Ida since she was ten, but she’s crying a little all the same (“We actually – we have grits in Central City…No, it’s okay, we’ll eat them. And the okra. Uh-huh. I will tell Barry he needs to eat more biscuits. Definitely. And Pound Cake. Sure.”).

They touch down at dinnertime, so Iris’ stomach is rumbling despite the teacakes she’d had on the plane. Thankfully, her mother’s questions about work are distracting her as they get their bags. “…and we figured out,” she says excitedly, “that he _couldn’t_ have killed her, because the blood spatter pattern was wrong. He murdered someone else, and he was wearing their blood.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Totally! Well, no,” she amends. “But we caught two murderers, so that’s justice for two people, right?”

Her mother laughs. “I’m glad you love your job so much, baby girl.”

“I can bring you to work!” she says excitedly, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“Really?”

“Yeah! You can see Barry’s mom and meet Rose and Melinda, and see my lab, and Meet Captain Singh, and meet the new detective, Nora’s partner, Julio…something…okay, I forgot his name, but-”

Iris would have kept talking, but that is the moment someone called her name, and the world seemed to right itself.

***

Barry isn’t surprised to see that, when he, his mother and Chesca arrive at Bean Palace at the airport, Linda is already there with Wally, who’s lying on the table. He sits across from them, eyebrows raised. “What’s with him?”

Wally mutters something unintelligible. “What was that?” Chesca asks.

“He says he needs coffee.”

“We’re at a coffee place,” Nora frowns, and Wally mumbles again.

“And what was that?” Barry asks.

“Real coffee. Jitters coffee.”

“Oh, I’m with you there,” Nora says. “The Bean Palace is where coffee goes to get burned.”

“What happened to him?” Chesca wants to know, picking up the menu.

“He just had to do a Whipple surgery,” Linda answers, and Wally makes another noise, poking her. Linda rolls her eyes.

“Okay, a pancreaticduodenectomy.”

“Was cool,” Wally mumbles sleepily, and Nora looks around.

“Look, Wally, I’m sure Iris won’t mind if you just see her tomorrow…”

“No. Iris cousin. Aunt Francine. Have to…” He yawns, his eyes still shut. “See Iris. Miss her.”

“Anybody need a translation?”

“I think we got it, Linda,” Barry laughs. He can’t blame Wally; he keeps looking around to see whether Iris has come out of arrivals. He talked to her pretty much every day, but he wants to see her and hug her. And make sure that she’s healing properly.

Barry himself is getting there, but it’s been hard. The paper helps, especially because there’s lots of stuff to do with the mayor’s office because of the repairs, and a lot of corrupt businessmen are being exposed. Plus, he’s helping Chesca with her metahuman alert app and she helps him with is blog. He can’t imagine without Linda or Wally either, and he doesn’t think he could have gotten through it without them, even though a lot of their hangouts are medicine-related (“You have to get over here and help him study for this surgery,” Linda had said to him once, “because if I do it any longer I’ll kill him, and he can’t do the surgery if he’s dead”), or just really long movie hangouts.

He hasn’t told anyone about the other thing.

Because he hasn’t forgotten them – Blackout, for example. Her son was kidnapped to get her to attack the precinct, but she’s gone and her son is still missing. Barry has files on all of them and he wants to figure out a way to get them back, but he wants to talk to Iris first. Even thousands of miles away, he’s fairly certain she’s the one to have helped him through all of this.

There was one time last week when he really thought he was okay, he really thought everything was behind him, when someone came up to him in the Bean Palace while he was working, and asked for his number. His whole world started shaking and he couldn’t breathe. Because she was blonde and tall and blue-eyes and pretty, and his mind went _Thawne_.

“N-No,” he’d stammered, gathering up his things quickly. “I – I’m s-sorry – I have to go…”

The next thing he knew he was in his car, his breath refusing to come even. Hands shaking, he pressed a number on his speed-dial and pressed his phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Iris?”

Immediately she knew something was wrong. “Barry? Bar, what happened?”

“I don’t – I think I’m having a panic attack and I can’t – it’s not-”

“Barry,” she’d said firmly. “ _Barry_. Where are you?”

“My car,” he’d replied.

“Okay, stay where you are, close your eyes and focus on my voice.”

“’Kay.”

“Good. I’m going to count to ten, and I want you to take a breath on each count. Slowly. Ready?”

“I think so.”

“Good. One…”

He calmed down eventually, and then felt kind of stupid, but still. You don’t come back from your girlfriend trying to kill you that easily. Anyway, he’s doing much better than before. At least he’s not punching out glass and yelling at everyone.

“…because if Jitters doesn’t open up soon, I’m writing a letter,” Chesca says. Barry tries to keep his face neutral. He’s seen a green blur in and out of Jitters when he walks past, and each time it looks distinctly less destroyed even though nobody is supposed to have started work on it yet.

“Do you think they’re going to elect a new Mayor of Star City?” Barry asks, and Linda scoffs.

“Who’d apply? I swear to god, everyone who gets that job dies. It’d be safer working with me.”

“The place with the guns?”

“Star City have gone through three mayors in two electoral cycles. What happens in that city?”

“Ooh,” Chesca says. “Don’t pull on that thread.”

Nora laughs and Barry looks around, and that’s when he spots her. She’s rambling about something, practically jumping up and down, and her mother’s nodding. Barry’s face breaks into a grin. “She’s here,” he says, and walks off through the crowd, so he doesn’t see everyone giving each other looks.

“Iris!” he calls, walking towards her. “IRIS!”

She stops and looks at him, her face splitting in a smile as wide as his, and then looks at her mother, who nods, so Iris just starts running towards them, closing the distance between them in seconds and then leaping into his arms, wrapping her arms around his neck as he lifts her off her feet. “Hi,” she says, laughing.

“Hey, sunshine. Wanna know what you missed?”

“What?”

“Me.”

She laughs again and he puts her down, before frowning slightly.

“What?”

“Did you get shorter?”

“And it’s over,” she says, shoving him, and then looks behind him. “Chess! _Linda_! You guys all came!”

“Duh,” Chesca replies. “I wanted to know what you brought me.”

“Well, isn’t this a surprise?” Francine says pleasantly, and Barry hugs her as well.

“It’s good to see you, Francine.”

“It’s good to see all of you, especially this late on a Sunday.”

“How was the flight?” Nora asks, letting Iris go as everyone greets each other. She opens her mouth, but her stomach answers first, rumbling loud enough that everyone can hear it, and they all laugh. “And that,” Francine adds, “is after half a dozen cookies and a slice of pound cake.”

“Metahumans,” Chesca mutters playfully.

“Let’s get dinner,” Barry suggests. “I’m starved too.”

“I think maybe we should get coffee for Wally,” Iris frowns. “What’s with the yawning?”

“Whipple surgery,” everyone answers, and Wally looks scandalised.

“Pancrea – oh, whatever. Just nothing from the Bean Palace.”

So everyone decided that Wally could get coffee with his meal, and Chesca and Linda tell Iris about everything, and Nora and Wally ask lots of questions, and Barry is smiling at her, so she finally, finally feels like she’s home.

***

It doesn’t last.

Because when Iris walks back into work and everyone says hello and she clears up her office, it’s barely ten o’clock in the morning before Captain Singh wants her to look at a dead body.

“I love my job,” she’s muttering as she walks towards the nuclear plant. “I love my job, I love my job…”

She flashes her badge at the guard and some of the cops nod at her as she makes her way to Nora. She’s standing over a sheet. “Tuesdays,” she says, peeling back the sheet.

“Tuesdays.”

“What happened here?”

“Co-worker found her here this morning.” Nora consults her notepad. “Alanna Rothstein, she’s a welder here at the plant.”

“Strangled,” Iris notes. She points to the woman’s neck, which is purple and bruised. “There’s the bruising, and petechaie on her face and the whites of her eyes. So this woman was strangled by something very, very powerful.”

“Not the Woman of War?”

“No, no mutant jellyfish here,” Iris says. She takes some samples and then stands up. “Look, I’ll let you know what I find, okay?”

“Sure.” She pauses. “So, this Miss Miracle Day thing…”

Iris looks away, putting her stuff back. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Iris, the Mayor wants to give you the key to the city – and I know how much you love getting awards. Like all those science awards you used to get!”

“Those, I deserved,” she points out. “I shouldn’t get award by barely closing a hole in the sky that was my fault in the first place.” She shakes her head. “Look, I’ll call you with what I find, okay?”

***

“You’re late.”

“I’m not late, _we_ are late. What were you and Scott doing?”

“We’ve never done conference calls like that before!”

“If Captain Singh kills me, I am haunting _your_ beanpole ass.”

Barry just laughs as he and Chesca make their way to CCPD. They’re supposed to be giving a presentation for the cops on how to use some of Chesca’s equipment for the Metahuman Task Force, which is why they’re walking there in their lunch hour. The Captain spots them as they haul something through the doors. “Ramon, Barry,” she says. “Thanks for joining…do I want to know what that is?”

“This, is the answer to all your prayers,” Chesca answers confidently. “I call it ‘The Boot’. Wait for it, wait for it, wait…” When the captain shakes her head and walks off, Chesca whistles. “Whoa, tough crowd. Hey, Nora, is like that with everyone? It’s not just me?”

Nora strides up to them. “Believe me, it’s not just you. And no,” she adds at Chesca’s face, “you cannot have a badge. Hi, honey.”

“Hi, mom,” he says. “Good day?”

“Better than most. What is this thing?”

“Listen, by the end of our totally bomb-ass presentation, you’ll have everything you need to stop metahumans. Especially since Iris is still doing the Lone Wolf thing – she keeps saying it’s too dangerous for us to back to normal.”

“I’ll say,” Nora says, and looks at him. “Have you talked to her? About Miss Miracle Day?”

“Not yet. She still hasn’t said anything?”

“She says she’s not going. Francine's going, but...”

Chesca makes a disbelieving noise. “I can’t believe she’s passing up the key to the city. Though technically, as part of the Miracle Workers, we should all-”

“No, Chess,” Barry and his mother say together.

“ _Really_ tough crowd.”

“Look,” Nora sighs, “you know Iris. The more you try to get her to do something, the less chance she’ll do it. Maybe if her best friend talked to her…”

“Believe me,” Chesca says, “I have _tried_. The girl is hard-headed.”

“I was talking about _him_ ,” she says, gesturing to Barry. Chesca blinks.

“Oh, um. Duh. Good luck. Like I said, the girl is hard-headed.”

Barry shrugs. “I’ll give it my best shot, but I don’t know if she’ll listen.”

“Well, that’s all we can do,” his mother says firmly. “I have to go talk to Rose before the presentation, but let me know how it goes.”

“And we have to set up,” Chesca adds as his mother leaves. He nods, turns, and his eyes fall on Patty’s desk – except it’s Julio’s desk. Patty isn’t real. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose. _She’s gone_.

“You okay, big guy?” Chesca asks softly. Barry shakes his head to clear it.

“Yeah, fine. Let’s go give that bomb-ass presentation.”

***

“…install the light fixture perpendicular to…no, wait, _parallel_ … Damn.” Iris sighs and climbs down from the counter, letting the fixtures float gently to the countertop. She picks her way through rubble and planks of wood to the array of construction manuals she has laid out on the tables in Jitters. The problem with having a photographic memory, she’s found, is that everything starts to blur together unless she refreshes her memory to keep it straight.

Iris figures out what she needs and gets back to hammering, drilling and cleaning – all at once, because multitasking becomes a lot easier when you can move things with your mind. Once she’s done here, she’ll go work a little more on the leisure centre so the kids can go swimming, and do something about the clock tower, but she wants Jitters to be fixed as soon as possible. She doesn’t think it’s on purpose, but she’s certain she’s heard everyone complain about how terrible the coffee at the Bean Palace is. And they’re right, their coffee is _awful_.

Iris is concentrating so much that she doesn’t hear someone come in, and blinks away to the top floor. She _knows_ she put a hazard sign outside, but then… “You know,” Barry says, “if you ever give up the hero thing and the CSI thing, you could make a great contractor.”

She appears in front of him. “Um.”

“See, I thought I saw that the library got repaired a little faster than it should have, even though nobody ordered any contractors for that place. And then the same thing happened to the shoe store on Fifth. And I’ve been seeing a lot of green lightning around this place, even though a little birdie told me she was going on vacation for a month. Miss Miracle.”

“Hey, I’m not in costume,” she points out. “See? Iris clothes. No gold or green anywhere.”

Barry gives her a half smile. “So you’ve been coming here at night and in secret?”

Iris blushes, taking a sip of water. “Yeah. I was just, um, trying to put things back the way they were. The way they’re supposed to be.”

“I’m sure people would appreciate that,” he agrees. “And on Saturday, they can show you how much. At Miss Miracle Day.”

She groans, turning away from him. “Bar…”

“Iris, come on,” he says. “People know you’re out there. Even if they haven’t seen you in person, they’ve seen the golden blur, or the green sparks, or, I don’t know, a 747 being carried over a bridge. They just want to thank the modern miracleworker.”

“It wasn’t a miracle that saved them,” she replies quietly. She takes off her glasses and cleans them, purely out of habit. “It was luck. Dumb luck. And I should have…Dr Wells…I’m not the hero, Barry. Not this time.”

He doesn’t reply for a long moment, before pulling a flyer out of his pocket and handing it to her. “Central City believes in Miss Miracle, and so do I. I always have.”

Barry leaves Iris studying it, the light from the street lamps reflecting on her glasses through the windows.

***

Miss Miracle Day is a beautiful Thursday morning, and everyone’s been given the day off. There are news trucks, concession stands, and even people dressed up as Miss Miracle, though Barry knows Chesca will be thoroughly unimpressed by knock-offs of her suit. He hasn’t spoken to Iris since finding her in Jitters, but there’s nothing else he can do. Pushing her won’t do anything but convince her not to do it. He picks his way through the crowd, looking for Chesca and his mother, and is happily surprised to find a couple of people he recognises.

“Professor Stein,” he says when he sees her and her husband. “Mr Stein. You came!”

“Of course,” she replies cheerfully. “She saved my life. And I haven’t seen her since…you know. Is she coming?”

“I hope so.”

Barry and Chesca visit her from time to time, making sure she’s okay, checking that nothing bad is happening to her. She was shaken by the revelation that Ronnie was evil, given that they shared a psychic connection, but she must have shielded her somehow. Still, she is happy to answer questions about how to stop certain metahumans, and is always happy to see him.

“As do I,” she says. “This is bound to cheer her up.”

“I think so. Anyway, I need to find my mom, so I’ll see you later.”

His mother and Chesca are leaning against one of the cop cars, his mother scanning the crowd. “I see we’re in full detective mode today,” Barry says, and his mother laughs.

“Look, in this city, I expect giant jellyfish and women who can control the weather.”

“That’s a solid expectation,” Chesca admits. “Hey, where are Wally and Linda?”

“On their way, I think,” he replies. He looks around at the music and the popcorn and all the little kids and hopes Iris is in her costume somewhere getting ready to show up. “I’m going to get closer, okay?”

Everyone’s excited as he makes his way to the front of the stage, jostling to get a better view, and everyone claps when Mayor Bellows walks on. They quiet, though, once she reaches the podium. “Good morning, Central City,” she begins. “A year ago, our world changed. We became ground zero for some pretty weird stuff, and our criminals defied laws of physics and reason. But we also got something else. Some _one_ else – Miss Miracle!” She pauses so everyone can cheer and whoop. "Our wounds run deep, and I know many of you are afraid of what tomorrow may bring. But Miss Miracle doesn’t just protect us, she reminds us of her namesake, that miracles still exist. That they happen. So I am honoured to present this award to the woman who saved Central City – Miss Miracle!”

Everyone erupts into more applause, looking around impatiently for her to arrive, and just as Barry’s heart starts to sink he sees something golden in the sky. There’s more whooping and stamping off feet as Iris lands gently on the stage in her costume. She looks kind of surprised at all the decorations and how many people turned up, nodding and waving shyly at all the applause, and Barry grins and whistles. The Mayor beams. “The doors of Central City will always be open to you, Miss Miracle.”

Iris takes two steps towards her before a piercing scream stops her, and when Barry looks up a cart is hurtling towards them both. She gets the mayor out of the way just as everyone starts screaming and running, and he gets back to his mother and Chesca. The crowd parts to reveal a woman in a metal helmet and sleeveless shirt walking towards them. Iris appears next to them in a second. “I’ve got this, alright?” she says.

“The modern miracle worker,” she snarls. “Sorry to rain on your parade.”

Iris hurls a cart at her but the woman just shoves it back, sending Iris smashing into a truck. Barry curses and looks at Chesca, who’s frozen and staring at the woman as she shoves cars at police officers. “Chess? _Chesca_ , the boot!”

“Oh, shit, okay!” she says frantically, and Barry tries to judge the distance. His mother’s bullets are bouncing off her and Iris is still disoriented. Chesca gives him the gun and he aims, shooting for her foot. It works, latching around her ankle and sending an electric charge through her, like they planned…until _she starts growing_.

“ _Jesu_ ,” Chesca mutters. She grows bigger and bigger, snapping the cuff off.

“You said that thing would work,” Nora breathes. “She’s not going down.”

“She went…” Barry begins.

“ _Up_.”

Right then Iris reappears, carrying two small fuel containers. “I’m throwing, you’re shooting,” she says shortly, and a year of this means Nora needs no further instruction. Iris throws them at the masked attacker and Nora shoots; the whole thing explodes, shrinking her in size again and making the mask fall off. “Oh my God.”

“What?” Barry demands.

“That’s Alanna Rothstein,” his mother breathes. “The body we found at the power plant. She’s alive.”

***

“Barry, I’m starting to think you specialise in ideas that are going to give me ulcers.”

His mother snorts at Chesca’s remark, but Barry waves a hand. It’s the next day and they’ve gathered in the precinct to talk about their next move – sans Iris, because he’s beginning to realise she’s part of the problem. “We don’t have a lot of choice.”

“You want us to just burst into STAR Labs and order Iris to let us help her?”

“In a word, yes.”

“Did you forget about the hard-headed part?”

“She won’t like it, but she doesn’t have a choice.” He gets out his notebook. “Look at this. Alanna’s body was in the morgue all night, and she was in Hawaii when the particle accelerator exploded. Now, she’s an only child, so unless we’re counting zombies…”

“We’re looking for someone who’s strong, looks like the person she murdered, and has a serious case of ‘Honey, I Blew Up the Kid’ going on,” Chesca realises. “Wow, if everything about her didn’t terrify me to my core, I’d love her.”

"Are you okay?" he wants to know. "You looked a little spaced."

"Well, yeah," she says, glancing at her shoes. "Our girl straight up smashed two cop cars."

“And,” Barry continues, “when she showed up, all the x-ray and CT machines near the rally failed all at once when she turned up.”

“Stein,” Chesca says immediately. “We’ll need her, she’s the only expert in physics we have.”

“And Iris cannot do this alone anymore,” Barry says firmly.

“How do we talk her out of it?” Nora asks.

“We don’t.”

“Oh god, I really can feel this ulcer starting.”

***

Iris has to assure her mother that she’s fine before she goes back to STAR Labs, and she swears she’s going to kill Wally for calling her mother, but when she gets there she has a whole other set of problems. Chesca, Barry and Stein are all gathered around the terminals. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Working,” Barry replies shortly. Iris takes a deep breath, because she recognises exactly when Barry isn’t going to budge. Well, neither is she.

“Because we all have radiation in us,” Stein says, “whether from cell phones or microwaves et cetera.”

“So she’s sucking up all the radiation to power herself?” Chesca clarifies.

“That explains why the machines failed the day of the rally.”

Iris, however, has heard enough. “Okay, guys, I want you to leave.”

“Tough.” Nora appears from a workroom, green eyes hard. “You need your partners – you need your friends.”

“What I need is for my friends not to get killed because they don’t listen when I say things are dangerous.”

“Iris,” Barry says, “there isn’t a person in this room who doesn’t care about helping this city, and you can’t deny us working with Miss Miracle anymore.”

“Got him!” Chesca says triumphantly. “Three block dead zone near a hazardous waste reclamation plant. Now, it should be blooming with radiation, but now it’s at zero.”

“That’s where you’ll find your atom smasher!” Stein grins. Everyone looks at her. “Well, because she absorbs atomic power, and she…smashes.”

“Oh, that’s a perfect ten, right there.”

Iris is ignoring them both, removing her suit from the podium with her mind so it hangs in mid-air, before snapping her fingers so she blinks inside it, her clothes falling in a heap. “Hey, when did you learn that?”

“Iris,” Nora warns. “You have to let Chesca and Stein help figure out how to catch her.”

“No,” she says simply, slipping her mask on, “I don’t.”

Iris knows where the place is, and teleports there before anyone can say anything. Sure enough, there’s Atom Smasher. She stalks out from behind a pillar, chuckling. “God, you’re worse than the one we have at home.”

 _Home_? “Where are you from? Why did you kill Alanna Rothstein?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Oh, I’m about to.”

Iris ducks out of the way the first time she lunges for her, and tries hurling things at her with her mind. Atom Smasher barely even flinches, just grinning at her. Then she tries moving her, but that doesn’t work either, and trying is making her see stars and her legs shake. Iris lets go, sinking to her knees with exhaustion, and she steps forward. “My turn.”

She grows then, crunching and popping sounds filling the air as she rips her clothes, and then she grabs her by the neck. “I take it back. You’re nowhere near as good as our miracle. At least she gave people a fight.”

Atom Smasher starts slamming her head against a wall and her vision starts to blur. Suddenly, a klaxon starts wailing, distracting her, and Iris switches on her glowing eyes, blinding her so she lets go. She barely makes it back to STAR Labs before she collapses on the floor of the corridor.

***

“I’m going to kill her.”

“You’re not going to kill her, Chess,” Linda says, her eyes on Barry as he paces.

“She ran off without her comms! Who does that?”

“Iris,” Nora says, “when she’s mad. Remember Captain Cold?”

Barry doesn’t say anything, just pacing some more. They found her in the corridor, and now Wally is working on her in a med bay. “I think,” Professor Stein says gently, “one person should be in there when she wakes up. Just one, more might overwhelm her.”

“I’ll do it.” Linda says. “Nora will make her guilty, Pacey McPacerson will make her nervous, and Chess wants to kill her.”

“Well, we don’t have to worry about that,” Nora says. “It’ll happen anyway once her mother gets here.”

***

Iris starts awake and is surprised to see Linda sitting next to her, reading a magazine. “I’ve got you,” she says carefully. “You were concussed and a little beat up, but you’re fine now.”

She lies back in the bed and closes her eyes. “Okay, I think someone’s in need of a sisterly pep-talk.”

“We’re not sisters.”

“You’re getting one anyway, nerd.” She shakes her head. “Iris, I can tell you that it’s not your fault, but you know that’s not true. It’s your fault and my fault and Colin’s fault – we all trusted the wrong person, so we all share the blame. And you can’t protect us from everything. The world is dangerous – I work with guns! I know more than anything the world is dangerous. But there are people who help protect it, and you can’t keep pushing us away.”

Iris sighs. She’s right, of course she is. “What do I do now?”

“Well, first we have to get rid of that Atom Smasher chick, because her novelty has worn right the fuck off.” They laugh at that. “After that, I guess you just take things one at a time.”

***

“Now whose ideas are giving who ulcers?”

“Look, I’ve got Stein’s back-up on this, beanpole. Besides, Iris believes in me.”

Iris, across town, speaks through her comms. “You’re still on punishment for calling my mother, Ramon.”

“And you’re still on punishment for running off without your comms, young lady,” her mother adds. They all need the laugh in the tense silence, and Barry watches Iris move closer to where they located her. When she woke up, they decided they’d have to lure her to a place where they could drain her radiation from her. Everyone was okay-ish with this. There was just the part where Iris was going after a crazed killer that had people a little jumpy.

“ _Come back for more, Miss Miracle_?”

“ _Hey, I thought you might like a round two. But you’ll have to catch me first_.”

“It’s working,” Barry says. “She’s following her.” Wally swallows.

“She’s pretty fast for someone her size.”

“Run, Iris, run…” Nora whispers. Francine looks at Stein.

“She’s not going to get hurt again, is she?”

“I…Mrs West, despite the previous display, Iris actually is very good at this.”

As they watch, Iris runs straight into the radiation chamber and waits. Everyone holds their breath. “ _Oh, you didn’t think I could catch you_?”

“ _Oh no_ ,” Iris says. “ _I knew you could_.”

“Now, Linda!” Iris says, and Linda presses a button. Barry breathes a sigh of relief and feels his mother squeeze his shoulder. They hear electricity crackling through the chamber and Rothstein shouting as she absorbs it. “She won’t be able to absorb it all, Iris,” Chesca tells her, just as an alarm starts blaring. “What’s happening? Iris demands.

“It’s clearing,” Stein reads off the monitors. “It’s safe to go in.”

There’s silence as they hear Iris step inside the chamber, and then they hear Rothstein gasping. “Why’d you do it?” Iris asks softly.

“It was…worth…a shot.” Then there’s more mumbling and the breath goes out of her. Barry bows his head. “I, um. I’m bringing her to the morgue,” Iris tells them. And a few minutes later she’s walking into the Cortex. Her mother runs straight to her and envelops her in a hug, and Stein smiles.

“You know,” Nora says. “It’s been a long week. What do you say we all meet at hours this evening for a little ‘thank God we’re still breathing’ party?”

“I love a good theme,” Chesca says, and Wally grins.

“Awesome, I’m making apple pie.”

“You’re making _cherry_ pie, I’m making apply,” Linda corrects him. Nora turns to Stein.

“You’re welcome to join us, Professor. I can pick up something kosher.”

“I think that would be lovely.”

So a few hours later everyone’s gathered in Barry’s house, eating cake and mac and cheese and lots of enchiladas (‘I don’t do the whole measuring thing, it’s mainstream’), courtesy of Chesca. After Charles has taught Wally the wonders of challah bread, Martina gets up to make a speech. “I feel very lucky to be a part of this group,” she says. “To be on the side of heroes. And even though we have lost a lot, and gone through great pain, I look at all of you and am reminded of a word that we use in times of graduation: _Kadima_. It means ‘forward’.”

“Forward,” Iris echoes, raising her (tragically ineffective) wine, and everyone follows suit. Afterwards, she finds her mom sitting by the window with a glass of wine. “So, I was thinking we could start looking at houses soon,” she says. “Somewhere quiet, but still close to work, and I’ll give notice at my apartment-”

“No, Iris.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to give notice at your apartment.”

Her face falls. “Why? I thought we were going to live together.”

“We are, baby girl,” she says. She takes her face in her hands. “But you – oh, you are a beautiful, talented, amazing woman with your own life. You shouldn’t be trying to accommodate me, I should be accommodating _you_.”

“Oh.”

“Keep your apartment. We’ll get a house together, but don’t live there all the time. Keep some of your life for yourself. No going backwards.”

“Forward,” Iris says slowly, smiling.

“Forward.”

To top it all off, right then is when Nora presents Chesca with a badge, who squeals excitedly. Iris raises her eyebrows. "Should I tell her those are the ones we give to kids?"

"No, let her have this."

***

“Are you sure about this?”

“Barry, I have memorised half a dozen textbooks on electrical wiring.”

He pauses. “Are you sure about this?”

“No, it could kill us.”

Iris very carefully turns on the switch…and sighs in relief when Jitters lights up instead of blowing up. “Way to go!” he says, high-fiving her.

“Thanks. Now make me an Americano. Hey, don't give me that look, I fixed your coffee shop.”

“Two coffees, coming right up.”

Iris moves over to a booth in the quiet of Jitters, bringing a tray of brownies out for them. Barry curses at the coffee machine for a few minutes before he joins her with two steaming cups. “I swear to god, that thing will survive the apocalypse. Where’d you get those?”

“Tyler. I ran into him at the post office.”

“He’s currently obsessed with scallops, so I guess culinary school is going well.”

“As long as he can make me brownies, I’ll get him whatever fish he wants.”

Barry nods. “So,” he says slowly. “What do you think of the new team?”

Earlier that Sunday morning, she, Barry, Chesca, Wally and Linda reopened STAR Labs properly. They each have workstations and passes, and Chesca is putting in some new protocols so people can’t just walk in like they own the place. Even Professor Stein has some ideas, but she’s a little wary of her right now, because when she was telling her about how weird it was that Alanna Rothstein looked exactly liked Atom Smasher, she said ‘doppelganger’ and ran off to google something. Iris hopes nothing comes from it, because that’s way too _Twilight Zone_ for her.

(Please, God, let doppelgangers stay in the _Twilight Zone_ ).

“I like it. And you’re sure, about Dr Wells-”

“We’ll find her, Iris. And we’ll find all those people. Just one step at a time. Forward, right?”

Iris smiles. “When did we get so sappy, Barry Allen?”

“Well, Iris West, I think it was about the same time you went off and got yourself struck by lightning.”

“That was an accident.”

“Still true.”

“Jackass.”

“Nerd.”

And they grin at each other, both privately thinking that no matter how bad the world got, it would be bearable if the other were in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you guys think!


	22. I Don’t Need a Parachute (You’re Gonna Catch Me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team have 99 problems and only 52 are breaches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoyed writing this and I've edited as much as possible, so I hope you like it! Chapter title taken from 'Parachute' by Ingrid Michaelson.

Iris, by her own estimation, has had a pretty good day. Spending her Monday night alone in her lab catching up on work isn’t something that would appeal to most people, but then, most people aren’t Miss Miracle. After taking care of Atom Smasher, their team had to deal with someone who called herself Sand Demon, real name Edie Slick…who also turned out to have a doppelganger. She had died too, but not before she said it was fun while it lasted. They’re having a team meeting about that soon, since Stein apparently has some ideas about it. No sooner had that happened that they’d gotten involved with Captain Cold and her ridiculous family, which is why she’s sitting in Iron Heights in the metahuman wing right now. So after that, playing with dye and fingerprints is a pretty nice night, especially since she’s up for a promotion and doesn’t want any of her work to be less than perfect.

“ _LAFAYETTE_! _I’m taking this horse by the reigns…_ ”

Iris smiles to herself and points a finger at her cell; it rises and comes close to her so she can slide her finger across the screen to answer Barry, if only to stop Tim the security guy from being worried that she’s being murdered by a rapping French revolutionary. “Hey, Barry, what’s up?”

“Iris, I kind of – no, no, I definitely need your help!”

Iris starts when she hears two sharp bangs in the background and she drops her test tube, red liquid spilling everywhere. “Are – Are those gunshots?”

“Uh…”

“Barry!”

“They’re gunshots – I’m at Baldwin Towers…” he curses and there’s a crashing noise, like shattering glass, followed by several more bangs. “I can’t find a way out!”

Iris snaps her fingers and her suit comes flying out of her locker to hang in front of her. “Um…Window. Is there a window?”

“Yeah…”

“Good, great!” Iris holds her suit immobile in the air, clicks her fingers, and teleports into it so her clothes fall into a heap on the floor. Then she starts trying to visualise Baldwin Towers. “You need to jump.”

“WHAT? Iris, no way!”

“Barry,” she says firmly, pausing in the act of fitting her mask. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes – yeah,” he says immediately. “I trust you.”

“Good. Then jump.”

Baldwin Towers, the apartment complex that’s being renovated, is across town, but Iris has no idea _where_ Barry is inside of it. She flashes to the top, scanning the air in pitch blackness, and indeed hears the bangs that are echoing through the building. Barely a second passes before she sees Barry jump out of the window, and she flies down as quickly as she can after him. She has to do two things – get him to the ground while slowing him down, and stabilise his neck so he doesn’t get whiplash.

Iris flies up behind him, wraps her legs around his waist, loops one arm around his neck, and secures the other over his chest. Then she slows their descent, the wind coming less violently against their faces, until she sets them gently on the ground. “You good?”

Barry nods, still a little shaken, and Iris goes to take care of the people up there, and then pauses. “Um, how many people are up there? Are we talking Multiplex or Everywoman?”

“No, it’s two women, but they both have guns.”

“Right,” she nods, and then flies up the building and goes into the building. There are several more bangs and flashing green lightning, and then Iris appears back in front of him, and the guns clatter to the floor. “Okay, that was actually kind of fun, and now they’re taking a nap until the CCPD wakes them. Now, Barry-”

“That was _so cool_!” Barry hisses, looking between her and the building. “Have you ever done that before? Is it like the time with Woodward, or is this new?”

“Bar-”

“I always wondered how the whole flying thing worked, you know, is it like Superwoman, or-”

“Barry!” Iris laughs, grabbing his chin to make him look at her. It’s a little intimate for her, touching his face, but she’s always done it and honestly, it’s the only thing that ever gets him to pay attention. She’s always wondered why. She lets go. “You wanna tell me why two women were shooting at you?”

“Oh!” He grins down at her. “I was following this story about the Baldwins – they’re illegally evicting families so they can renovate and hike up the prices.”

Iris rolls her eyes but still smiles. “Okay, that’s great, but you know no story is worth your life, right? Especially since they apparently think they’re in Goodfellas.”

“Right?” he agrees. “You break into one apartment complex and suddenly you’re sleeping with the fishes.”

“That’s the Godfather – wait, you _broke into an apartment complex_?”

But Barry just smiles and hugs her. “Thanks for coming so fast, I can’t wait to write about this!”

“You’d better get on that. Like, right now.”

“Why?”

“Because your mom’s the cop on duty today.”

Barry’s eyes widen. “Oh, shit. Give me a ride back to CCPN?”

“Sure.” Then she grins. “’Leave the gun, take the cannoli’.”

“God,” he mutters. “You are such a nerd, sunshine.”

***

The next day, Francine amusedly watches Iris get her things together for work, her eyebrows raised as she takes a break from looking at housing stuff. “You sure you don’t need any help, baby?”

“No, I got it!” she replies as she brushes her hair with one hand and does her mascara with her mind. “I have to get to Costco to meet Chesca.”

“Now?”

“Yeah, we’re really low on stuff. Okay, I’ll see you later!”

Iris grabs her back and jacket, and is two steps towards the elevator before she turns around and heads back inside, where her mother is holding out a brown paper bag. Iris takes is sheepishly from her. “Thanks.”

“Have a good day at work, sweetheart.”

“I can’t believe we’re doing this so early,” Chesca complains when she gets there. “You said you weren’t a morning person!”

“Girl, I’m not,” Iris says. “I have two Americanos in me right now, but I’m up for a promotion at work, which means no ducking out to STAR Labs without explanation. So we have to do all the groceries when we can, since…you know.”

Chesca knows. Since they own STAR Labs. “Okay. Can we at least get the good croissants?”

“Definitely name-brand. And brownies!”

“It’s dawning on me that maybe we shouldn’t be in charge of finances.”

“Eh,” she shrugs. “It’s Costco, we’re buying everything in bulk. That’s a smart financial decision, right?”

When they’re done loading stuff into the STAR Labs van and Chesca drives to drop Iris off at work, Iris pulls out a little can of cashew nuts and a Ziploc bag, before pouring the nuts in the bag and closing it. Chesca eyes her. “Who’s that for?”

“A little joke for Barry. He jumped out of a window last night chasing a story.”

“He _jumped_ out of a _window_? Why?”

Iris shrugs. “I asked him.”

She whistles. “Damn. You guys definitely have that best friend thing down, because I wouldn’t jump out of a window if Superwoman asked me.”

Iris pauses. It hits her, then – Barry trusts her enough that he would jump out of a window because he knows she won’t, under any circumstances, let him die. “I guess we do.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, we’re here. Team meeting at lunch?”

“See you then.”

She gets out of the van and runs into Nora, who’s sipping some coffee. “Morning,” Iris says cheerfully. “How’s things?”

“Pretty good, now that Jitters is up and running again. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“That’s me, saving the world, one miracle at a time.” She catches a whiff of Nora’s coffee. “Whoa, espresso? That’s not like you.”

“I need it,” she shrugs. “Julio and I got a call last night at Baldwin Towers – found two unconscious shooters who kept saying they were chasing someone who jumped out a window.”

“Really?” Iris clears her throat. “Um, weird.”

Nora narrows her eyes at her. “Iris-”

“WEST!” Captain Singh calls, and Iris straightens.

“Gotta go, captain’s calling!”

***

Barry had spent most of the night writing the story at the paper, so after a last-minute round of revisions, he’s finally given it to Missy, who is reading it as Barry watches nervously at his desk across the room. Scott taps him on the shoulder. “Dude, don’t stare,” he says. “She can feel it.”

“She always makes that face, right? She doesn’t hate it?”

“It’s hard to tell,” he admits. “She made that face when she read my piece on the decline of arts in schools, but she also made that face when Marilyn wrote about waste dumping in the bay.”

Barry has never heard of her. He frowns. “Who’s Marilyn?”

Scott grimaces. “Exactly.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Barry, relax. Worst comes to worst, she’ll start calling you Larry again.”

“I guess,” he shrugs. “Hey, how was that conference in Metropolis?”

“Really good, actually. I met Clark Kent.”

“Superwoman’s Clark Kent?” Barry’s impressed – Clark Kent must be the most prolific writer of the modern ages, especially since she became the first person to write about the alien known as Superwoman.

Scott nods, grinning. “That’s the one. It was for about a minute, and then he had to go report on Brainiac. I did get to talk to his girlfriend, though. She’s cool – kind of nerdy, but sweet.”

“Guess that’s the Kansas girl in her.”

“Guess so. But it must be weird having to share your boyfriend with Superwoman.”

“Maybe Lois has something the alien doesn’t,” Barry shrugged. A delivery guy walked in then, looking around. “Delivery for Barry Allen?”

He frowns as he goes up to him and signs for the package, which is in a little brown paper bag, and tips the delivery guy. “You order lunch?” Scott asks.

“No, I’m going out for lunch today.” Then his face clears when he recognises a tin of cashew nuts, and when he opens it he sees a miniature red Care Bear plushie toy with a note attached to its foot, he smiles. _Please don’t chase anymore Godfather stories. x_

“What is that?”

Barry grins, shaking his head. “It, uh, a joke between Iris and me. I may have done something a little dangerous and this is her way of telling me to stop.”

“With a cashew-eating Care Bear?”

“Long story. I think she’s trying to cheer me up.”

Scott nods. “Right. You know, I heard she was back in town. How she doing after…”

Barry shrugs. “She’s okay. Okay as she can be, I guess. We don’t really like to talk about it.”

Not much, anyway. They have healed some parts of himself, but he still can’t look at Iris without remembering that she almost died because of him – her relationship with him had put her in harm’s way. What’s more, it was _twice_ : once when they were kids and someone called Ashley Zolomon tried to kill them, and then this thing with the Thawnes. Because of his dad, rather than the fact that she ran around in a suit and a mask fighting crime. And he has no idea how she feels, and honestly the idea of being with anyone at all like that right now makes him feel like he’ll have another panic attack, but he’s sure that any lingering feelings she might have had for him probably couldn’t have survived all that. Despite the _Iris West-Allen_ that he remembers Gideon and Colin showing him.

Could they?

“Well, I’m glad she’s better. Do I want to know the story about the cashew nuts?”

“Probably not.”

He leaves pretty soon after that, heading to STAR Labs so they can talk about whatever it is that Stein has come up with. Iris and Chesca are there when he arrives, spooning food out of a chafing dish. “Hey, Bar. You want some rotisserie chicken?”

“Courtesy of the STAR Labs food budget,” Chesca adds cheerfully. “God, I love Costco.”

Barry pouts. “You guys went to Costco without me?”

Iris floats a package over to him. “Relax, I got you a churro. Actually, I got you five, but I got kind of hungry on the way back.”

“Must you eat everything?” Chesca wants to know. “You’re like a pint-sized black hole.”

“Unless you want the Miss Miracle part of the Miracle Workers to faint from hypoglycaemia, then yes. What is that beeping noise?”

Chesca wheels herself over to the terminals and clicks some buttons. “Oh, that’s just the new alert for a visitor who’s entered their passcode correctly. It’s Linda and Professor Stein.”

“What, no Wally?” Iris asks.

“He’s busy today,” Barry tells her. “Some fancy surgery or other.”

In the next moment they see Linda helping the professor into the room, and Iris frowns. “Professor? Are you alright? What happened?”

“Quite alright, Miss West,” she says pleasantly. She sits down in the chair Barry gets for her. “Thank you, Mr Allen. I was simply feeling a little lightheaded on the way here, and Miss Park here offered to help me.”

“Hey, anything for Firestorm, right?” she shrugs. “Wait, did you guys go to Costco? Did you get rotisserie chicken?”

“Third dish,” Iris points. She makes up a plate for Stein, who thanks her. “Now, would anyone like to know my findings on the latest craziness to come to our fair city?”

“Dying to,” Linda grins, hopping up on a desk. “We’re all ears.”

Chesca wheels a board over to her and gives her a pen. “Now, in the scientific community we have many theories – string theory, quantum gravity, tachyons, though our very own Miss West has made short work of that last one in the past year.” She pauses. “One of these theories is the many different worlds theory, or as I like to call it, the Theory of Parallel Earths.”

“Parallel earths?” Barry repeats. “That sounds…”

“Insane,” Linda finishes. “Totally insane.”

“Insane though it may be, Miss Park, but it may have been proven sooner than we thought. Alanna Rothstein had the same appearance and build as Atom Smasher – they even had the same DNA. Yet Alanna was honeymooning in Hawaii when the Particle Accelerator exploded, and the autopsy revealed no metahuman gene within her. Edie Slick was in custody the entire time Sand Demon paid us a visit, and yet it was definitely an Edie Slick that attacked us.”

“So you’re saying that Atom Smasher and Sand Demon came from another earth?” Chesca wants to know, and Stein nods.

“Precisely. Say we have our earth – Earth-1 or Earth-Prime,” she explains. She draws a circle and labels it. “This is Earth-2. And many, many more, each offering alternatives to our own earths. They all exist at the same time, but vibrate at different frequencies, so they cannot see each other.”

“What do you mean, alternatives?”

“Well, exactly that. The Iris West of Earth-2 may not be Miss Miracle – perhaps she is a doctor. Linda Park could be a baker. Barry Allen, the mayor.”

“Maybe I’m rich on one of these earths,” Chesca muses. “That’d be cool. Wait, how would they get over here?”

“Ah.” Stein walks over to the computers. “The theory extends to explain that interaction between these worlds is possible, usually by corridor, or breach, that extends between the two. The breaches are pockets of time and space folded into and upon themselves, caused by massive and repeated disruptions in spacetime where tidal gravitational forces become infinite, possibly by a very large lightning strike.”

Iris is probably the only person in the room apart from Chesca who knows what that means. “You mean like a lightning strike hitting a singularity?” she suggests quietly. They all look at her, flashing back to that night. Iris’ lightning had ripped out of her twice, and when it hit Colin the second time, lightning arced out and hit the sky, creating the singularity that they had to close – her, Stein, and Ronnie. “You’re saying that lightning hitting the sky caused it?”

“That would be my guess, yes,” she nods, her voice grave. “The disruption of the singularity closing probably sealed the deal. Now, I took the liberty of using electrophotography to search Central City for these pockets, for energy leaving one earth and entering the next.” She taps a few buttons and a satellite image of the city comes up, with dozens of light blue blobs floating around. “But there aren’t just one. There are fifty-two.”

Iris’ eyes widen and Barry almost drops his croissant. “You’re saying,” Chesca clarifies, “that there are _fifty-two_ breaches between this world and all the other earths?”

“Wait.” Linda walks up to the map, shaking her head. “Look, I dropped particle physics in sophomore year, but with the amount of energy phasing through, how is it stable for anyone to just walk through it? Wouldn’t they get hurt?”

Iris studies the map with her. “Well, according to these specs, because it’s moving at such an alarming rate, there must be at least one point in the shifting cycle where it’s stable enough to go through. They’re probably coming through by accident.”

“Yeah, but Atom Smasher and Sand Demon _wanted_ to come through, remember?” Barry points out. “And Alanna killed her doppelganger as soon as she showed up. At least someone over on one of these other earths must know how. But how do we tell who’s who?”

Barry, Iris and Linda are studying the map, so they don’t see all the colour drain from Chesca’s face before she looks at her hands, which are shaking. But Professor Stein does.

“The main problem right now is that there are portals to another world all over the city,” Iris says. “And if I’m reading this right, three of the biggest ones are in or around STAR Labs.”

Linda snorts. “Well, that certainly makes our day-”

They all stop when they hear a klaxon blare, so loud it’s making their test tubes vibrate. “What the hell is that?”

“Someone tried to break in!” Chesca shouts over the noise, typing several commands on the terminal. “To get in you need the correct passcode to the gate and a keycard with your face on it. The keypad is set so even if you enter the wrong passcode, you’re let in, but then you’re detained and this alarm goes off.”

“We’re detaining people now?”

“This is private property,” Professor Stein points out, “and they, whoever they are, were trespassing.”

“Exactly. They’re trapped in the elevator right now,” Chesca continues. “Let’s go see who’s trying to walk up in here like they pay rent.”

They walk out to the main corridor just as the elevator gets to their floor. When it opens, Iris sees that Chesca has had them fitted with steel bars, trapping the person who’s inside. He’s blonde, about their age, and glaring at all of them like…like…

Iris stops and stares at him. Her photographic memory is pretty entertaining to most people, given that she is a metahuman who never forgets anything she reads but she’s always forgetting everything else. But now it’s working perfectly, taking her back to a night in the Allen house months ago, of enchiladas and plans and revealed secrets…

“Who in the hell are you?” Linda demands, her arms folded, but Iris already knows.

“That’s…He’s…”

“My name is Jesse Chambers,” he says, hazel eyes hard. “Dr Jesse Chambers. My aunt is Dr Helena Wells, and I need to know what the hell you’ve done with her.”

***

“This is illegal.”

“So is breaking and entering,” Iris counters, and Jesse glares at her. He’s been doing that a lot, especially since they handcuffed him after they let him out of the cage. That took some doing, but it helps that they have someone who can move things with their mind on the team. Now, they are all glaring at each other.

Jesse has grown since the picture that they have of him was taken. He is a couple of inches shorter than Barry with honey blonde hair and a handsome face, though she thinks it would be a lot better without the scowl. They never bothered looking him up, since he stopped visiting Dr Wells years ago, but apparently he knows exactly who they are. His backpack lies unopened on the worktable.

“This building doesn’t belong to you-”

“Actually, it does,” Chesca tells him. She’s looking him up on the computers, typing furiously, but her tone doesn’t leave any room for argument. “Dr Wells left it to us.”

“She shouldn’t have done that.”

“And you would know?” Iris demands. “Since you visited all the time, and all.”

Jesse looks hurt by that, but Iris isn’t sure she cares. Dr Wells had been alone for fifteen years apart from Colin controlling her, and now Jesse is here, asking all these questions like he has the right, like he knew her at all, and _looking_ at them like…like they killed her.

“What is it that you want?” Barry asks carefully. “Dr Wells isn’t here; she’s been gone for months.”

“I told you, I want to know what you did with her.”

“What makes you think we did anything?”

“How else do you explain STAR Labs going under the supervision of a CSI assistant who never looks like she’s paying attention and a structural engineer in a Sailor Moon T-shirt?”

“Okay!” Linda interjects when Iris and Chesca take on identical furious looks. “Maybe enough with the smartass remarks, huh buddy? Since you’re sitting here in handcuffs.”

Jesse sighs. “I didn’t visit, you’re right, but I kept up with her. I know about when the Particle Accelerator exploded, and how it ruined her career. I know about everyone leaving her, apart from Francesca Ramon and Dr Colin Snow. And I know about how she put _you_ in a coma.” He addresses this last part to Iris, and the glare is back. “Iris West. Or, as everyone else calls you, Miss Miracle.”

Everyone gasps and Iris stares at him. “How the hell-”

“Relax, West. I’ve been watching you for months, and if you triangulate every pathway that Miss Miracle takes, her origin point is most likely to be this place. But honestly, I still don’t really believe it.” He peers at her. “Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone else will figure it out. You look way too puny to be a metahuman.”

“I can see why Helena never wrote you,” Iris snaps back. “Seriously, you think you can just waltz in here after years of ignoring her and demand whatever the hell you want?”

“Miss West,” Stein interjects. She wipes her brow. “I think perhaps we should wait until we have – that is, Mr Chambers…He…I…”

“Professor!” Chesca shouts. She’s shaking, her breath coming in short gasps, and suddenly blue flame erupts from her hands and head. It disappears as soon as it comes, and then she collapses to the ground. “Guys, her heart rate is dropping!”

“What’s happening to her?” Iris demands. “Why did she go all Firestorm and then stop?”

“Firestorm?” Jesse repeats. “This woman is merged with the Firestorm matrix?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Where’s her secondary? Who’s the person she merges with?”

Linda is the one who answers after everyone looks at each other. “She…died.”

Stein jerks again and Barry shakes his head. “Guys, we have to do something – she can’t take this for much longer! Should we call Wally?”

“No, it won’t work,” Chesca replies. “He’s a medical doctor; he wouldn’t know anything about this.” She pauses. “You. That ‘doctor’ you have in front of your name – medical?”

“With a specialty in bio-engineering.”

Chesca shares a look with Iris, who gives a terse but reluctant nod. “Got any ideas?”

“Uh…some sort of stabilising matrix? It will stop her cells from wanting to merge. Do you have some sort of portable power source?”

“Dr Wells’ wheelchair!” Iris realises. She stands and walks over to Jesse. “I’m trusting you to help us, you know. And I may be puny, but I will light your ass on fire if you hurt her.”

“Noted.”

***

Barry watches, several agonising minutes later, as Chesca helps Stein back into the Cortex from the medbay. Jesse and Chesca managed to stabilise her with a device that was in the wheelchair, putting it in her cane to prevent her from merging. Jesse is in the Pipeline now, waiting for them to deliver their verdict.

“Thank you, Miss Ramon,” she says shakily, sitting down. “Despite her glaringly obvious character flaws, it appears that I need Veronica much more than I thought. I’m sorry I gave you all such a scare – I have been feeling weaker recently, but I put it down to my years.”

“We’re just glad you’re okay, professor,” Linda says, and she nods.

“Yes. Thanks, in no small part, to young Dr Chambers. Surprising given that he’s so…”

“Aggressive, abrasive, and assholery?” Chesca suggests mildly, and Iris snorts.

“Good alliteration.”

“Thanks.”

Barry steps forward. “Okay, look. I know we may not like the guy, but this might actually be a good thing. He wants to know what happened to Dr Wells, and we’re trying to get her out. He’s a doctor with a history in bio-engineering, and he already seems up to speed with Miss Miracle stuff.”

“Seeing as he saved my life,” Stein adds, “I have to say, I am not averse to the idea.”

“We don’t need another doctor,” Iris disagrees, folding her arms. “We have Wally.”

But Linda is shaking her head. “Guys, I don’t think we can rely on him anymore. He’s always busy at the hospital, and I’d hate for something to happen to iris when he’s there. And like you said, his expertise stops just shy of tachyons and nuclear fusion.”

“Chess?” Iris tries, and her friend shrugs.

“I kind of think the guy’s an asshole, and not a little one. And if you want to beat his ass, I will pretend I didn’t see it. But he did safe the Professor’s life, and I kind of believe him.”

“What, because he guessed at some stuff and got other stuff from the news?” Iris is sceptical. “You guys, we literally just kicked one lying asshole out of this place; this is not the time to invite another in because he said some stuff that kind of maybe checks out.”

Barry narrows his eyes at her and glances at Chesca, who raises an eyebrow. He clears his throat. “Guys, could you give us the room for a minute?”

Iris frowns at him from behind her glasses when everyone leaves. “What?”

“What’s going on with you? Jesse was barely here for five minutes before he saved Stein’s life, and you want to kick him out? It’s not the thing where he keeps calling you short, is it? Because you’ve heard way worse from me.”

She lets out a short laugh and shakes her head, taking her glasses off to clean them. “I don’t trust him.”

“And when did you turn into someone that doesn’t trust people? That isn’t you, Iris.”

“A lot has changed. I…” she shakes her head helplessly. “We both trusted the wrong people, Barry, and we almost died. I can’t let that happen again.”

He comes to stand next to her, shoving his hands in his pockets. “You’re right, that happened. But we can’t let that stop us from doing our jobs. You’re not that person, Iris. You shouldn’t let yourself get swallowed up by darkness.”

Iris groans. “God, I hate you. Why are you always right?”

“It’s my superpower.” He pauses, rubbing his face. “So, Freddie called me and asked if I wanted an update. I said no, but-”

“She’s doing okay,” Iris says quietly. “She works, kind of keeps to herself. Did I tell you her name?”

“Beverly Lewis. That’s…”

“Yeah, I don’t know why she picked it either.”

Iris told him about Patty being alive soon after she got back from New Orleans, but he has been quiet about it apart from to know how she’s being doing. “Look, Barry, it’s okay if you want to…I can get you more stuff-”

“No, I’m okay,” he interrupts softly. He shrugs, wrapping his arms around himself. “Just curious. I guess I’ll get over it eventually. I just want to put the whole thing behind me, you know? Pretend like it’s just a thing that never happened.”

“Oh, you mean like that haircut in sophomore year of college?”

“Are you ever going to let that go?”

“Not on _this_ earth.” She pauses. “You really think I should trust him?”

“I think you should give it a try,” he tells her sincerely. “And it is his aunt, and we’re going to need all the help we can get with finding her.”

Iris rubs her eyes. Trying to free Dr Wells is a two-pronged problem – they need to get the people she kidnapped back, and prove that she was under someone else’s control. Essentially, they’re on a hunt to find missing people and Colin, but they have no idea whether the former are even alive, and where the latter is. “Any luck?”

“Well, we have to start with the metahumans,” he points out. “At least, the ones who are still alive. We have Linda, but neither she nor Wally even remember where they were held. Eddie’s a no-go. Our best bet would be Blackout, Woodward, and any of the other metas that escaped the Pipeline. Any idea where Colin went?”

Iris shrugs helplessly. “He learned how to teleport – he could be anywhere. The last time I saw him, he punched a hole in thin air and stepped through it. I’ve never seen anything like that before, and it’s not like I can find Dr Wells to ask.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, one problem at a time, right?”

“Right. Besides, you can actually kick his ass now if it goes bad.”

“True,” she agrees. She presses on the intercom. “Okay, you can all come back in now. And bring Jesse with you.”

When they all traipse back in, Iris glances at Barry before continuing. “Alright, Jesse, obviously we need you, and you want us to answer our questions, but I’ll propose a compromise. Obviously our most pressing problem is Professor Stein – you and Chesca built that device to help her, but it won’t last long before she might have another episode. So we need to find some way to help her. Linda, Barry and I need to go back to work, but you can call us if you need anything. You stay here and help Chesca find something to help her, and we will tell you about Dr Wells.”

Jesse nods immediately, crossing to the computers, and Chesca makes an indignant noise. “Whoa there, new boy!”

“I want to get started-”

“Wait, Jesse.” Iris steps forward, something commanding in her voice, and he turns back around. “What happened to your aunt…It’s not a nice story. It is not a fun story. And it definitely doesn’t have a happy ending. So you’d better be damn sure that this is what you want.”

Jesse regards her, takes in the rest of the team’s faces. Then he nods slowly. “I’m in.”

“Good. Ideas?”

“Well, the whole point of the Firestorm matrix is that she can merge with someone who was affected in the same way.” He snaps his fingers and points. “Ramon?”

She glares at him. “My name is Chesca.”

“Of course it is. Get over here, I need your help. Type this…”

Linda sidles up to Iris as Jesse gives Chesca instructions. “Ten dollars says Chesca is going to duct-tape his mouth shut and throw him in the pipeline.”

“Twenty,” Barry and Iris say together, and Professor Stein laughs. After a few seconds, Chesca whistles.

“Okay, apparently Dr Hattie Hewitt and Jemima Jackson were also affected by the Particle Accelerator and dark. They were both admitted to the hospital showing signs of gene rearrangement mutation, and they have the same blood type as Professor Stein.”

Barry nods, impressed. “And what, we just ask them both if they’d like to merge with a woman who has to set herself on fire to live? No offence.”

“None taken, Mr Allen,” she says easily. But Jesse shrugs.

“Well, we can always ask. Who doesn’t want to be a superhero? West even makes it look fun.”

“Don’t make me regret letting you join this team.” She pauses, studying the results. “How did you get all of that stuff?”

Chesca gasps. “Did you – you had me hack into state medical records!”

“Dude, that’s a felony,” Linda points out, and Jesse shrugs again.

“Well, it was either that or steal their blood without their permission.”

“So you stood there and told me how to hack into people’s medical records? Why didn’t you do it?”

He looks at her like she hasn’t been paying attention. “Because it’s a felony, Ramon, and I’m the one with the medical license to lose.”

“Ahem!” Iris puts in before they can start arguing again. “So we find these guys and see if either of us wants to merge with Stein. Keep us posted – we still need to talk about this breach problem.”

“I’ll give you guys a ride back to work,” Barry adds, standing up, and Linda brightens.

“Can we stop at Jitters on the way? I think this whole thing stole all the coffee from my system.”

Iris stops next to Stein, who is watching Chesca and Jesse argue about something. “Could you-”

“Rest assured, Miss West. I will not let them murder each other before they save my life.” Iris grins.

“You read my mind, Professor.”

As they leave, they turn back to see Jesse and Chesca bickering already. “Oh yeah,” Linda says. “This’ll be good.”

***

 

Iris makes it back to work just before her lunch break ends, and a mountain of work on her desk. Her only consolation, she supposes, is that none of this is field work – just authorising and signing reports, and double-checking what the detectives found to make sure they understood what she was talking about. Maybe if she gets all of this work done before five, she can duck out of work early and find a new partner for Professor Stein. Honestly, between the breaches, trying to figure out where in the world Colin went, the Firestorm situation and now Jesse, she’s starting to miss New Orleans. There is a message from her mother, though, that makes her smile, and she’s just finished listening to it when someone knocks on the door to her lab.

“Iris? Are you busy?”

“Detective Mendez,” she greets him. She looks at her desk and then picks up a file. “I actually have your report ready. Just to let you know, your witness is probably lying, since I found traces of the accelerant on his shoes.”

He smiles at her, showing off his perfect white teeth. Chesca met him a couple of weeks ago and insists on calling him Detective Jalapeño (“Because he’s hot.” “…that was really weak, Chesca.” “Yeah, I know.”), and now that’s all she thinks of when she sees him. He _is_ attractive though, in the whole strong-jawed, inky black hair, soulful brown eyes way. “Thanks, Iris. I was wondering whether I could ask you about something?”

“Sure. If it’s blood spatter or DNA analysis you’re after, I’m your girl,” she replies easily.

“Good to know,” he laughs. “It’s kind of weird, but you’ve handled all the metahuman stuff by yourself in the last year, so I figure you can handle it.”

Iris smiles. “Right. Well, let’s just say I’ve got a unique perspective on these things. What’s up?”

He hands her an evidence bag and she studies it, pushing her glasses up her nose. “These look like…”

“Shark teeth?” he finishes as she goes to study them under the microscope that Barry got her for Christmas. “Yeah, I found them out by the bay. And there was an eyewitness that said he saw a woman shark person walking on land.”

Iris takes off her goggles and stares at him. “A woman…shark?”

He shrugs. “Hey, I just report what I heard. The guy seemed pretty certain of it, though. And I hear that’s not even the weirdest stuff you get sent.”

Iris is about to reply that there better not be a goddamned shark wandering around the city when the captain walks in. “Mendez,” she says, and then turns to Iris, her expression already irritated. “West. I take it Mendez is enlightening you on his findings?”

“Yes, ma’am, but we don’t really have the equipment to analyse shark teeth. Besides, I doubt that there was a woman-shark thing walking around broad daylight-”

“West,” she interrupts. “Are you a detective?”

Iris sighs. “No, ma’am.”

“Then I would leave the investigations to the professionals. We have already had a giant jellyfish almost kill Miss Miracle, and I don’t want anyone eaten by a shark because you didn’t think it was plausible. As for equipment, don’t you own STAR Labs?”

“It is…under my ownership, yes.”

The captain nods. “Well, then you have my permission to go there and find out whether this checks out.”

Iris can only smile to herself. All this time worrying about whether she’ll make it back to STAR Labs to help with all their latest problems, and the captain is just sending her back there. “Of course, captain, no problem. I’ll try to have these done by tomorrow morning.”

“That’s what I like to hear, West. Mendez, I’ll see you later.”

He immediately turns back to her, his expression apologetic. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for-”

But Iris just laughs. “Don’t worry about it, really. A few more weeks in this place, you’ll figure out she was actually being nice that time. I’ll have this done for you soon, detective.”

“Julio. ‘Detective’ is a little too formal for me.”

Iris smiles. “Julio it is.”

***

Barry plays with the Care Bear plushie toy absently as he types, his brow furrowed in concentration. Safe in the knowledge that Chesca and Jesse are working with Professor Stein to figure out the whole Firestorm situation, which is now the most pressing problem, he’s looking into how to find the metahumans that escaped from the Pipeline when Colin let them out. And as much of an asshole as Jesse Chambers apparently is – and he’s had half a dozen texts from Chesca confirming just that – they will need his help, since apparently Colin turned into Houdini when he disappeared.

Iris promised she would think about that, so Barry is tackling the other side of things. He still has that file of people who went missing around the same time all the metahumans turned up, so he’s basically got to follow up on what happened to them. Plus, because Calamity is no longer a threat, he doesn’t have to worry about her coming back to kill him. Unless, you know. Colin decides he’s going to turn them all into popsicles in their sleep.

And then there’s this breach problem. He doesn’t have to look at Iris to know that she’s feeling guilty about it, even though she couldn’t possibly have stopped a singularity. But if there are people wandering in from different earths, she could work herself to death. To top all that off, he keeps seeing pictures of some sort of hawk man thing, and that’s exactly the kind of thing he’d love to investigate if he had the time.

Despite himself, he can’t quite bring himself to dislike the mysterious Dr Jesse Chambers, either. The guy is a complete asshole and he can foresee several arguments with him in the future, but he can’t say that he blames him. If anyone even hinted at hurting his family, at hurting his mother or Iris, he’s sure he’d be an even bigger asshole than Jesse.

“That looks like fun,” someone says, and he looks up. “Mom? What are you doing here?”

Barry hugs her and she shrugs. “I need to give a quote for the fire at the mayor’s summer house,” she explains, “and I thought I’d check in on my favourite reporter. How are you doing?”

“Just trying to tackle our latest problem,” he replies, running a hand through his hair. She frowns.

“We have another one?”

“Yeah, Firestorm, the breaches into another world, and Jesse Chambers.”

His mother blinks at him. “I thought the latest problem was the shark teeth.”

“Shark teeth?”

“Yeah, Julio has been working up the nerve to ask her about them for a week, and I guess the captain gave her permission to go back to STAR Labs to go look into it.”

“Why would he need to work up the nerve to talk to Iris? It’s not like she bites.”

“Well, some guys are intimidated by pretty girls. Especially smart ones.”

Before Barry can process what exactly that means, Scott walks over to them, smiling. “Detective. Barry, you’re need to come with me.”

“What? Did Missy hate the piece? I’m getting fired, aren’t I?”

But Scott is laughing. “Relax, Barry. Not only are you not getting fired, but they want to interview you for a piece they’re doing on tonight’s news.”

Barry almost falls over. “I’m going to be on TV?”

“Yep. Apparently the Baldwin family have been doing this in cities all over both coasts, so this is going to be big.” He backs away as one of the interns calls his name for something. “You need to meet the broadcast department in fifteen!”

His mother hugs him and kisses him on the forehead. “Barry, that’s amazing!”

“Yeah,” he says breathlessly, sitting down. This is a far cry from what he thought was going to happen. “Yeah, it is. How’s my hair?”

“Of course,” she laughs. “Listen, I’ll get out of your hair, but tell me what time you’re on, okay? I want everyone at the precinct to see.” She walks away, and then turns back. “Barry, how much liquor am I going to need with ‘breaches to another world’?”

“…Great-Uncle Rudy’s whiskey.”

***

“Are you sure it was a good idea to leave them alone in there?” Iris asks. Professor Stein nods.

“It was rather tough going at first, but I am reasonably confident that they will be able to work together long enough to find a solution to our problem.”

“Reasonably confident?”

“Perhaps we should check on them periodically. But I am much more interested in what you dropped off for analysis.”

Iris just shakes her head. “Seriously, Professor, the fact that those shark teeth is the most normal part of my day today should tell you something about my life. Are we close?”

They study the satellite navigation system and Iris makes a left turn into a side street. Jemima Jackson has her auto shop here, and they’ve been sent to meet her while Chesca and Jesse collect Hattie Hewitt from her job at Kord Labs to talk to her. “What do we know about her? Chesca told me about Hattie already, but…”

Stein is reading through the medical reports that Jesse printed out. “Well, she was on track to become a professional athlete, with numerous scholarships to study at some of the country’s top institutions.”

Iris whistles, impressed. “Which sport?”

“Baseball,” she replies. She hands Iris a picture of a pretty, dark-skinned woman with curly black hair in a baseball outfit, smiling into the camera with her father’s arms around her. “She would have been an engineering major.”

“Would have been?”

“When they dark matter hit her, it damaged her ACL. That meant the end of those dreams.”

Iris sighs. That’s another thing that has been messed up – another life that isn’t how it should be. “Well, this is a chance for her to be a part of something bigger. Ready?”

The auto shop is loud with the sounds of drills and hammers, and the pungent tang of oil hangs in the humid air. Through all of that, they can hear the sounds of a music playing from speakers.

“ _First things first, I’ll eat ya brains/Then Imma start rockin gold teeth and fangs_ …”

“Interesting taste in music,” Stein mutters.

“Hey!” Iris says indignantly. “I love this song.”

“Yes, well, that coupled with her susceptibility to allergies does not do much to sway me to Miss Jackson’s side.”

Iris spots her then, legs sticking out from underneath a truck. “Jemima Jackson?”

“You want a car fixed, you can go ahead and call me Jax.” She rolls out from underneath the car and stands, smoothing her hair back in the bandanna tying her hair back. “My mom calls me Jemima.”

“Catchy,” Stein says, and Jax regards them, wiping her hands on a cloth.

“Can I help you guys?”

“Um, I am Iris West,” she says quickly, reaching out to shake her hand. “And this is Martina Stein. We’re with the Department of Safety – it’s a small, newly-formed department-”

“Very new, I’m sure we don’t even have a website-”

“No website,” Iris clarifies, and Jax nods.

“If you want to see our licenses, we’re all up to code here…” Jax says helpfully, but Iris shakes her head.

“No, nothing like that. We’re actually compiling data on people who were affected on the Particle Accelerator two years ago, and we wanted to know whether we would ask you a few questions-”

“Look,” Jax sighs tiredly, folding her arms, “I lost enough time in my life because of that stupid thing going wrong. Now, it looks like you and Lady Grey over here _don’t_ have I car I can fix, so I can’t help you.”

Iris and Stein share a panicked look. “Miss Jackson-”

“Jax.”

“Jax, if you just come back to STAR Labs with us, perhaps we can help each other.”

She narrows her eyes at them. “Help each other how?”

Iris steps forward. “Look, we know what the Particle Accelerator did to you…”

“And I already told you, I don’t talk about that night.” She shakes her head, her expression twisted into one of helpless sadness. “Everything changed for me, the night of the explosion. I woke up in the hospital with a torn ACL and a busted arm, and who wants a baseball player who can’t run? I wanted to go to college, but without my scholarships, I couldn’t afford it.” She lets out a breath through her nose and tightens her bandanna, going back around to her workstation. “Look, I have to get back to work.”

Iris looks at Stein again, who deflates. So much for that. Iris bites her lip, before scribbling something down in her notepad. “Look, that’s our number. Just think about it, okay?”

They leave Jax in her workshop and Iris helps Stein back to the can, both disappointed. “I must admit, I thought it would be as simple as asking and she would come with us.” Stein adjusts her glasses. “But then I suppose that must just be optimism. Have we had any luck with Miss Hewitt?”

“I’m not sure,” Iris admits. She starts the van, shaking her head. “Still, I kind of wanted it to be Jax. Sure, she didn’t graduate summa cum laude from Stanford in physics like Hattie did, but she’s an athlete – that’ll help a lot with the physical attributes of being Firestorm. Plus, more of her alleles are compatible with yours.”

“Well, I have to say, Miss West,” she says, a little sadly, “given that my last partner with perfect attributes turned out so disappointing, and I am only concerned with finding someone long enough so that I don’t explode and leave my husband again.”

Iris nods. Professor Martina Stein should be somewhere teaching master’s students about quantum physics and going home to listen to Chopin with her wife, not wondering whether she’s going to spontaneously combust because she’s become the equivalent of a nuclear fission experiment. Another thing that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Her phone buzzes with a text from Jesse and she brings it up on the dashboard. “Oh!” she says, raising her eyebrows. “Hattie Hewitt already said yes.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, according to Jesse she’s very enthusiastic. He went to go see her at work, so let’s get back to STAR Labs and talk about it.”

Iris is shocked, then, when she gets back to the Cortex to find Hattie Hewitt wandering around the room and talking to Jesse like she’s lived there her whole life. She’s tall and slim, with short her and brown skin, dressed in a pencil skirt and shirt. She grins when she sees them both. “You must be Professor Stein! I’m really looking forward to…I suppose ‘partnership’ is the right word for it.”

Stein shakes her hand, a little dazed. “Of course, Miss Hewitt.”

Iris, meanwhile, has spotted Chesca stewing in the corner, and beckons her and Jesse over to her while Hattie and Stein talk. “Can someone explain why she’s here already? I thought we were supposed to talk about this!”

Chesca shrugs, her brown eyes hard. “Don’t look at me. We looked her up and I thought we should all talk about it. I go upstairs to see whether I can make something for Stein’s cane, and when I get back, she’s already here.” She shrugs. “She’s compatible, but she’s got an ego the size of Texas.”

Iris turns on Jesse who, infuriatingly, looks thoroughly bored by this entire conversation. “Look, Jesse, I know you’re new here, but on this team we actually discuss things like this and then make decisions together. Like a _team_.”

“Well, so far, your team would have had a dead professor without me,” he replies sardonically. “And it seems your decision-making has been pretty terrible so far, or your original Firestorm secondary would still be alive.”

Iris is sure that one or both of them would have murdered Jesse right then and there, but Hattie taps her on the shoulder. “Iris West? I just want to say, I’m a big fan. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like working with the Golden Grace.”

She rounds on Jesse again. “And we don’t tell people that I’m Miss Miracle!”

“You guys are the ones who leave the suit out.”

“Because we don’t invite people into STAR Labs like this is MTV Cribs!”

Stein clears her throat. “I think it might be best to leave this until later. Miss Hewitt has already expressed a great interest in helping us, and after speaking with her, I have a lot of faith in her.”

“And it looks like you guys couldn’t get Jemima Jackson to join you,” Jesse points out. Iris looks around.

“We need more time than an hour-”

“Really? I didn’t. Hewitt is here and willing, and they already get along pretty great. I say we start the merge.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Hattie adds helpfully. “I’ve always known I was destined for something great.”

Iris takes a deep breath. She still has an uneasy feeling about this, but the alternative – that Stein could die at any moment – is too horrible to contemplate. “Okay, let’s do it.”

That’s how, a few minutes later, Jesse is explaining to Hewitt what will happen once they merge. Iris comes to stand next to Chesca after checking on the analysis of the shark teeth. “I don’t like him.”

“Neither do I.”

“He can’t sit with us.”

“Not on this earth.”

“And he can’t come to the movie nights.”

“I wasn’t going to invite him.”

“And he isn’t getting a keycard.”

Iris has to draw the line there. “Chess, he needs a keycard. Otherwise he’ll get locked up every time he walks in.”

She shrugs. “Eh. I don’t have a problem with that.”

“Chess.”

“Fine. But I’m photoshopping his forehead so it looks bigger – why are hot guys always assholes?”

Iris puts a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, it – Chess? You okay?”

Chesca had jumped slightly, and now her eyes are wide, skin clammy, as she looks at her. “S-Sorry. I’m fine, just thought about something Colin said to me.”

Iris frowns, but then Jesse gestures for Chesca to come forward. “We’re ready.”

“Okay, Hattie. This is a splicer. When I put it on your chest, you’ll feel a rush – that’s a molecular primer being released into your body. Then you can make physical contact with Professor Stein, and you’ll be Firestorm.”

As Iris watches, Chesca fits the splicer to the front of her shirt, and they hear a tiny _snick_ sound as the legs fly out and attach to her shirt. Chesca nods and steps back. Jesse clears his throat. “Go ahead.”

Hattie and Stein look at each other, raising their hands so that flame erupts between their fingers…

And nothing happens.

Iris shares a look with Chesca. “Try again,” Stein suggests, and they make to move their hands closer, but it still doesn’t work. “Why isn’t it working?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse frowns.

“Maybe you’re not as compatible as we thought,” Stein says, disappointed. But Hattie is glaring at Jesse.

“You said this would work,” she snaps. “That if I agreed to come with you, I’d be a superhero.”

“I said there was a possibility-”

“So what’s the problem? If _she_ can be a superhero, why can’t I?”

 _Okay, is this ‘find an asshole, get another free’ day, or something_? Iris thinks to herself. “Hattie, I know you’re disappointed, but there could be any number of things that explain why you’re not merging-”

“The problem is that you’re all idiots,” she snaps, and Iris gets a smack of her thoughts, vicious and unforgiving, and steps in front of Stein. “I know I’m supposed to be something greater than this – _you’re all wrong_!”

She storms out, fists clenched, and Chesca looks at Jesse. “Well,” she says brightly, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “That could have gone better.”

***

It takes him a few tries, but Barry gets the hang of being on TV eventually.

Scott gave him a few pointers before he was driven to Baldwin Towers to give a report on what he found there. It looks different than it did at night – especially because he isn’t jumping out of a sixteen-storey window – and there are detectives talking to people. Barry, though, is in the middle of one of the apartments, explaining to the camera how these people were evicted from their homes.

“…or they employed several methods to make sure that these people left of their own accord,” he continues. He picks his way past some evidence tape, walking backwards so he’s still facing the camera. “And they changed it depending on who was living in the apartment.”

Off-camera, someone asks, “Could you explain that?”

“Of course. Landlords are responsible for certain things – when the dryer is broken, for example, that’s who they go to. In this case, we had a family of four with two small children who complained that their mattresses were damaged.” He points. “The mattress was replaced – but it had bedbugs. When you have toddlers wandering around, touching surfaces, and then putting their hands in their mouths, they’re worried. They call their landlord, or consider leaving.”

Then he kneels, gesturing for the camera to follow him, and points at the carpet. “Lower down, near the ground floor, we had several reports of older couples saying that their carpets smelled. I took an old portion of the carpet that was thrown out to have it analysed, and it was found to have carcinogens in it. Older people have weaker lungs, and they were inhaling the particles that give you cancer.”

“That’s horrific.”

“Exactly,” he says, standing up. “There were other problems, too: unsafe boilers, cracked ceilings, dirty water…Either these people were being evicted because they were withholding rent until their landlords fixed their problems, or they were leaving because of the danger to their health and safety. Essentially, the owners of Baldwin Towers were employing psychological warfare on their tenants.”

“Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?”

“Not at all,” Barry replies easily. “It’s a typical manipulation tactic, similar to what happens in a child custody case or a case of financial abuse – the person with the power will say something like ‘you’ll never see or child again’, or threaten their financial stability. When a family member or loved one is in danger, people become emotional, and they are much easier to manipulate.”

They wrap up the report then, and Barry breathes a shaky sigh of relief when the cameras stop rolling. His mother comes around the corner, smiling, and pulls him into a hug. “I am so going to brag to all the other moms about this.”

“Good to know. Are you one of the people on this case?”

“Yeah, Julio and I are going to be interviewing some of the people you couldn’t. He’s going to interview you, actually, since I can’t. Family members and everything.”

He comes around the corner as his mother finishes speaking, the newest detective at CCPD, and nods. “That was really impressive, Barry. Why didn’t you become a detective? You seem like you’d be really good at it.”

Barry laughs. “Mom wasn’t too big on that.”

“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t get himself into trouble anyway,” his mother mutters.

“Well, I’m sure our interview will be seriously enlightening. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Thanks, Julio,” he replied easily, and then he remembers what his mother told him earlier in the afternoon. _You think Iris is pretty_. Then he brings himself up short. Of course he thinks Iris is pretty – he has eyes. “I have to get back to the paper, but I’ll see you later?”

Missy is actually smiling at him when he walks back into CCPN, which is a nice surprise. “Barry. Congratulations on not looking like a gaping fish while they were recording.”

“Thanks, Missy (!) What happens next?”

“Well, it was a feature report, so it’ll be on at eight. There might be some ADR – are you okay to stay late?”

“Sure.”

“Good. And then we’re probably going to take you out for drinks to celebrate. Sound good?”

Barry grins, sitting down at his desk. “Sounds great!”

Missy nods and makes to leave, but then turns back around again. “Oh, I almost forgot – someone was looking for you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Older guy about your height, broad shoulders, blue eyes, brown hair.”

Barry shakes his head, not knowing who she’s talking about, and Missy looks around. “Evans, what was the name of that guy who wanted to talk to Allen?”

Scott looks up from his desk. “Henry something?”

His entire body turns cold and the edges of his vision start to blur. “H-Henry.”

“Yeah. You know him?”

 _Henry had been here_. _In Central City, at his desk, talking to his colleagues_.

His heart speeds up and he raises a shaking hand to his hair. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “I do. Did he leave a number?”

Scott picks a note off his desk. “Yeah, he said to call him. He seemed to really want to talk to you.”

“Right.”

“And your friend,” Missy continues blithely. “The pretty one with the glasses – Violet?”

Barry’s head snaps up at that. “Iris? He asked about Iris?”

“Yeah, he wondered whether she would be here any time soon.”

He shuts his eyes, his jaw clenched, and tries to quell the anger churning in his belly. The thought of Henry – because no, that man is not his father – anywhere near anyone he loves again is like the thought of swallowing poison. Missy must see something on his face, because she steps closer to him. “Allen? You alright?”

“We didn’t tell him anything,” Scott adds, but Barry is already standing up.

“Thanks. I just – I’ll be right back.”

Barry grabs the number from Scott and sends a short text message to it as he stalks out of the building.

_Central City Bay. Now._

Henry wants to talk? Fine. Barry has always had plenty to say.

***

“I think we should get her back.”

“ _Are you insane_?”

“What other choice do we have? Why shouldn’t we get her back?”

Chesca, who’s looking between Jesse and Iris as they argue at each other as she sits at the computer terminals, gives him a disbelieving look. “Maybe because she was a pretentious asshole who was more than a little scary?”

Stein agrees, nodding. “I am with Miss Ramon – scientific compatibility or not, it takes more than that to become Firestorm.”

“Besides, did anyone see her hands before she left?” Chesca asks, and everyone looks at her.

“Her hands?” Iris repeats.

“Yeah, they were kind of red and glowy.”

“Her powers must have activated when we attempted the merge,” Stein realises. “We have to find her and stabilise her or she could…well, blow.”

Chesca makes a choked noise. “Uh-oh.” Iris pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Please tell me that’s an ‘uh-oh, we made a mistake and Stein only has the flu, all she needs is fluids’?”

“No, it’s an ‘uh-oh, Hattie Hewitt has two counts of aggravated assault on her record, and had to have court-mandated anger management classes last year’.”

Iris has to count to ten to prevent herself from turning to Jesse and telling him she told him so, but she doesn’t have to worry because Chesca is giving him that look. “Alright,” she says, trying to remain calm. “Obviously now we can’t merge the two of them. I will go back to Kord Industries and make sure Hattie knows how dangerous it is to attempt a merge but not actually be merged. Jesse, you’re coming with me. Chess, we need – who’s that?”

Chesca stops the visitor alarm, before pressing some keys and peering at the security footage. “Wow. It’s Jemima.”

“Jax,” Iris and Stein say together. Iris comes around to stare at the screen. “She’s here?”

“Maybe she changed her mind?”

Jesse, who at least has had the good grace to look ashamed about everything, folds his arms. “Does she know what could happen to her if she merges with Stein? I don’t think we want a repeat of what just happened.”

“Well, we never actually got that far. But I guess we’ll see what she thinks now.”

As if she hears them, Jax wanders into the Cortex, her hands buried in her leather jacket pockets. “Okay, maybe you guys can fix my leg.”

“Your leg?” Jesse repeats.

“Yeah, I figured it couldn’t hurt to talk to you guys, right? Talking never did anyone any harm. What’s up, Lady Grey?”

“Jax,” she says quietly. “I think the first thing I must do is apologise.”

“Why?”

It’s Iris who answers – half because she’s afraid that Jesse will say something abrasive. “When the Particle Accelerator exploded, it didn’t just hurt your knee, it changed the molecular structure of your body.”

Jax blinks at her. “So you mean I’m like one of those metahumans I keep hearing about on the news?”

“Yes,” Stein answers, sitting down. “We think that, because of the accident, you may have potential…capabilities.”

Jax’s gaze slides between them all. “What kind of capabilities?”

“The same as Professor Stein, here,” Jesse tells her. “The power to process fission and fusion.”

“And,” Chesca adds, “you can harness excess energy and turn it into these massive nuclear blasts. And you can fly. There’s also that.”

“You can do all that, Lady Grey?”

“Yes, but only in times of convergence with a willing volunteer.”

Jax stares at every single one of them like they’ve lost their minds, before settling on Stein. “You and me?”

“That’s right.”

“Yeah,” Jax laughed in disbelief, “I don’t think so.”

“Jax,” Iris says desperately, “this is the chance to right the wrong that was done to you.”

“Yeah, see, I actually watch the news. And the metahuman with those powers went up into the singularity and _never came back_. Jax folds her arms. “I was okay with this when it was supposed to fix my leg. But this? This is crazy. I don’t want anything to do with this.”

They watch her leave helplessly, and Jesse starts after her. “I’m going to talk to her.”

Iris doesn’t think that will go well – at all. “Wait – Jesse, wait!”

Jesse catches her in the corridor. “Look, Jax, I know you don’t have to do this, and I know it’s a crazy idea. But you’re not the only one who had a wrong done to you. You’re not the only one who’s…angry about things not turning out the way they should.” He looks down at the ground. “I made a mistake – a lot of mistakes, actually, and I’m trying to correct them. But we need your help to do it.”

Jax looks between the two of them for agonising minute. “Jax, the person who was merged with Stein before died, you’re right. But she was never worthy of being a hero. You are.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read your file, Jax. The only reason you were injured that night was because you were helping someone else leave.” She shrugs. “You’ve always wanted to be something to be part of something bigger. Now you can be. Now you can help people.”

Jax considers this, and then Chesca runs into the corridor. “Guys, Stein fainted.”

Jesse follows her back in and helps her off the floor. “What happened?”

“Her temperature is a hundred and forty degrees and rising fast.”

Jesse listens for her pulse as Stein mutters listlessly, sweat glistening on her forehead. “She’s going into rapid oxidation – we need to find a coolant.”

“It is _way_ too late for that.” Chesca picks up the cane. “This thing must have given out.”

“I’ll do it,” Jax says. She looks around. “If – If I can help other people, it’ll be worth it, right?”

Iris looks up at her. “Are you sure, Jax? Once you merge, you can’t go back.”

Her gaze settles on Chesca. “You said I could fly, right?”

“Damn straight.”

“I’m in. What do I do?”

Chesca stands quickly. “Just so you know, you’re getting this CliffsNotes version of this.” She picks up the splicer that Hattie left behind and positions it on her chest, while Jesse and Iris get Stein off the floor and help her to her feet. “Jax,” she says, blinking. “You didn’t leave.”

“Well, you’re my girl, Lady Grey. Apparently. So what happens?”

“All you have to do is touch her,” Jesse says. “And then…you become Firestorm.”

Jax nods and stands in front of Stein, while Iris and Chesca go to stand next to him. As they watch, flames erupt out of both of them and the merge finishes, and Jax turns to them, her face alight with wonder. Fire bursts forth from her hands and head. “Okay, now,” she says. “I could get used to this.”

Jesse steps forward. “Professor Stein?”

 _Nicely done, Jax_.

“Yeah,” Iris says, relieved, “she’s in there.”

“So when do I get to take this new thing out for a test run?”

As if on purpose, the Cortex starts blaring with alarms. Chesca runs to the terminals. “How about now?”

“What happened?” Jesse demands.

“Hattie must be on the rampage – fires at Kord Industries, the plant, the solar station…”

“Well, where is she now?”

Then something odd happens. Iris sees Chesca freeze for just a second and then swallow. At least, she thinks she does. “How about the high school? It’s got these big solar panels, and that must have been the thing that powered Jax. It’ll be the perfect place to recharge.”

“That,” Jesse nods, “is an excellent guess. You up for it, Jax?”

“Yeah, but I just got these powers,” she replies. But Iris throws back her shoulders, heading to the alcove where she keeps her costume.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help.”

“I’m Miss Miracle,” she replies tersely, and Jesse points at her.

“See? You tell people!”

“Call it an executive decision.”

Jax raises an eyebrow. “You’re Miss Miracle? Girl, I can fit you in my pocket.”

Iris just snaps her fingers and almost every object in the room flies off the ground. “Okay,” Jax says, her hands up. “Let’s get ‘em, Miss Miracle.”

***

Henry is waiting for him when he arrives, and Barry is shocked once more by how similar they are. The way they stand and move…But that doesn’t matter. It’s just DNA, it doesn’t mean anything. There’s no one else but them, surrounded by boats as they bob on the water. As always, Henry is in a pressed suit with dice arranged in a pentagon shape on his lapel. “Barry,” he says quickly. “Thank you for coming.”

“You came to the paper,” he replies tightly. “Not like I had a choice. What do you want?”

“I wanted to talk.”

“What,” Barry snaps, “could we _possibly_ have to talk about?”

He sighs, rubbing his face, and Barry thinks this is so unlike the man who called himself Jay Garrick in Jitters, and then Eobard Thawne when Patty fled. He is apprehensive, worried. Maybe this is the real Henry Allen. Too bad it’s too late to care.

“I know you have every reason to be angry, son-”

“I am _not_ your son!” Barry points at him. “You already have a son, you made that clear, alright? So this? This showing up and looking at me like this and whatever the hell this is? It stops now. Permanently.”

“Barry, if you would just listen-”

“I’m not listening to a damn thing you have to say,” he snarls. “No, this isn’t a conversation, this isn’t a debate, this is me _telling you_ what is going to happen. You do not come by my work. You do not go to the precinct. You do not talk to my friends, you stay the hell away from my mother, and you do not go _anywhere_ near Iris. Under no circumstances will you or any of the people you work for will ever hurt her again. And if I find out that she so much as saw you in her rear-view mirror, I will break _every damn bone_ in your body. Are we clear?” When Henry doesn’t answer, Barry takes a step forward. “I said, _are we clear_?”

Henry nods slowly, and Barry turns on his heel. “We’re clear. Barry-”

He whips back around. “ _What_?”

“Just one minute,” he begs. “One minute, and then you never have to see me again. Not if you don’t want to.”

Well, isn’t that inviting? Barry folds his arms. “Fine. Talk.”

Henry struggles for a moment. “You know the way we work? Eddie and Waller and I?”

“That you’re a bunch of liars?”

“We do have to keep more than a few secrets, yes. But our agents go into operations knowing that, should things go sour, they’re on their own.”

“Charming (!)”

“It’s the world I live in, Barry,” Henry says tiredly. “It’s not the one I chose.”

He never considered that. “I’m still listening.”

“Right. Well, Eddie said that there was an agent he was supposed to be looking for when he came here. Before he got captured by Calamity.”

“Yeah. Linda said he called her Agent M. Didn’t want us to know who she was.”

“When we found out that Eddie was okay and Calamity was arrested, Waller made the decision to let that agent go. We weren’t sure whether she was dead or alive, and we’re still not, but with the investigation closed and Calamity in custody, she was no longer necessary. Standard procedure. Eddie was upset about it and I’ll be honest, he’s not over it.”

Barry frowns. For a supposedly skilled veteran who’s been doing this for years, it’s strangely hard for him to get the words out, apparently. “So you cut her lose?” he clarifies. “Because she’d been compromised.”

“Right.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

It takes him a second to get the words out. “The agent was my… daughter. Eddie’s sister – your sister.”

Barry’s mouth goes dry. “You – you mean…”

“Yes, Barry. It was Malina.”

***

Iris and Jax arrive at Central City High to see baseball players running off the field, their screams echoing in the air. Iris spots Hattie in the middle of the field, flames shooting out in four directions and hitting all four solar panels. “Okay, guys?” Iris says into her headset. “I think it’s safe to say she blew!”

She flashes away in a second when she sees flames flying towards two people who can’t get away fast enough, and she teleports them away. “Chesca? Cut the power to the field so she can’t draw any more energy.”

“On it!” Iris hears frantic tapping, and when she teleports outside, all of the lights have been switched off. “HOW DO YOU LIKE THE DARKNESS, BITCH?”

“Hewitt!” Iris calls, flying towards her. “You have to stop this now, before it goes too far!”

Hattie turns to look at her, her eyes red and pockets of fire blazing under her skin. Then Jax appears next to her, hovering in the air beside Iris. Hattie glares. “Stein? You chose her over me? _That’s who I’m supposed to be_!”

Iris is too slow to stop the fireball that Hattie hurls at Stein, who goes shooting off in the other direction. She hears Stein, though, clear and calm as she gives instructions even though Jax is flailing in the air.

 _Calm down, Jax. You are an athlete – this is natural to you. You can regain control_.

_You always full of good advice, Lady Grey._

_Most days, yes_.

She lands on the bleachers and Iris flashes up next to her. “You okay?”

“I’ve been playing ball my whole life – I know how to take a hit.”

Iris puts her hand to her headset. “You guys, cutting the power didn’t work. It’s like the more we anger her, the stronger she gets.”

“That’s it!” Jesse says. “It’s like one of those controlled fusion devices, like a…”

“Tokamak?” Chesca tries.

“Yes! And the stronger it gets, the more unstable it gets. Iris, make her angry, and she will _blow her fuse_.”

Iris looks at Jax. “You up for a little game of catch me if you can?”

“Oh, honey.” Jax grins. “I love that movie.”

Iris nods and flashes down to Hattie, before teleporting around her in the most confusing way possible. _Hey Hattie. What’s up?_

Hattie looks around for her even as her voice sounds in her head. _Paging Dr Hewitt…_ An arm of flame just misses her and she flashes right above her, shaking her head. “Girl. You _suck_ at this.”

She screams in frustration and fires at her again, but misses. Iris laughs. “Aw, you need a hug, doctor?”

Then, when Iris is teleporting around her in showers of green sparks, Jax makes her move. “Come on, Hewitt!” she calls. “Gimme your best shot! Betcha can’t hit me!”

 _Now_! Stein orders, and she launches a column of flame that collides with Hattie’s and makes the ground shake. They cancel each other out and Iris appears behind her. “Is that… _all_ you’ve got? Seriously? Gotta say, I’m a little insulted.”

“Girl, no wonder you didn’t make the cut if that’s how you fight!”

Hattie takes several deep breaths, and then just explodes in a starburst of flame. Jets of fire fly out in all directions, before she runs out of steam and stumbles. Before she can react, Jax flies down and punches her in the face, knocking her out. Iris appears next to her. “Not bad for your first go at this.”

Jax shrugs. “Well, I had a pretty good coach. Ain’t that right, Lady Grey?”

 _I must say, maybe there are some merits to baseball after all_.

Iris holds a hand out. “Welcome aboard, Firestorm.”

“Thanks – _ow_!” Jax helps. “I think I broke my hand.”

“Yeah, that happens a lot in this line of work.”

***

“…cold temperatures, fireproof glass, and reinforced tungsten,” Linda finishes. “High melting point and high tensile strength. Not even the fires of hell could get through that.”

They leave the unconscious form of Hattie (though Chesca is just calling her ‘Tokamak’) in the Pipeline and make their way back upstairs. Iris squeezes her hand. “Thanks for coming, Linda.”

“No problem.” She gestures back with her wrench. “What’s going to happen to her?”

“Well, once she wakes up, we’re going to convince her that maybe it’ll be best to keep this whole thing to herself,” Chesca answers. “Seeing as she almost fricasseed a high school.”

“And you two? What does the new Firestorm have planned?”

“Well, after I tell my mother about the fact that I can set myself on fire,” Jax says, “Lady Grey and I are heading to Pittsburgh for some training. Should be fun, right?”

“Fun,” Stein smiles. “Indeed.”

Chesca laughs. “Come on, I’ll drive you both home. Lin, can I give you a ride?”

“Thanks, but I’m good. Actually, I left my jacket in the Cortex – I need to go get it.”

“I’ll meet you outside, Chesca,” Stein tells her as Linda walks upstairs. “I need to talk to Iris.”

Iris tips her head. “What’s up, Professor?”

“I wanted to ask something of you.”

“Sure, anything.”

Her voice lowers. “Keep an eye on Miss Ramon. I fear she has been struggling with some things after the business with Colin, and I feel she may need your support.”

Iris looks up at her, confused. But she nods. “Of course.”

“Thank you, Miss West. For all you have done.”

She hugs the professor goodbye, promising to call, and then wanders back up to the Cortex. “Find it, Lin?”

“Yeah, thanks. So… Dr Jesse Chambers. He sounds like an asshole.”

Iris sits next to her. “Oh, he is.”

“He sticking around?”

Jesse was gone before Iris and Jax got back, but she’s messaged him to meet her at Jitters. He has lived up to his side of the bargain, after all. “I think he might. We’ll see. How was your day?”

“Well, they finally gave me a new boss. Carter Hall. Hopefully he’ll be around for longer than Vanilla Pattycakes’ mom.”

Iris laughs shortly. “Here’s hoping.”

“So, did you see it?”

“See what?”

“Barry, of course,” Linda replies. Iris just stares at her. “You must have seen it – they’ve been playing commercials for hours.”

“Did you miss the part where I had to catch a human ball of fire?”

“Sorry. Barry’s story is this big scandal that made the eight o’clock news.”

Iris stares at her. “Barry’s going to be on TV? He never told me that.”

“I seem to recall you trying to catch a human ball of fire.”

Iris looks at her watch, biting her lip and thinking. “You busy at eight?”

“What do you have planned?”

“Meet me at Barry’s house. And bring Wally, if he’s conscious.”

Iris rounds out the day with a patrol, teleporting up and down the city in a golden blur. And when she finishes outside of Jitters like she always does (which is absolutely _nothing_ to do with the fact that she sometimes got to see Barry smile when he was leaving at the end of his shift), she regrets it. Because that is the moment when something grabs her by the neck and chokes her.

_Shark, shark, shark…_

“Miss Miracle,” the shark thing snarls at her as she claws her it’s fins, choking. It’s huge, covered in scales and baring rows upon rows of teeth, and – inexplicably – standing on two legs. “You’re _smaller_ than the one on my earth.”

Very vaguely, as her purple splotches appear in her vision, Iris marvels at the fact that even a shark woman from another earth makes fun of her height. Just before she’s sure she’s about to faint, she hears a thud and a zapping sound, and the shark lets her go. She drops to the floor, gasping, just in time to see a figure in black slink away. Iris grabs him and teleports away, and then blinks when she realises she recognises them. “Jesse?”

“Um,” he says intelligently. He’s holding what looks like a cold gun prototype, but apparently it shoots out electric blasts. “I can explain.”

“No need to explain. You saved my life. Where did you get that?”

“It’s Chesca’s. I was taking it home to study it, and I saw you-”

“Right,” Iris interrupts, rubbing her neck. “Well, usually I’d yell at you for stealing Chesca’s tech, but you kind of saved my life.” She pauses. “So, let me get out of this costume, and we can go inside and talk.”

Several minutes later, Iris is ordering a coffee and a plate of donuts to take to Jesse, who’s sitting patiently in the corner waiting. “Miss Miracle!” someone says, and she turns.

“Huh?... Oh, Julio. What’s…”

He points upwards to a banner hanging from the ceiling, which is showing a coffee with ‘MM’ drawn on it sitting next to a cronut. “An almond-flavoured cappuccino with extra sugar with an Oreo-flavoured cronut, guaranteed to get you to perform at least one miracle during the day.”

Iris’ eyes widen. “Miss Miracle has a coffee order now? Wow, you go to New Orleans for a couple of months and you miss a whole lot, huh?”

He nods, smiling. “I guess you do. Hey, did you hear about the woman shark thing? She attacked Miss Miracle right outside Jitters – I had to call the captain.”

“Looks like you saved the day, detective. Julio,” she adds quickly, laughing. “Maybe the Miss Miracle worked for you.”

He smiles at her again and wishes her goodbye, and she watches him leave. _He’s not Barry_ , she thinks, as she walks back over to Jesse. He’s cute, for sure, but he’s not Barry. Jesse looks up when she puts the plate of donuts on the table. “Iris,” he says carefully. “I just wanted to apologise for…everything. I was just feeling guilty.”

“Guilty?”

“Aunt Helena was alone. I kept saying I would come visit her after college, and then after medical school, but I never did. And now she’s in trouble, and I could have stopped it, so I was desperate to do anything to fix it.”

Iris looks down at her hands. “Well, you’re not the only one angry about the way things are supposed to be.”

“I’m not always an asshole.”

“You sure?”

“Well, I am, but not that much. And then her letters stopped coming…”

Iris frowns. “Letters?”

He nods. “Yeah. She wrote me once in a while, just to see how I was doing.”

Iris closes her eyes. She has never liked the idea of killing, but Colin makes her seriously consider it. Because it couldn’t have been Helena who wrote those letters. “Jesse, like I said, this isn’t a fun story, and when I tell you, you need to decide whether you can handle what we’re doing.”

Jesse nods. “I’m listening.”

Iris takes a deep breath. She supposes she should start at the beginning. “When I was eleven, my father was murdered…”

***

The first thing Barry sees when he opens the front door that night is the house filled with people and food everywhere. “What’s all this?” he asks, looking around. His mother, Iris, Chesca, Wally, Linda and Francine are all gathered in the house, smiling at him.

“Blame Iris!” Chesca says immediately, and Iris detaches herself from the table filled with food and launches herself into his arms. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be on TV?”

“I – Oh,” he says, looking down at her. “Sorry, it just kind of happened. But you didn’t have to do…all this…”

“Of course I did! And we have to watch it together, right? I’m making Mama Ida watch it, too.” She turns to her mother. “We called her, right?”

“She’s recording it,” her mother confirms, and Iris turns back to him, her sunshine smile on her face. “I’m so proud of you!” she says, hugging him again. Everyone congratulates him and he nods, mostly on autopilot since that afternoon, and then Iris leads him to the table to get food. “I can’t believe your story blew up like this! Was it scary? Did you have to memorise a lot? Ooh, did you have to go in the recording booth thingie?”

“Iris!” his mother laughs. “Let him talk, he’s had a long day.”

“No, it’s okay,” he says, spooning food onto a plate. “Uh, a little scary at first, not really since I wrote the article already, and yeah, but not for very long.”

“Is this why you had me analyse those carpet fibres that time?”

“Yeah. Guess it helped.”

“And now I guess I know why they were chasing you with guns,” Iris laughs, and Nora stares at him.

“ _You_ were the guy they were chasing with guns? They said you jumped out a window!”

Barry and Iris share a look. “Well…” Iris stammers. “You know what? I think we need more plates. Chess, come help me.”

She grabs Chesca from where she’s eating popcorn on the couch and leads her into the kitchen. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told Barry to jump out of the window.”

“I could have told you that,” Chesca points out. “But you did get him on TV.”

“True.” She hops down from the counter, balancing more bowls in her hand.

“So, is Jesse sticking around.”

“I think he is,” she replies slowly. “He was a little shocked – I mean, who wouldn’t be? – but he’s staying. So it looks like we have a new member of the team.”

“I’m still photoshopping his keycard photo.”

“Hey, that’s your right.” She pauses. “You…I mean, you’re doing okay, right?”

“Well, you took me away from the crab cakes your mom made, so I’ve been better.”

“No, I mean with…everything. You’re okay? I mean, it’s okay if you’re not, but you know you can tell me, right?”

Chesca nods. “Of course I do. It’s just been weird, with everything that’s been going on. But I’m cool, promise.”

“Good. Now I’d hurry up, because Wally really loves those crab cakes.”

“The man is half asleep!”

“Means nothing.”

Barry, meanwhile, can’t seem to stop his hands from shaking every time he picks up his fork. He keeps seeing Henry’s face when he painfully explained everything. Even through going back to work, and doing ADR, and going for drinks with everyone, he could see it. He’s so lost he doesn’t notice that Iris has walked back into the room. “Hey,” she says softly. “Everything cool?”

“Yeah,” he replies, shaking his head. “Yeah, it’s just been a long day.”

“Oh. Oh, Bar, God – should I not have invited everyone? I thought it would be fun-”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, sunshine, of course not. I really appreciate this, I’m just a little tired.”

“Everyone!” Linda calls. “It’s starting in a few minutes!”

Iris nudges him playfully. “You’re gonna be on TV. Don’t you want to watch?”

“Well, I was kind of there. Plus, now you can tell me about what went down today.”

Iris flips her hair out of her face, and Barry frowns. “Iris, what happened to your forehead?”

“Oh, this? Little accident.”

“What happened?”

“I think it was Firestorm.” She pauses. “Oh, wait. Maybe it was Queen Shark.”

“Queen Shark?” he repeats.

“Chesca’s name.”

“Iris.”

“I was bleeding earlier,” she shrugs, and he frowns down at her.

“Shouldn’t you be rapidly healing?” he asks. “Should we call Jesse? Or – Wally’s right here-”

“Barry!” she laughs. “Sometimes when I haven’t eaten it slows down. Would you quit worrying?”

“If you’re sure you okay…”

“I’m fine… And you’re okay, right?”

“Fine,” he says quickly, and she nods before leading him to the couch. The feature starts, and everyone tells him how great it is, but all he can think is that with everything Henry told him about Malina – about _his sister_ – he is absolutely anything but fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some stuff to note: I made Superwoman Lois Lane because they're iconic like Barry and Iris are, so it makes sense to make her the hero rather than make Clark a girl.  
> So now some comic stuff. Eddie has the powers of Cobalt Blue, while Malina, Barry's sister, is a cross between Malcome Thawne (Malina is the feminine form of Malcolm), CB's name in the comics, and Wally West on the show, being that they're both long-lost and nobody knows about them. It'll probably become more clear as I go, though. Let me know what you think! (PS, no Julio isn't S2 Patty, before you all @ me)


	23. Just Hold Onto Me, I'll Hold Onto You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A well-dressed doppelganger and the birth of a new hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the ending so it might be a little messy, but I loved writing this. Title taken from Parachute by Ingrid Michaelson

“…and it has two bedrooms, one for each of us – only one study though, but it’s big enough that we can both use it if we want – did I tell you she’s interviewing for the publisher position at the community college? And she thinks she’ll get it-”

“Iris!” Barry cuts her off, laughing. “Breathe, sunshine. I’m not going anywhere.”

Iris grins sheepishly, pressing the phone to her ear as she walks to Jitters quickly. Barry didn’t mind when she called him this morning to tell them that they’d found a house that both she and her mother liked. She would tell someone else – Linda or Wally or even Chesca, but he’s been with her for her whole life, so he’s the only one who understands that all of these little things are like walking on the moon for her. Understands that it’s a novelty to have her mother home when she gets back from work three days a week, that when Barry meets her for lunch at the precinct she never gets sick of the fact that her mother made her lunch in a little brown paper bag, and he gets why it’s funny that her mother couldn’t keep a straight face during _Bridge of Spies_ when they went to go see it because the last time she’d seen Tom Hanks in a movie he was voicing a talking cowboy doll.

“Sorry,” she continues. “Um, did you ask me something?”

“I think you answered my question, since you hadn’t stopped talking for about a minute. Is that one of your superpowers?”

“Actually, it’s possible – all of the physiological changes in my body were made to compensate for my powers, so an increase in lung capacity could…totally be an indicator that you’re joking. Aren’t you?”

“Sorry.”

“Whatever. So how was your lunch with Jesse?”

“Okay, I guess. Do we really have to do this with him? This team bonding thing?”

Iris pushes the door to Jitters open, raising her voice above the noise of the morning rush. “Look, we need to make sure we know who we’re dealing with, especially since my entire existence was constructed by a sociopath in a sweater vest.”

Iris hears the frown in Barry’s voice. “Wasn’t that a line from _Dollhouse_?”

“Yeah. And isn’t it sad we can talk about a fictional TV show and apply it to my life?”

“I loved that show.”

“Me too. Oh – how’s the Hawkman story going?”

“Well, I have an update for you – it’s Hawk _girl_. Someone got a picture of her.”

“And is that the latest in your long line of impossible?”

“The woman flies around at night with the wings of a hawk,” Barry points out. “You’re damn right I’m gonna write about it.”

“Well, keep me posted. Hey, Linda’s here – I’ll call you later, alright?”

“Later.”

Iris puts her phone away and smiles at Linda, who’s chatting with a tall, good-looking guy by the counter. “Morning, Lin. Who’s this?”

“This is Carter Hall, the new sales guy at work,” she says. “Carter, this is Iris West, Wally’s cousin.”

“Nice to meet you,” he says pleasantly, shaking her hand. “I’m pretty new here, so it’s nice to make some friends.”

“Well, with Linda as your friend you’ll know pretty much everyone in the whole city soon.”

“Got that right,” Linda laughs. “Headed to work?”

“Yeah, thought I’d grab a Miss Miracle to help me through the day. We still on for tonight?”

“Wouldn’t miss it! Carter, I think we should get going.”

Iris wishes them both goodbye and makes her coffee order, typing on her phone as she waits at a table amongst the huge crowd of people. Jax called her from Pittsburgh the night before, telling her that everything is fine, and Stein sent her some stuff on how to identify and stabilise the breaches. With random people showing up through the breaches at all hours of the day, she needs to find a way to stop them. The last thing this city needs is more craziness, especially when they still haven’t figured out how to find Colin.

“Order’s up!”

Iris walks up to the counter, still looking at her phone. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you there.” She looks up and starts. “Oh. Hi, Scott.”

Scott regards her, a slow smile spreading on his face, and she takes in what he’s wearing. A black suit with a waistcoat and suspenders, and golden cufflinks and black gloves. He also has a diamond stud in his ear, dark shades hanging out of his shirt and a rather…interestingly-shaped beard. “Morning, beautiful.”

Iris blinks at him from behind her glasses. Okay, that’s nice, but not really appropriate for an _ex_ -boyfriend. “Um. Morning. You look…nice.”

Scott rakes his gaze up and down her body. “Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

“…thanks. Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“You could say that.”

A message pings on Iris’ phone and she looks down to see that she’s got to get to a robbery at Central City Royal Bank as soon as she gets to work. “Look, I have to go, so I guess I’ll see you later?”

Scott doesn’t reply, studying her face, before smoothing her hair behind her ear and chucking her under her chin. “Oh, you will definitely see me later, sweetheart.”

Scott grabs his coffee and leaves, and Iris heads out of the door in the other direction, confused. She broke up with Scott months ago, and whenever she sees him around nothing seems wrong. And, fine, she knows she’s attractive, and it’s nice to have someone flirt with her, but she’s not used to whatever the hell Scott was just doing. Besides, they’re broken up, and isn’t he dating one of Liv’s supermodel friends? He was acting like a totally different person.

_He was acting like a totally different person._

Iris freezes in the middle of the street, gets her phone out again, and calls the first number on her speed dial.

“Barry Allen?”

“Barry?”

“Iris?” he says. “We just spoke – did something happen? Are you okay?”

She closes her eyes briefly. “Please tell me Scott called in sick this morning.”

“Uh…no, he’s here. Been here for about an hour. You want to talk to him?”

Iris looks around for the man that wasn’t the Scott Evans she knew, her heart sinking as she realises that he’s disappeared in the morning rush crowd. “No, but he may have a problem soon.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I think I just met his doppelganger.”

***

“Scott Evans has a doppelganger.”

“Yup.”

“Scott Evans, your ex-boyfriend, has a doppelganger.”

“That’s the one.”

“Scott Evans, broadcast reporter for channel fifty-two news, has a doppelganger.”

Iris looks up from lifting prints off the side of the safe. “I thought repeating it would make it want me to stab myself in the eye less too, but no, still finding the urge get a number two pencil and shove it in my eye socket.”

Nora lets out a small groan. “These are the times when I wish our biggest problem is that you covered the kitchen in nougat with a science experiment when you were thirteen.”

“Are you ever going to let that go?”

“Nope. What was he like? Is he going to start randomly strangling people like our good friend Alanna Rothstein?”

“Don’t think so,” Iris admits. “Different, for sure, but not dangerous. _Really_ flirty, and well-dressed. He looked like an Armani commercial.” She doesn’t understand what the shades were for, though. “I called Chesca – she’s using facial recognition to see whether she can find him when he’s out an about. We need to hurry, though, since Scott Evans is on TV every night. It won’t take long for people to figure out something’s up.”

“And the real Scott? Are you telling him anything?”

“What, that his doppelganger from another earth is walking around the city? God, no. Barry’s keeping an eye on him, though. Hopefully we can find him and ask him how the hell he got here without hurting him. Maybe he knows something about how to get through, and then we can find a way to send him back.”

They both pause when the captain and Julio head towards them, and Julio’s smile is so infectious that she smiles back. “West?” the captain asks. “Find anything?”

“Unfortunately not on the door,” she admits. She leads them to the door of the safe. “Whoever did this is an expert – not only where there no prints on the door, the surface, or on the combination lock, but it doesn’t look like there was any sign of force used to get inside door.” She pauses, removing her gloves. “Do we know what happened?”

“No, actually,” Julio replies, shaking his head as she studies his notebook. “Apparently security were here minding their own business, when someone walks in and there’s a flash of light.”

“Light?” Iris repeats.

“Mm-hm. Both guards reported a bright flash of light, and were rendered temporarily blind. It only wore off an hour ago.”

Iris is getting a very bad feeling. “Anything else?”

“We wanted you to take a look at this,” the captain says. She leads Iris to the front desk and points to the underside. Iris frowns when she sees that someone has apparently burned a hole around the silent alarm, causing it to hang out by the wires and rendering it useless. Without a word, she fishes a small penlight from her back pocket and studies the cut, eyes widening when she recognises it. “This – these burns…”

The captain is nodding. “I thought you’d recognise them.”

Julio frowns. “What? They looked like normal burns to me.”

But Iris is shaking her head, flipping her kit open so that she can take a sample. “There are only two people who could have burnt through metal like this. Dr Light…and Calamity.”

It’s the messages burned into the door of the precinct and the projector at Barry’s work – the same kind of pattern. Iris realised it when she took samples of those places, and now she knows it’s because of Calamity’s ability to control lightning. Iris still hasn’t figured out how to use her own yet.

“But Calamity’s dead and Miss Miracle captured Dr Light, right?” Julio asks, looking around. “That’s what Barry’s website says.”

Iris shares a look with Nora. “That’s right, but you never know.”

“I need to go talk to the manager,” the captain says. “Can I trust you guys with this?”

After the captain has walked away, Julio turns back to them. “What did you mean ‘you never know’?”

“In this city anyone can become a threat – someone could have just as easily made a weapon mimicking these powers and then robbed banks,” Iris explains, thinking. “How did they get in? Did the computers shut down randomly, or the safe – did it just swing open?”

“It did, actually,” Julio says, impressed. “Apparently there’s no video footage because someone hacked into the computers and shut them all off, and that includes the safe. Is that what she can do? Is that how her powers work?”

Iris shakes her head. “How do I begin to explain Dr Light?”

“Dr Light is flawless,” Julio jokes.

“Dr Light has robbed two banks and a post office,” Iris laughs, catching on.

“I hear her powers are out of this world.”

“I hear she does bank heists…in Gotham.”

Julio smiles down at her. “Her favourite movie is _Ocean’s Eleven_.”

“One time, she met Clark Kent on a plane.”

“And he told her she was pretty.”

“One time,” Iris says, “she robbed _my_ bank. Not so awesome.”

They both erupt into peals of laughter, before Iris snorts and then claps a hand over her mouth. Nora clears her throat. “Hey partner, maybe you should go help the captain,” she suggests, amused. “Iris and I can finish up here.” Julio blushes and walks quickly away, but not before throwing her a smile over his shoulder.

Iris starts packing up her stuff to head back to work, but Nora’s still looking at her. “What?” she frowns.

“We’re not going to talk about that?”

“About Julio having seen _Mean Girls_?”

“About you flirting with Detective Jalapeño. Which,” Nora adds, “is what I get for hanging around Chesca too much. And that name is weak, by the way.”

Iris blushes a little. “I wasn’t flirting.”

“Well, _he_ was, and not subtly. And he asked Barry whether you have a boyfriend.”

“He did?” Iris says. “What did he say?”

“He said no, of course. Because you don’t have one.”

That’s right, at least. What she _does_ have is a decades-long love for her best friend, who is still so screwed up from dating a sociopath for a year that the idea of being with someone is enough to give him a panic attack strong enough to make him call her in the middle of the day in New Orleans. “I mean, he’s nice, and hot, and everything, but I don’t…I just feel like he’s not the one I’m supposed to be with.”

Nora gives her a small, sad smile. “Well, I’m no stranger to that. But you can’t wait around for what’s supposed to happen. Don’t do that to yourself. You have to go out and live your life.”

Iris sighs, taking off her glasses to rub her eyes, and then puts them back on again. “Fine. I will think about it. Now we have to get back to work and I need to call Chesca.”

“Why?”

“Because there are two options – either there is another Dr Light with new equipment, or someone took the old equipment,” she replies. “Dr Light can use light blasts to blind people, can hack into anything with optic fibres, and can turn himself invisible. And seeing as how last week the new guy invited a psycho into STAR Labs, I’m just gonna go ahead and make sure we don’t have to worry about all our tech going missing.”

***

“…no, he hasn’t. I will. Uh-huh. Keep me posted, Iris,” he says, and he hears her sigh.

“I swear to God, I actually miss it when it was just Woodward punching me out. I’ll talk to you later.”

Barry hangs up and his eyes slide back to Scott, who’s talking to one of the broadcast interns on the proper protocol for an interview. When Iris called him to say that Scott had a doppelganger and could he please keep an eye on him, he was only partially surprised. This is essentially their lives now, isn’t it? Iris says she isn’t worried about the other Earth version of Scott – apparently his only crime is being incredibly flirty and very well-dressed – but they still want to see whether they can ask him how he and all the other breachers are getting here. Besides, it is a welcome distraction from the worry that has been gnawing at him for over a week.

He hasn’t been able to get Henry’s face out of his head for days, when he told him about how his sister survived (and he still can’t believe that story), and how she became an agent. Apparently Waller closed the investigation into anyone who was taken by Calamity, since they had her in custody, leaving Malina wherever the hell she is now.

“Why are you telling me this?” Barry had demanded hoarsely. Henry had looked at the floor in the same way that Barry always does when he’s nervous.

“We thought, because you and your friends were working to defeat her, you might know something about what happened to the missing people.”

“We are,” he’d said shortly. “But this…Malina has been dead to me, to all of us, for twenty years, and now you’re telling us that she’s the whole reason Eddie was in Central City in the first place?”

Barry often dreamed about this, before he grew up and stopped caring about why his father left. That maybe his dad was like a character in Harry Potter or James Bond, and he had to go off and fight dragons or something because it was too dangerous for him to be around them. But now it’s like that with a cruel twist – his father is a spy and it _was_ too dangerous to be around them, but that didn’t mean that their lives weren’t irreparably ruined. They were. And now his sister is somewhere out there, possibly all alone, and they might not be able to save her.

Barry still doesn’t know what to do. Henry promised he would leave, but asked him to tell him if they found anything. And what is he supposed to do with that? How is he supposed to look for these missing people – not to mention tell his friends to – when his not-so-dead is supposed to be one of them? That is, if she’s even still alive.

How does he deal with that? How does he tell his mother that the daughter she’s mourned for over twenty years could be alive? That she’s been working for an organisation that shouldn’t exist? And Iris – Iris would go through hell to find her, he knows she would for him, and he can’t ask her to do that. He can’t ask any of them to do that – not Chesca or Wally or Linda, or even Jesse.

Barry’s stomach flips again and he shakes his head, forcing himself back to the present, and trying to find some information on the Hawkgirl person. He’s ignoring it, for now, but he has no idea how he’s going to broach the subject with his mother and Iris. At least with this, he can concentrate on a problem with a clear solution. He can keep an eye on Scott until they figure out what’s up with his doppelganger.

Because the other secret is eating him alive.

***

“Iris, for the last time,” Chesca says to her friend, “no, there is not a criminal running around with Dr Light’s stolen tech.”

Iris follows her into the Cortex and across the room, where Jesse is clicking through the computer. “Are you sure? Because this seemed exactly like what she did.”

But Chesca opens up a cupboard and they see Dr Light’s gloves and shades sitting inside a container, neatly labelled and definitely not missing. “Yes, I am sure. And despite the recent breach of privacy by certain law-breaking doctors who have just joined the team-”

“You should keep your stuff more secure,” Jesse says, not missing a beat, and she scowls at him.

“What kind of doctor can pick locks?”

“The multitalented kind.”

Chesca mutters a curse in Spanish and turns back to Iris. “Are you sure it was Light who committed the robbery?”

“Light or someone Light-adjacent,” Iris sighs, running a hand through her hair. She’s here on her lunch break, checking in to see whether they need her help for any crimes. Even though they all wish Jesse could be less abrasive, they can’t deny he’s slipped into the team pretty seamlessly, especially since Wally really is busy and Linda is still working for Wayne Industries full-time.

“Which,” Iris continues, hopping onto the desk and digging into her lunch, “isn’t a huge headache on top of everything else, or anything.”

“What about your friend?” Jesse asks, not looking up. “Lana?”

“Linda.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, she’s at work,” Chesca answers. “Besides, Calamity was controlling her, and she’s…” She trails off, noting the vein jumping in Jesse’s forehead. They have told him everything about Dr Wells and Colin; they had to, otherwise it would be unfair. He is still coming to terms with it, and to be honest so are they, but he agreed to help. “Gone.”

“What are you looking at, doc?” Iris asks, leaning over his desk. He looks up.

“Your medical files, they’re very interesting. Have you seen your brain scans? Because the cells there mimic tachyon particles in the most fascinating way…”

Iris shrugs, laughing. “I can’t say I’ve ever studied them, no. I just left that to all the doctors. Why are you looking at those?”

“I’m looking at everyone’s medical files – legally,” he adds when Chesca puts her hands on her hips. “I need to get an idea of you guys. Iris, are you really allergic to all these beauty products?”

“Yeah, I can only get expensive stuff, which is really fun for me. I can just about afford MAC when I get low.”

As Iris is looking over his shoulder, Chesca lets out a small yelp. “What is it?” Iris asks. She gets out her phone.

“Robbery at Central City Federal Bank,” Chesca says quickly. Jesse frowns at her even as Iris speeds across the room to get into her suit. “How did you know that?”

“I – I got an alert on my phone,” she explains quickly, and Iris doesn’t see Jesse’s frown deepen. She remembers that bank – she’s stopped robberies there before. As she’s leaving she sees Chesca head over to the desk to sit next to him, and then when she opens her eyes she’s in the vault of the bank. When she finds herself in front of a large stack of dollar bills, deep in the underground of the bank, she sees that someone is burning a hole through the metal. Iris braces herself, flexing her fingers, and then the portion of the wall falls off. A tall man step through, though Iris can’t see his face properly – those gloves are making it hard to focus, and she’s wearing glasses. “Miracle!”

His tone is surprised more than irritated, and she’s curious as to how he recognises her straight away. “Miss Miracle,” she corrects automatically, and he shrugs.

“Cute. Different from where I’m from, but cute.”

“So you’re a breacher,” Iris says, and the man laughs.

“Actually, I’m a robber. The name’s Dr Light, sweetheart.”

“Dr Light?” Iris repeats. “But you…that’s not right, you’re a guy.”

“I _am_ a guy,” he agrees, taking off his shades. “A guy who’s going to need you to step away from that cash so I can get going.”

Iris freezes when she recognises the man she saw in Jitters that morning. “Scott? Scott Evans?”

He tips his head to one side. “I know Madam Miracle over here?”

Iris blinks. _Madam_ Miracle? “This isn’t possible…” she trails off when she hears sirens sound from above them, and Scott shrugs. “Gotta run, Miss Miracle.”

Before she can move, he thrusts his hands out, bathing everything in light, and Iris feels two starbursts of pain in her head before everything goes black. “Iris?” Chesca says in her ear. “Iris, what happened?”

Iris blinks several time, terror creeping through her veins like poison. “You guys – you guys, I can’t see.”

She makes it back to STAR Labs through sheer luck, teleporting because her body and mind know that place much better than her eyes do. Chesca catches her and helps her into a STAR Labs shirt, while Jesse calls Barry and Nora before he starts to examine her eyes. Everything is blurry, like she isn’t wearing her glasses, and she feels weirdly disoriented, like everything is in the wrong place. Nora arrives first – Iris can feel her thoughts, wracked with worry, as she enters building, and then she can hear her as she walked into the labs. “What happened?” she asks quickly, a little away from Iris. “Is she okay?”

Very vaguely, Iris can see Jesse shining a red light in her eyes. Then just for a second everything goes clear, before going back blurry again. “I still can’t see,” she sighs, frustrated. “And then when I can, everything looks wrong.”

“You’re suffering from solar retinopathy,” Jesse explains. “Your retinas are severely damaged – you’re lucky you’re not permanently blind.”

“But with your super fast healing, everything should be okay soon, right?” Chesca says hopefully, and Iris starts.

“There! See, everything’s clear and…wait, why is everything upside down?”

They all share a look. “Upside-down?” Nora repeats, and Jesse groans.

“Dr Light’s powers seem to be harnessing solar power, which explains the photokinesis and cutting through metal. Iris has that power in a much less lethal fashion, so when he used his powers on her, it seems to have collided with hers and damaged the photoreceptors in her retina, which is what helps your brain make sense of images that you see when they aren’t the right way.”

“What does that mean?”

“Iris’ brain thinks that everything is upside down.”

Iris makes a shocked little noise, but then her vision swerves again, confirming it. Even though she _is_ wearing her glasses, everything is still blurry and reversed. “But other than that,” Jesse continues, “she’s fine. She might experience some vertigo, though.”

“I already called work,” Chesca adds helpfully. “I told them she had an allergic reaction to her eye drops.”

“But I don’t understand,” Nora says. She looks up at the video that came from the camera in Iris’ suit, of Scott taking off his mask and using his power. “Scott’s doppelganger is Dr Light? I thought Linda was Dr Light – Calamity controlled her and then she turned into a villain.”

“Don’t forget, none of that was supposed to happen,” Iris points out. “Maybe before Colin used Gideon’s connection to the Mindscape to fuck with everything, Scott was Dr Light on this earth. Or it could just be a coincidence and there isn’t supposed to be a Dr Light at all on this earth.”

“Trippy,” Chesca mutters.

“And anyway, that’s the least of our problems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Scott from another earth didn’t know about the Scott from _this_ one,” she points out. “But when I saw him, he caught me off guard and I said his name. The first thing Atom Smasher did when she got here was kill her doppelganger, and now that we know he’s a criminal,” she says, standing up, “we should keep a closer watch on him.”

Unfortunately for Iris, everything flips as soon as she starts to move, and she walks into a doorframe. “Iris!! everyone says.

“Oops,” she says. She tries to step over something and then ends up almost falling over, and Chesca catches her. “Okay, you can’t look after anyone like this, _chica_. You just grab this railing here and sit down…”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Nora says as Iris leans forward on the table with a bored look on her face, her chin in her hands. “I’ll tell Julio we think Dr Light might be in the area. Jesse, you need to come with me.”

“I do?” he asks, and Nora nods.

“Since you’re the medical expert of STAR Labs right now, the captain wants to talk to you about anything that could stop them from getting hurt.”

“What about Iris?” Chesca asks.

Jesse grabs his jacket. “She’ll be fine as long as she doesn’t try to do anything.”

“Wonderful (!)” Iris says.

As they’re leaving Barry walks in quickly, looking around. “Hey, Iris?”

Iris looks up in the direction of his voice. “Hey!”

“I came as soon as I…” He trails off at the video footage of Scott. “God, he looks just like him.”

“Better dressed,” Chesca calls from her workstation, “but you’re right.”

Barry turns back to Iris, who’s squinting through her glasses trying to find him. “Barry, I know it’s weird, seeing a doppelganger that we actually know, but we’re trying to fix it.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, turning back to her. She whips around to face him when she realises he’s behind her. “It’s just a lot to process lately, you know? Between Colin, and the breaches, and my dad…”

“Oh, I wanted to talk to you about that, actually,” she says. She gets up and walks away from him, and Barry catches her shoulders and gently twists her around so she’s facing him. “Thanks. So, um, I know that Henry was really awful to you and I know I told him to stay away from you and Nora, but that doesn’t have to be the case.”

Barry swallows nervously, his heart thrumming in his chest. “What do you mean?”

“Just, I know emotions aren’t black and white. And even though he did all that stuff to you, it’s okay to want to get to know him, you know?” Iris wanders off again and Barry grabs her hand to turn her back to him. “I mean, he’s _there_. He’s alive and breathing and walking around in the world. I’m just saying if you wanted to have some sort of relationship with him, I wouldn’t judge you or be mad at you.”

“But he got you hurt,” Barry points out quietly. “He got _us_ hurt.”

“Well, everyone tries to kill me on practically a daily basis,” she says dryly, “so I’m almost used to it. But if you don’t want to, I’m fine with that too. I guess because I got my mom back after everything, I don’t see why you shouldn’t get your dad back too.”

Barry doesn’t reply for a moment, looking down at his hands, and tries to get Henry’s desperate voice out of his head. He shrugs. “Well, I’ll think about it.”

She squints again, putting her hand out. “Good, I’m glad. Where’s your…” He takes her flailing hand, grinning. “Thanks. You know you can talk to me about whatever, right?”

“I know that, of course I do. But really, Iris, I’m fine, I should be asking about you’re doing.”

“Well, blinder than usual,” she answers. “I’m looking up at you, but really, I feel like I’ve been having a conversation with your blurry knees. Your jeans look nice today. I think.”

“Thanks,” he laughs. They hear a phone buzz and Iris perks up.

“Oh, that’s me! I’ve got it…” Iris does fine for about two seconds, feeling her way across the table, before she almost trips and slams into the table. Chesca walks past, holding a toolbox. “Your shoelaces are untied, _mama_.”

“Thanks, Chess,” she replies cheerfully, and starts to bend over, before Barry stops her from hitting her head again.

“Okay – wait, stop! C’mere, sunshine, let me help you.” He takes her hand with one hand and picks up her phone with another, leading her to a chair. “Just hold onto me and try not to do anything.”

“Don’t let me fall,” she warns.

“When have I ever let you fall?”

“Well, that was the time when I taught you what a tango was-”

“Are you never going to let that go? You’re not that far from the ground, it barely even counted as a fall.”

“You,” she mutters darkly, “are _so lucky_ I’m blind.”

Barry sits them both down and pulls her Converses up to his knee, scanning the message on her phone. “ _Heard about your allergic reaction, guess we’re not going shopping, loser._ Then a pause. _Was that too mean? I’m sorry, I feel like that was too mean. Let me know if I can get you anything. Feel better, J._ ” He looks up, still tying her shoelaces. “Who’s J and why is he quoting _Mean Girls_?”

Iris tips her head to one side and then seems to realise something. “Oh. That’s Julio.”

“My mom’s partner, Julio? What does he want?”

“I was supposed to tell him more stuff about Dr Light, which I can’t do because I can’t even see ten inches in front of my own face.”

Barry nods, bending over her shoes. “I…It seems like he likes you.”

Iris adjusts her glasses and Barry continues, switching to her other foot. “He’s nice – well, my mom says he’s nice. And I know you guys call him Detective Jalapeño, which,” he adds, looking at Chesca across the room, “ _weak_ , by the way.”

“You’re a pain in my ass, Allen.”

Barry laughs, turning back to Iris. “And he asked me if you-”

“Have a boyfriend. Yeah, I heard. I mean, he’s nice, and I like him, but I just think with everything going on, it might not be the best idea.”

“I get that, Iris, I do. But you of all people deserve some happiness after everything that you’ve been through. You deserve something that’s not psycho metahumans or doppelgangers from another earth.”

Barry bends over her laces again, thinking. He has been thinking about this for a while, the concept of him and Iris as more than what they are. Gideon said that in the future that was supposed to happen, the most likely one, they were married and Iris started something called the Justice League. But those people, the people that they could have been, are gone, and this is what they have. He has his best friend that he would do anything for, and he’s sure she would do anything for him as well. But he’s still broken from Patty, and their friendship is too precious for him to want to risk. It’s still fragile from all the trauma it suffered, precious and fragile like blown glass, and he’s wary of anything that would cause it to break. Because Barry’s certain that not having Iris in his life at all, at having them be broken because one of them got greedy and then messed it up, would kill him.

“Well,” Iris says finally, “once I can walk five feet without falling over, I guess we’ll see what happens. Do you have to go back to work any time soon?”

“No, not until lunch is over,” he says, putting her foot back on the floor. “Scott’s on a lunch date with his girlfriend, so I thought it would be kind of weird to tag along to that. I’ll go back when lunch is done.”

“Good, because I wanted to talk to you guys about the breaches. I think it might be a way to help us find Colin.”

Iris vaguely sees Barry wave Chesca over and steels herself. She’s been thinking about this since the whole theory of parallel earths came to fruition, and even though the very thought of it makes her want to rip her hair out, it explains why they haven’t been able to find him as of yet. They come and sit down in front of her. “The night of the singularity,” she explains, “Colin punched some sort of hole in mid-air and stepped through it. I didn’t know what it was before, but now I’m thinking he might have gone to another earth.”

Iris knows Barry and Chesca are glancing at each other. “I’m not as powerful as Dr Wells was,” she continues. “But what if that was one of her powers? What if she could teleport not only between places, but between earths?”

“That would explain why we couldn’t find the missing people,” Chesca realises. “They’re on a different earth.”

“Right. Where’s the nearest breach?”

Chesca gets up and goes to the computer, typing quickly. “Um.” Iris can hear the frown in her voice. “According to this, it’s here.”

“Here?” Barry repeats. “In STAR Labs?”

“Yeah, in our…basement.”

“Why did you say ‘basement’ like I say ‘ten-foot jellyfish’?” Iris asks.

“Well, because looking at this map, the breach is underground. I would say basement. But our basement is on the east side, near the entrance. This map is saying the breach is where the basement would be if it was on the north side. But there is no basement on the north side.”

“Uh, Chess?” Barry tries. “Remember when we said there was nothing underneath the Cortex? And it turned out there was a machine that could predict probabilities under there?”

“Oh, shit.”

More tapping of keys, and then Chesca says a word that Iris knows would make Mrs Ramon cross herself. “Okay, apparently there was a basement down there. Let’s go.”

They make their way down their slowly, finding a secret panel that opens into a room that they’ve never seen before. It looks exactly like their old basement, except there is a large, pulsating mass of energy and light floating around in the middle of it. Iris can practically feel it’s vibrations on her skin. “Is that the breach? What does it look like?”

“Uh, it’s…big,” Barry replies, staring at it. “Blue, floating around. You can hear it, right?”

“Yeah, and that’s what the thing Colin stepped through looked like. So he can open breaches.”

Iris, who has her arm linked with Barry’s so she doesn’t fall over, hears Chesca’s voice float away as she wanders around the room. “I have never seen the place before. I don’t understand…Okay. Okay, we are _screwed_.”

Barry leads Iris to where Chesca is standing, and Iris blinks repeatedly. “What? What is it?”

“There’s a gap in the wall,” she says. “Look, and it leads right outside. They’re coming through the breach and going outside and into our earth, all because we keep finding rooms in the place that aren’t supposed to freaking exist!”

“Well, what do we do?” Barry asks, and Iris tugs on his arm.

“Stein sent us some stuff on how to stabilise the breaches, but now I’m thinking we need to find a way to identify them as well, since we need to send them back.”

“The first thing we need to do,” Chesca says, “is shut this gap. I guess I know what Jesse, Linda and I are doing this weekend. God, this vibration thing is freaky, can you guys feel that?”

“Vibrations!” Iris exclaims shrilly. “That’s it! Chesca, you’re a genius!”

“Yes,” she says slowly, “we all know that. But why?”

“Because you just gave me an idea of how to identify the breaches, send people back, and figure out a way to find Colin and all those people.” She claps her hands together. “I need Stein’s notes on the breaches, a digital stroboscope, and I need to call Olivia so she can get me several dozen copies of Captain Boomerang’s boomerang.”

Iris disappears without another word, and Barry and Chesca stare at each other. “Did you just get a flashback to _Kenan & Kel_?” Barry asks. They hear several thuds upstairs.

Chesca sighs as they walk back upstairs. “Aw, here it goes.”

***

Everyone is safe until that night.

Barry had to leave STAR Labs just as Iris was gearing up to explain everything, but it was a lot harder considering that she couldn’t see anything. So Iris decided to take a break until her powers came back. Barry has been at CCPN since then, trying to make sure nothing happens to Scott. Thankfully he hasn’t been on TV today, so it’s not like there’s a live feed for the other Scott to chase. More people leave as the night wears on, but he’s been instructed to stay until Scott leaves. Only the two of them and Larkin, shut in her office upstairs, remain – Scott because he has to get ready for an interview with the Mayor, and Barry because he’s looking for someone called Carissa Knox for his Hawkgirl story.

“Good day, Scott?” he asks pleasantly, crossing to the coffee machine. The other man looks up from his desk.

“Yeah…”

“Good! That’s good! Working on anything new?”

“Not since the last time you asked.”

Barry blinks. Okay, maybe he’s been a little over the top with the whole ‘keep an eye on Scott’ thing, but really, that Dr Light guy seems more than a little dangerous. “Right. Sorry. So I hear you went to Nardini’s for lunch, how was it?”

“Nice,” Scott says slowly. “It’s a deli, so…sandwiches and stuff.”

“And it was normal? You didn’t say anything weird?”

“You mean weirder than this conversation?”

Barry laughs nervously. “Well, you know, we live in Central City, and I write about metahumans and stuff like that, so you know – just on the lookout for a story!”

Scott looks at him for a second and then shrugs, going back to his work. “Well, if I find anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Good to know,” he says quietly. He looks at the clock; Scott usually goes home around eight, which is in about half an hour. After that, he thinks his mother will patrol the area around where Scott lives in case Dr Light turns up there as well. There had been talk of putting a tracker on him, but Chesca had to remind Jesse that they try not to violate people’s civil liberties when they can help it.

In an effort to make it seem like he’s not stalking Scott – and because he really needs to study these pictures – Barry goes down to the copy room. It’s not that long until closing time anyway, and what can happen in the last twenty minutes?

(Of course, everything proceeds to happen in the last twenty minutes).

Barry is studying pictures of Carissa Knox, frowning because he has no idea how a woman running an insane asylum in the 1950s could have any connection to the hawk person who’s apparently running – or _flying_ – around the Pacific Coast. He notices that it’s eerily quiet when he walks back up the stairs, and when he hears Scott’s voice, quickly followed by _another_ Scott’s voice, he freezes. Around the corner, he can see Dr Light’s immaculate form walking towards Scott, who’s backing towards the far wall.

“…my surprise when I found out that I was a famous news reporter on this earth,” Dr Light is saying. His hands are glowing. “So I thought it would be much easier to kill you and then take over your life.”

“You want to k-kill me?” Scott stammers. Barry puts his papers down quietly and looks around for something to throw. Scott locks eyes with him then, and Barry puts a finger to his lips. Dr Light keeps talking and Barry picks up a stapler.

“It’s unfortunate, that’s not usually my thing. But it’s not murder if it’s your double, right?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I wanted a fresh start in this place, and the only way I could do that is to become you. Sorry, Scott.”

Barry takes his chance – he hurls the stapler at his back, and then punches him in the face when he turns around. The shades fly off his face and Scott – _their_ Scott – curses. “What the – you have my face? How is this possible?”

“You couldn’t understand,” Dr Light snarls, wiping blood from his jaw. He flexes his fingers and Barry realises what he’s about to do. “Scott, close your eyes!”

The light blast hits them both, hurling them both across the room, and Barry hits his head on a desk. By the time he’s getting up, shaking his head, Light is gone. “Scott? You okay?”

They hear someone clattering down the stairs and he sees Erica looking around the room. “What the hell happened?”

“We were attacked by a metahuman,” Scott says shakily, standing up, and Barry nods.

“His name was Dr Light, and we need to call CCPD right now.”

Nora and Julio arrive quickly, along with an Iris that’s apparently cured of her blindness. “I came as soon as I heard,” she says, pulling on her gloves. “Are you both okay?”

“Okay as I can be,” Scott replies, loosening his tie. “Thanks to Barry. Apparently a stapler and a punch makes you a hero.”

“He’s a hero, alright,” Iris says, giving him a warm look, and Barry puts a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I just don’t get it – that guy had my face, and he wanted to kill me. He said his name was Dr Light, but wasn’t she a criminal from last year?”

Barry, Iris and Nora all look at each other and Iris clears her throat. “We have reason to believe that this Dr Light has the same powers but is different,” Iris explains carefully. “The original was locked up, but this one is new.”

“And he wants to kill _me_?” Scott asks. “What did I ever do to him?”

“Mr Evans?” Julio calls, interrupting them all. “We have a car ready to take you to protective custody.”

Scott nods absently and Nora pats him on the shoulder sympathetically, before he leaves to go talk to Julio. Iris shakes her head. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. What about you?”

“I’m okay, the blind thing wore off about an hour ago.” She sighs. “This is my fault.”

“Iris, come on,” he disagrees. “You were blind – there’s nothing you could have done.”

“Yeah, but if I hadn’t told him Scott’s name, none of this would be happening. And Scott – we can’t keep him under house arrest forever, it’s not like he can stop working, and he’s famous, so it won’t take long to find out where he lives. We still don’t have a way to catch Light.”

Barry thinks for a moment. “Well, do you think he could come stay with us? I don’t think there’s a safer place than somewhere Miss Miracle always goes.”

“Plus the cop that lives in the house,” Nora adds. She shrugs. “Look, if he’s okay with it, so am I. I’d hate for anything to happen to him.”

“Great.” Iris bags and labels Dr Light’s glasses, and Barry frowns. “What are you doing with that?”

“Since this is a metahuman weapon, I have to take it to CCPD’s consultant to depower it before it can be taken into evidence, which means Chesca. She and Jesse will probably still be there – why don’t you guys see if Scott wants to stay with you guys and meet me there?”

***

Thankfully Iris cleared out most of her stuff when she moved out, so even though there is some residual proof of the fact that she used to live there, most notably the huge Backstreet Boys poster that greets you when you open the wardrobe, but it looks more like their guest room than anything. “So Miss Miracle thinks it’s best if I stay with you?” Scott says as he puts his stuff away. Barry nods, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“I called her and she said there was a huge chance that Light could come after you again. And since she can’t keep an eye on you 24/7, she figured I’d be the next best thing.”

After Iris left his mother suggested that he come and stay with them, especially since he got the benefit of police protection _and_ the Golden Grace.

“Guess it pays to have a superhero on speed dial,” Scott replies. He pauses. “Look, Barry, I know we probably had a bit of a…weird spell at the beginning, and I know you’ve had a tough few months, but I really appreciate all this. It must be weird having to deal with all this.”

Barry just shrugs lightly. “That’s okay. Would you believe this has actually been one of the saner moments of my year?” He pauses, grabbing his jacket. “Now, I have to go talk to her about how we’re actually going to catch this psycho, but call me if you need anything, alright?”

He leaves Scott with his mother and drives to STAR Labs, where he sees Jesse, Chesca and Linda studying Dr Light’s shades. “I’m guessing he didn’t get these from the Sunglass Hut,” Jesse says as he studies them. “Are you okay, Barry?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. What do you guys think we should do next?”

 Chesca and Linda look up from where they’re drawing up plans to cover up the huge hole in their (new) basement, and Iris comes to stand in front of the still of him they took from the video. “We need some kind of way to draw him out,” Iris says slowly. “He’ll be hiding now, right? Because everyone will be looking for him.”

“Yeah, but not for very long,” Barry points out. “He’s stuck here now, especially if he can’t get back to his earth because we’ve sealed off the entrance to the breaches.” He pauses. “He might try to rob another bank.”

“Maybe, I – Jesse, would you put the shades down? They don’t do anything.”

Jesse ignores her, still studying them. “Actually,” he says slowly, “they’re going to help us catch him.”

Linda frowns. “How do you figure that?”

“All we need to do,” he continues calmly, “is give them to her.”

He’s pointing at Chesca, who visibly swallows. “Why me?”

“Because you have powers?”

Barry and Iris share a look, but Chesca can’t take her eyes off Jesse. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been studying your brain scans and medical files for days. Hormone levels, white blood cell count…and then I found something weird. Iris has the metahuman gene, and it’s cause several mutations in what her cells look like. Imagine my surprise when I found that the same thing has happened to you.” Jesse pauses. “Every time someone touches you, you flinch and look spaced out. You figured out where Hattie Hewitt was hiding in seconds, and you told Iris there was a robbery at a bank _before_ you got an alert. Because you’re a metahuman.”

Iris frowns at her. “Chess…Have you known about this and not told us?”

“I was gonna tell you,” she explains, cutting her eyes at Jesse. “But apparently we exchanged one asshole doctor for another. I was, I swear. But I didn’t.”

“Why not?” Barry asks. Chesca wrings her hands, her usually cheerful expression twisted into one of self-doubt. “Dr Wells said I could do this thing. Right before she left, remember? She said-”

“That some of the things you’d be able to do would be normal,” Barry remembers, “and others not so normal.”

“Right,” she says. “But I’m not…This whole dark matter giving you powers thing, it’s scary. Iris, when you woke up, you kept getting migraines and you couldn’t sleep. Dr Light runs around blinding people and cutting through metal. And then there’s Colin – if there’s anyone I don’t want to be like, it’s him.”

Barry wants to interject, to tell her that she could never, _ever_ be like that psycho, but Jesse, surprisingly, gets there first. “Chesca,” he says, “if you think that you could ever be like a sociopathic murderer, you haven’t been paying attention. You help people everyday, whether though Miss Miracle or the police. All you ever talk about is building things to make things easier for people. You have nothing to worry about.”

Chesca bites her lip. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. It was my fault, I should have said something.”

“Well, you can be sorry later,” Jesse says briskly. “Right now, we have to use your powers to find Light.”

“Chess,” Linda says. “Your powers, how do they work? When Calamity made me Dr Light, I just had the gloves – are you like that?”

“No. It’s, um, kind of hard to explain? I get, kind of, visions. Sometimes of the breachers when they come through, or just of you guys, hanging out. Sometimes they’re random, but sometimes they come when I’m touching something that belongs to someone.”

“Well, there you go.” Jesse marches towards her and thrusts the shades towards her. “Do it.”

Chesca looks around, and then steps forward, laying her palm over the shades. They wait for a few seconds. “I’m sorry, it’s not working.”

“Try again.”

“Look, I can’t control it-”

“ _Try again_.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Iris declares. She walks past Jesse and floats the shades away from Chesca, sitting down in front of her. “Chess, you don’t have to do anything. Not tonight. Scott is safe for now and Light won’t be attacking him any time soon, since Barry punched him out.”

“Right,” she sighs. “Thanks.”

“I’m not done.” Iris pauses, adjusting her glasses. “I know you said you were scared, and I get that, I do. But we’re a team, Chesca, and if there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that secrets are bad for us. I didn’t tell Barry I was Miss Miracle for _months_ , and I can only imagine what kind of danger he could have been put in because he didn’t know. If we don’t know what’s going on, we’re all in danger.” Barry swallows, looking at the ground, and Linda peers at him. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Long day.”

Iris presses on. “We can’t have big secrets like that – you have to trust us enough to let us know what’s going on. You’re right, these powers can be terrifying. But that’s why we’re here. To help you with them. Okay?”

“Okay,” she replies in a small voice.

“Good,” Iris says cheerfully. “Now, it feels like this day has gone on forever, and I was blind for half of it. I think we should all go home and get some sleep. Chess, we can figure out if your powers can help tomorrow. And _you_ ,” she adds, turning to Jesse. “Put a dollar in the jar.”

“What?” Jesse demands. “Why?”

“Because we do not out people in the Miracle Workers.”

“But I was nice! I said all those nice things!”

“Which is why your ass is only putting _one_ dollar in the jar, not three.”

Jesse grumbles under his breath but obediently gets his wallet, and Linda and Barry try not to laugh.

***

Iris has to go into work briefly to check in with the Captain, despite the fact that it’s a Saturday morning, before heading back to Barry’s so they can go to STAR Labs together. She frowns when she opens the door to the house and sees Barry looking at a table full of food. “Um, hi,” she says slowly. “You guys having a dinner party?”

“You would think,” Barry replies, amused. Right then, Scott comes out with a dish of something. “I know, I know. Sometimes cooking helps me to relax. You like honey-glazed chicken?”

“If you don’t,” Barry interjects, “there’s also four-cheese baked ziti, spicy Thai noodles, and devilled eggs.”

“Wow, you are nervous.”

“Have you heard anything about Dr Light?” Scott asks. “Am I still in danger?”

Iris sighs. “It’s hard to explain, but we think so.”

“Come on, Iris, I am losing my mind over here.’

“He is not kidding,” Barry mutters. A timer goes off in the kitchen and Scott turns.

“That’s the cake. Hope you guys are hungry!”

Barry grabs a devilled egg and Iris does the same. “He’s serious, you know. There’s enough food in there to feed an army.”

Iris shakes her head. “He must be terrified.”

“Well, I get where he’s coming from. There’s someone out there trying to kill him to take over his life, and he could strike at any moment. Have you had any ideas?”

“One,” she admits. “But it sucks.”

Barry shrugs. “Can’t be worse than nothing, right?”

“Well, Light can’t go home, and he can’t walk around trying to be Scott Evans while the real Scott Evans is still alive,” she explains. “So it’s just a matter of _when_ not, _if_ Light attacks him. But that might be what we need?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we use Scott as bait to lure him out, and we’re prepared this time, I can catch him. Plus, we have someone who can talk to us about whatever earth he comes from.”

“That’s not such a bad idea. Except, well…”

“What is it?”

“Look, Iris, I know you’re doing your best, and I trust whatever you want to do. But Scott only knows Miss Miracle as someone in a golden costume and domino mask. I keep telling him Miss Miracle has everything under control, but it’s hard when he doesn’t even know who she is. It might be hard to convince him to put himself in danger like that.”

She nods. “Good point. You think I should tell him who I am?”

“You’re asking him to trust you. Maybe you should trust him, too. It’s like you said – this secret just became dangerous for him.”

“Using my own advice against me, Allen?” She gestures with her deviled egg. “Well played.”

He smiles. “I aim to please, sunshine.”

“Okay,” she says, standing up. “Bring him by STAR Labs, if he says yes.”

Iris walks out the door, and Barry goes into the kitchen to find Scott frowning at three packets of grated cheese. “Scott?”

“You like chicken alfredo?”

“My mom does, but forget about that for a second. What if I told you there was a way for you to help catch Dr Light?”

“I’ll do it,” he says immediately. Barry raises his eyebrows.

“Really? That fast?”

“Well, it was that or go out to get flour for alfredo sauce. What do I need to do?”

They make it to STAR Labs and are heading up the elevators when Scott turns to him. “I thought your mom said not to leave the house?”

“She was okay with this,” he says as they walk out. Scott frowns.

“Why?”

“Because someone wants to talk to you.”

As if she hears them, Iris appears before them in full costume, her eyes golden. “Mr Evans,” she says, her voice distorted.

“Miss Miracle,” he breathes. Iris glances at Barry and takes off her mask, switching them out for her glasses. “Hi, Scott.” He just stares at her.

Barry nods at them both. “I’ll let you guys talk.”

He squeezes her shoulder ask he walks out, and Iris looks at Scott. “Oh my God,” he stammers. “I had sex with Miss Miracle. My brother is going to be so jealous.” His eyes widen. “God, I’m sorry, that was inappropriate-”

“It’s okay,” Iris laughs. “That might be my favourite reaction, actually. You okay?”

“You know, after the last twenty-four hours, this is somewhat comforting. And it explains a lot.”

“Like what?”

“Well, all the times you had to cancel. When you kept running out on our dates.”

“Oh! My friend Ronnie was on fire. Well, she wasn’t.”

“On fire?”

“My friend.”

Scott blinks and she laughs again. “Look, Scott, there’s a reason I’m telling you who I am. I have a plan to find Dr Light, and I’ll need your help. But I wanted you to be able to trust me.”

He thinks for a moment, before nodding slowly. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

“Dr Light is you, but from another earth. It’s a long story, but there are parallel universes all around us, and the singularity from a few months ago meant that corridors between them opened up so people from those universes could show up here. Remember when I was telling you about Commander Carl, Space Marshall of the Galaxy?”

“That stuff is real?”

“Yup.” She pauses. “Well, for the most part. Jury’s still out on the aliens. God, I hope the aliens aren’t real. Not important!” she adds when Scott makes a worried face. “Why don’t you come in here and meet the team, and we can go from there?”

Jesse eyes him when Iris leads him back in. “Your doppelganger was better dressed.”

“JAR!”

“But-”

“He’s new,” Barry says. “He’s not used to your assholery.”

“Hi, Scott,” Linda calls pleasantly.

“Um. Hi.”

Iris leads him to the middle. “Why don’t we tell him about the plan?”

“With pleasure,” Chesca answers. She points at the video of Light. “Our boy Light can only fire at things he can see. So if you give him more than one target so he doesn’t know who to target, BOOM! Confused metahuman.”

“How do I do that?”

“By teleporting so fast he doesn’t know where to turn. Oh, that reminds me…” She picks up a domino mask from her workstation. “I modified these with the same type of lenses as Light has, so now you won’t be blind if he hits you.”

“But how do you get him out?” Scott asks. Barry steps forward.

“That’s where you come in,” he explains. “If you go about your day but have us all watching you, if and when he attacks, we’ll be ready for him. We’ve hacked into the cameras all around the city, too, so we have eyes on you.”

“And then BOOM!” Chesca says. “Captured metahuman.” Jesse scowls. “How come she doesn’t have a jar?”

“Cause I’m fly, BOOM!”

They get Scott miked up and ready, reassuring him that everything will be fine. “We’ll be listening the whole time, okay?” Barry tells him. “Iris will be there too, and my mom has a patrol car in the area. All you have to do is walk around and look normal.”

“Oh!” Linda walks over to them. “Don’t forget this.”

“What is it?”

“It fires off a small electrical charge to incapacitate people.”

Scott stares. “You’re giving me a Taser?”

“Isn’t it illegal for civilians to carry those?” Barry frowns.

“We are dealing with a metahuman that can cut through metal.”

“Give him the Taser,” Iris and Barry say together. Iris pulls on her mask and looks at Scott. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be. Let’s do it, Miss Miracle.”

***

“Okay, I’m bored.”

“This isn’t supposed to be exciting, Chesca” Jesse admonishes over the mike.

“Anyone else bored?”

“I’m bored,” Barry and Linda say.

“Me too,” Iris adds from her vantage point on the roof.

“You think you’re bored?” Scott wants to know. “I’ve been walking around the plaza for two hours. I think I’m going to get cited for loitering.”

Barry watches the dots move around the map, indicating that Scott is walking on the ground and Iris is tailing him from up high. They started enthusiastically, but soon got bored when Scott spend ages walking around downtown without anything happening.

“Should we give up?” Linda asks.

“Maybe he doesn’t know where Scott is?” Jesse suggests, but Barry shakes his head.

“I’ve already posted five pictures to Scott’s Instagram – _everyone_ knows where he is.”

They’re interrupted by the sound of Iris’ stomach rumbling. “God in heaven,” Jesse mutters. “What was that?”

Iris folds her arms even as she scans the street to make sure Scott is still in her line of sight. “Look, I get hungry. Sue me.”

“You ate a whole dish of that four-cheese pasta that Scott brought, how can you still be hungry?”

“Wait, that was Iris?” Scott wants to know. “I thought that was a car starting. You’re so-”

“Scott Christopher Evans, if you call me small, so help me God…”

“Get her a Big Belly Burger,” Chesca suggests.

“We’re on a mission!” Jesse says.

“You’re the ones complaining!”

“Iris, just get back here and get a power bar-” Linda says, but Barry cuts her off.

“Got him!” Barry says quickly. “A speed camera picked him up, he’s a couple streets behind.”

Iris rolls her should back and teleports around until he finds Dr Light, prowling through the crowd. “Iris?” Scott asks.

“I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

The minute Dr Light hits the plaza and sees Scott, Iris teleports in front of him.

“Everyone, run!” she shouts at the people. “Get away, now!”

“You,” Dr Light says, narrowing his eyes at her as everyone flees. “Madam – no, it’s Miss, isn’t it? Figures. You’re pint-sized.”

“Oh, imaginative (!)” Iris mutters. “I don’t know why I bother.”

Dr Light advances on her, his hands already glowing with deadly light. “Now, Iris!”

Iris flashes away and appears behind him, grinning. “Try again, doc.”

He launches more light at her and she rises above it. He grunts in frustration and she spins and twists away from him, watching as he fires blast after blast at her, and then she sees her chance. She teleports right behind him and hits him with a right cross, and then shoves him into a pole, knocking him out.

Iris appears in the Cortex with his unconscious form a few minutes later and drops him unceremoniously on the floor. “Now,” she enquires, dusting herself off. She looks up at everyone, a dangerous glint in her eye. “Would anyone else like to call me small?”

“No,” everyone says together, and Iris nods.

“Good.”

***

After Barry has taken Scott home and Linda goes to get Wally from work, Iris finds Chesca pacing in the entrance of the Pipeline, Dr Light’s shades in her hands. “Hey, chica,” Iris says quietly, smiling. “You okay?”

Chesca sighs, rubbing her arms. “I was – my powers were supposed to help, and they didn’t. If I’d been able to find him, we wouldn’t have had to put Scott in danger.”

“Chess…” Iris shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’ve been getting, watching me, but that’s not how any of this works. Sometimes your powers won’t work. Sometimes they’ll go haywire and you won’t _want_ them to work. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. You can go as slow or as fast as you want, but you’ll get there eventually.”

Chesca regards her. “You know, you’re getting good at the whole pep talk thing.”

“I know, right? Nora would be proud.” She pauses when she hears a groaning sound. “He’s waking up.”

Dr Light stands slowly, clutching his head. “What’s wrong with me? Where am I?”

“You are currently staying at Casa De STAR Labs,” Chesca informs him cheerfully. “And that groggy feeling you’re experiencing is the mild sedative that prevents you from using your powers.”

“This is illegal,” he snaps. “You can’t keep me here.”

“Believe me, we don’t want to,” Iris replies. “We’re trying to get you home. But first you have to answer some questions.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because nobody is going to look for you, and nothing is stopping us from keeping you down here. I mean, if you like the décor…”

“Fine. What do you want to know?”

“How did you get here?”

Dr Light sighs through his nose. “A few months ago someone noticed that there was this thing. A kind of…portal. Things were disappearing into it, and soon people were too, going in and then coming back, saying there was this whole new place where they were the same, but different.”

“People have been travelling through the breaches for _months_?” Iris demands.

“Not people. Criminals. My friend Edie Slick came through a while ago. Rothstein from downtown came through as well.” He shrugs. “We wanted a new start, away from our own earth, away from our crimes. And away from Madam Miracle.”

Chesca raises an eyebrow. “Is that Miss Miracle’s doppelganger?”

“Of course not. But ever since the Particle Accelerator exploded and there are more metahumans than there were before, she might come out of retirement. I wanted the get the heck out of dodge in case I ended up like Killer Frost.”

Iris almost falls over. “Killer Frost? There’s a Killer Frost on your earth?”

Scott rolls his eyes. “There was, years ago. Madam Miracle defeated him years ago, right before she retired. But by that time metahumans were peaceful or too scared of her to do anything. Killer Frost and Deathstorm were the last ones she battled.”

Chesca looks at Iris.

 _We have_ got _to tell the others_.

They leave him then, messaging Jesse and Barry that they need to meet at Jitters immediately. The guys meet them there and order four Miss Miracles, before settling in a back booth where no one can hear them.

“There was a Killer Frost on that earth?” Jesse repeats when he tells them, and Chesca nods.

“Yeah, he said someone called Madam Miracle defeated him. Maybe it’s someone with Iris’ powers on that earth?”

“Maybe,” Barry admits. Iris herself adjusts her glasses.

“You guys, I kind of have an idea. Several, actually.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, you know how Stein gave us that stuff on how to stabilise the breaches? What if we could find an idea of how to identify them as well?”

“What do you mean?” Jesse asks.

She gets a napkin and starts to draw on it. “I got the idea yesterday, but I was blind. Stein said that the breaches are stable and then not for a little bit, and that’s how people are walking through, and that all these different earths vibrate at a different frequency. And then Dr Light said that random objects keep coming through and going back again.”

“Right…” Barry says.

“If we could stabilise them and then throw an object through one, and then get it back again, we could measure its frequency,” she tells them, drawing arrows on the napkin. “That’s what I wanted the boomerangs and the stroboscope for. Boomerangs come back and stroboscopes measure frequency.” She bites her lip, turning to Chesca. “And I thought of you.”

“Me?”

“Well, yeah. I haven’t looked into it, but I feel like your power is something to do with being able to feel frequencies that are far away. When you put Dr Light in the Pipeline, did you feel anything?”

Chesca thinks for a moment. “Kind of. Felt weird, though.”

“Weird how?” Barry asks.

“You ever played the piano? When I touched you guys and got that feeling, it’s like playing a note in one scale. When I touched Light, it felt wrong. Like, I recognised the note, but it was the wrong scale or song.”

Iris nods. “That’s what I thought. If we stabilise a breach, throw a boomerang through it, and then get Chess or the stroboscope on a breacher, we can identify the breaches and order them according to frequency. Now I’m guessing Light, Atom Smasher and Sand Demon are probably from the closest earth, since that breach is the biggest one. Like, Earth-2, we could call it. But there could be more metas from other earths.”

Everyone stares at her, and she stirs her coffee self-consciously. “Well, I mean, it was just an idea, I haven’t-”

“Iris, that’s…” Jesse shakes his head. “I mean, that’s ingenious.”

“How did you come up with all that?” Barry asks, and she shrugs, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“Photographic memory. And, you know. You have a lot of time to think when you’re blind.”

“Well, I think it’s a great idea,” Chesca tells her. “I mean, I still don’t know how I’m going to deal with these powers…”

“Well, I was actually hoping we could catch a movie,” Iris laughs. “It’s Saturday night, and I kind of want to chill.”

“Oh, I’m with her.”

“You guys are the worst,” Jesse tells them. They all look at him. “We haven’t done the most important thing. We haven’t given Chesca a _name_.”

“Oh snap, you’re right!” Chesca says.

“Well, we know you, it’s gotta be perfect,” Barry says.

“Something that really sings,” Jesse adds. “Like…”

“Like…”

“Vibe?” Iris suggests. Barry raises an eyebrow.

“Vibe?”

“Huh,” Jesse says. “Vibe.”

“Vibe,” Chesca grins. “I like it.”

***

Things get a lot more complicated than that.

No sooner than Iris decided they’d need a way to identify the breaches that they soon realise more are opening. Iris catches several new metahumans and Chesca informs her that not all are from this earth, so Iris puts them in the Pipeline. Chesca, Linda and Jesse work diligently to stabilise the breach in their basement, desperate to implement Iris’ plan. Then there’s Olivia, who’s dealing with a mayoral election and Dana Darhk, which Iris can feel she’s going to get pulled into at some point.

Still, there are some good points. Francine gets the job at the university and they move into a three-bedroom near CCPD, so everyone helps them move in. It is nice, homey, and they take to decorating straight away. But then one of the ceiling fans breaks and the company will take too long to send someone, so Iris just asks Barry to do it. Which is why he shows up with a toolbox that afternoon on her front steps.

“You’re making me dinner,” he says by way of greeting when she opens the door. She frowns at him.

“I am not making you dinner.”

“I was busy and now I’m helping you.”

“Watching Sherlock for the millionth time,” she tells him, “is not busy.”

“Whatever. Where is it?”

“Lounge.” The place is already mostly finished decorating, with her dad’s record player and lots of pictures of them scattered around the room. Francine comes out of the kitchen wiping her hands, and smiles when she sees him. “Hi, Barry. I can’t thank you enough for doing this.”

“It’s no problem,” he shrugs pleasantly. “I’ll be done in no time.”

He works diligently with Iris for company as she passes him his tools and he stands on a chair fixing the fan. “Congratulations on the promotion, by the way.”

“Thanks,” she replies. “Now I can take the ‘assistant’ part off my title. And I get to carry handcuffs and make arrests.”

“You’re not going to arrest anybody.”

“Well, no. I have superpowers.”

“You’re not going to arrest anybody because you’re going to forget the handcuffs somewhere.”

Before Iris has a chance to throw a cushion at him, her mother appears in the doorway. “Honey, did you give Barry his present?”

“My present?”

“He doesn’t deserve it if he keeps making fun of me.” She pauses. “Okay, fine.” She walks over to one of the cupboards and fishes out a large box. “Courtesy of Mama Ida, all the way from the French Quarter.”

Barry opens it. “She got me food?”

“Uh-huh. Grits, tea cakes, and lots of other stuff, as well as making me promise that I’m going to make sure you eat.” Iris laughs. “She saw you on TV and thought you were too skinny. I told her about your beanpole-ness, but she didn’t listen.”

“Funny (!)”

When Barry goes back to his car to pick up a screwdriver her forgot, her mother regards her. “So.”

“So?”

“Barry’s doing well.”

Iris shrugs. “I guess.”

“That is, after his girlfriend turned out to be…”

“A psycho?”

“Well, yes. And are you two…”

Iris takes off her glasses and cleans them. Her mother has always been far too perceptive for her own good. “We are friends. Barry isn’t…he doesn’t feel that way about me.”

“I see.”

She puts them back on. She went on a coffee date with Julio last week, because really, why shouldn’t she? Barry seems to have completely forgotten about the kiss or anything he might have felt for her, even knowing everything about what Gideon told them. He arrives just as her mother goes back into the kitchen, twirling the screwdriver between his fingers. “You okay?”

“Mm? Oh. Yeah, fine.”

No sooner is he finished that they both get a text from Chesca saying ‘911’. When they get there, Chesca, Linda and Jesse are proudly standing around three circular metal structures around the breach in their basement. “What is that?” Barry asks after Iris has let him go.

“Three weeks of blood, sweat and tears,” Linda answers dryly.

“My greatest achievement,” Chesca sighs dreamily.

“A Speed Cannon,” Jesse says. “Look, it’s stable, watch!”

He gets a book and hurls it at the pulsating mass in the middle of the room, and they all watch as it makes a sucking sound when the book is pulled through. Iris swallows, her hands shaking with anticipation. “You know what this means, right? It’s time for the boomerangs.”

Chesca lets out a loud whoop and crosses to the far side of the room, while Barry goes up to the Pipeline to get Dr Light. “I’m still surprised Liv made up all those boomerangs for you,” Linda tells her.

“It wasn’t easy. She was still upset that I had to get her to call A.R.G.U.S. to help solve ‘my Queen Shark problem’. Like it’s my fault giant sharks are walking around my city.”

“That is so last season,” Chesca says, carrying a box. “Look at these babies. Custom-built titanium, refined for speed and aerodynamics…Why are we throwing them through breaches again?”

“Because they’ll come back. Want to do the honours, Miss Ramon?”

“It was your idea, Miss Miracle.”

“…just saying, if you want to hold my hand, just ask,” Dr Light is saying, and Barry rolls his eyes.

“Found him.”

Iris looks around and picks up the boomerang, coming to stand in front of the breach. Taking a deep breath, and lifts her arm and hurls it through the breach. Nothing happens.

“Oh.”

“That’s…” Jesse starts.

Chesca swallows. “We can always – DUCK!”

The boomerang comes flying back out with such force that it sticks in a wall. Iris raises her hands and it floats down to hover in front of them. She nods at Chesca, who reaches her hand out. “It’s different,” she whispers. “God, it – it feels weird.”

Iris nods. “Thought it would. Barry?”

He brings Dr Light forward and Chesca touches his arm. She curses. “It’s the same! You guys, _they feel the same_! We did it!”

Everyone whoops and hugs each other, apart from Dr Light.

“I hate it here,” he mutters darkly.

***

That, unfortunately, is where things take a detour.

They decide to stabilise all the breaches and then figure out their next move, and its days after this development that Iris gets a distress signal in the middle of the night from Linda, who’s supposed to be working late with her boss. When she arrives, a strange woman in a cloak is there, stalking towards them.

“…Carter isn’t going anywhere with you, Highlander,” Linda snaps.

“My name is Vandal Savage,” the woman says. “And his name is not Carter Hall. Give him to me and I’ll make your death fast.”

“Not going to happen.”

“As you wish.”

The woman – Vandal Savage, _really_ – pulls her arm back, and Iris flies down to slam into her. “You are done here, miss thing.”

“And so is she!” She hurls a knife at Carter, who has come to stand in front of Linda, and Iris stops it just in time. Just as she’s turning around, however, the woman disappears. Linda, breathing a shaky sigh of relief, puts a hand on her shoulder. “Iris, thank god you came.”

“ _Linda…_ ” Iris groans. Her friend seems to realise what she said.

“Oops.”

***

“So what you’re saying is that a knife-throwing psycho in a Darth Sidious costume started calling you weird names?” Chesca clarifies.

To Carter’s credit, he got over the whole Miss Miracle thing pretty quickly. Probably because of the whole ‘knife throwing psycho’ being much more dangerous. Everyone has gathered in STAR Labs, trying to figure out how to deal with this latest threat.

“What were the names?” Iris asks.

“Prince Khufu,” Carter answers, confused, and Jesse looks up.

“That’s Coptic.”

“Like, Egyptian?” Barry asks. Carter shrugs.

“Maybe? I mean, I’ve never even left the states. And the whole knife thing?”

Iris comes forward to study the one that they’ve got. “These blades are old. Like _centuries_ old. And the way she disappeared…it feels a little more Dana Darhk than it does Calamity.”

“You mean like magic?” Jesse asks. “You want to call the Arrow?”

Iris gives Linda a meaningful look. “Carter, why don’t we get you some coffee?”

“We have a _lot_ on our plates right now,” she continues. “I’ve never dealt with this kind of thing before – I don’t know if I can protect her, but Liv can.”

“I’ve got the footage from the building!” Chesca declares. When Barry sees the woman’s face, he starts. “Wait, I know her.”

“How in the hell do you know her?”

“I’m researching her for a story – the technology that Freddie left us keeps bringing up her face.”

Iris throws her shoulders back. “Then you’re coming with us to Star City. Everyone get ready, we’re leaving tomorrow.”

***

Barry’s packing his stuff for the town car that will take them to the train station the next day when his mother walks in from shopping. Really, only in this life can he go from catching a doppelganger to making sure they stabilise a breach from another world to hunting an immortal assassin in three weeks. But Iris needs his research and his help, Olivia won’t help without proof, and he’s fairly certain he needs them both to make sure Jesse and Chesca don’t kill each other. She’s waiting for him at her lab. “Mom?”

“Hey, honey,” she greets him. She raises an eyebrow. “Do I want to know what’s going on?”

“I don’t think so. What’s all that?”

“Francine wanted to get some stuff for Iris’ room to surprise her, and she thought it would be fun.” She sighs a little wistfully and he studies her. “You okay, mom?”

“Mm? Oh. Well, it’s…Look, I love Iris, and I always will, but it’s times like this when I remember she’s not my real daughter. It just makes me think of Malina, that’s all.” She reaches towards him. “Be careful, sweetheart.”

Barry holds her tightly, the piece of paper with Henry’s number on it burning a hole in his pocket. “I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think!


	24. Don't Tell Anybody, But You Turn My World Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris learns why the lightning turns black. Warning: contains one sucker punch and lots of feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was late. Been a hard week. Also, this might move very quickly compared to other chapters. Title taken from 'Parachute' by Ingrid Michaelson.

Iris taps her foot impatiently as she waits in line at Jitters. The more Barry explained what he’d found about Vandal Savage, the less she liked. Specifically? The fact that she seemed to be immortal and had travelled across the world over centuries, apparently just so she could throw knives at Linda’s new boss. So now she, Barry, Chesca, Linda and Jesse are taking Carter to Star City to get some help with it, given that she’s currently dealing with magic herself in the guise of one Dana Darhk.

“Could I get one Americano, extra shot, two cappuccinos, one with no cinnamon and one with no sugar, a flat white, a café latte, a mocha latte with added mint, and…” Iris puts a pile of sandwich orders on the counter. “All of these, to go.”

The barista takes them and starts putting them in the grill to heat them up. “Long journey?”

“You have no idea.” Chesca will come and get her as soon as they’re ready to leave. They’ll get to the train station, which will take hours, and then begin the long drive to Liv’s house. Not only will they need food, they’ll need to explain to Carter what’s going on, and make sure Chesca and Jesse don’t murder each other on the way. Plus, they need to figure out their next move with this whole Earth-2 situation. Or rather, several earths. According to their frequency measurements, there are metahumans from Earth-5, Earth-19, and many other earths that they haven’t identified yet, including an earth with aliens. And that weird tugging feeling from before the singularity is back, snapping underneath her ribcage again.

“Iris?”

“Huh?” She turns. “Scott, hi. Everything cool?”

He nods. Ever since the whole Dr Light situation she’s been pretty busy, but it’s still nice to see him. “Heading out of town?”

“Yeah, we have a…thing.”

“Does this thing have anything to do with the Hawkgirl story that Barry is chasing?”

“…maybe,” she hedges, laughing. “Anyway, what do you need? You don’t have another doppelganger, do you?”

“Ah, no,” he laughs. He looks around. “Well, none that I can see anyway.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Scott hesitates. “Scott?” she says slowly. “People generally only make that face at me when it’s something I need to worry about. What’s going on?”

“I…How’s Barry doing?”

“Barry?” she repeats. “Fine, I think. He’s been really busy with work, actually, we haven’t had much time to talk. Why?”

Scott sighs. “I know this probably isn’t any of my business, but I’m a little worried about him, and he did save my life. A few weeks ago, this guy came in looking for him but he was out doing the Baldwin Towers story. He left a number and Barry went out to go find him, but he seemed really freaked out.”

“A guy? What did he look like? Did he leave a name, or…”

“About Barry’s height, brown hair, blue eyes. Said his name was Henry.”

Iris stares at him. “H-Henry?” she splutters. Scott looks down at her. “Do you know him?”

 _Yeah, he’s Barry’s super spy dad whose history almost got us all killed in a decades-old vendetta_. “Yeah, it…Listen, Scott, when you mentioned Henry, did Barry get really pale, really still, and get this kind of stony look on his face?”

“Yes, actually. What does that mean?”

 _That he was about to murder someone_. Iris has only ever seen that look on Barry’s face a few times in her life, and on one of those occasions someone ended up with a broken nose. She has no idea why Henry could have come to see Barry, but that explained why he was so weird about her suggesting that he make up with his father. If he’s mad about it, there’s no way he’s going to want to see him. She makes a note to ask him about it.

“Nothing,” she says to Scott. “Well, not noting, but I’ve got it.”

“Iris!” Chesca sticks her head through the door of Jitters just as she sees barista with all their sandwich orders in paper bags. “We gotta go, _chica_.”

“Right, of course,” she says quickly, gathering up the sandwiches. Scott looks down at her, concerned.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No, it’s – I’ll talk to him, Scott.” She hugs him quickly. “Thank you.”

The town car takes them through the early-morning traffic as they eat their breakfast and drink their coffee. Linda is trying to explain to Carter exactly what’s going on, Barry is trying to look through his files, and Iris is trying – and failing – to stop Jesse and Chesca from killing each other. “You guys – you guys!” Iris says quickly. “We’re not deciding on that yet!”

“I should go through the breaches with Iris,” Jesse says tightly, “because I’m a doctor. If anything goes wrong I can take care of her. “

“I should be the one going through the breaches because I’m the engineer who knows how they work,” she counters. “And – and I’m a metahuman!”

“You’ve been a metahuman for about five minutes!”

“Still more metahuman than you.”

“Both of you, stop!” Iris says. “I told you, we are talking about this when we get back.”

They’ve quickly realised that they can’t keep all the parallel earth metahumans in cells without doing anything about them. Since they stabilised the first one, they have stabilised the breach in the Badlands and the one near the car park in STAR Labs. Chesca, Jesse and Linda created a portable stabilisation machine so that they don’t have to leave expensive equipment lying around. Iris knows that she need to put at least some of these metahumans back. Moreover, they need to go to Earth-2 at some point to find out how Killer Frost was defeated.

“Okay?” she continues. They eye each other.

“Fine,” Jesse says finally, waving Chesca off. “Are we really going to meet the Green Arrow?”

“Yes,” Iris replies, dialling a number.

“Does she really have arrows that blow up?”

“Yes.”

“And she really shot you five times?”

“Six – Freddie!” Iris says quickly when he picks up. “It’s Iris, you okay?”

“Hey, Iris. Are you – shit!”

“Freddie? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, we’re just – um. Darhk attacked a power plant and you know Liv, always has to get involved. TRICK ARROWS! Flank, Theo, _flank_!”

Iris frowns. “Freddie, do you need my help?”

“No, I’m sure we’ve got it under control, we – Liv? Liv. _Olivia_?”

Freddie only calls her that when she’s in trouble or he’s _really_ pissed at her. Iris gestures for Chesca to give her the uniform with her bag in it, before disappearing and reappearing in the Foundry. When she puts her hand on Freddie’s shoulder, he jumps. “Do you always have to-”

“We have been friends for months,” Iris cuts him off quickly. “Yes, I do. Address?”

Freddie turns back to the panels as Iris gets back into her suit. He’s pulled up a map of the place as well as video imagery of what’s going on, so within seconds she’s teleported across town to the chemical plant. She barely has a split second to register the scene – Theo, Laurel and Diggle are being surrounded Darhk has her hand over Liv’s chest and Liv is frozen as she uses her power on her. Gritting her teeth, Iris sweeps the others away from the fight, dumping them a few streets away, and goes back for Liv. Just as she’s teleporting away, she hears Dana Darhk give an impressed laugh and exclaim, “Whoa! What was _that_?”

When she gets back, Diggle is recovering from throwing up, giving her an evil look and being supported by Olivia, and Theo is staring at her in disbelief. “Sorry, Dig,” Iris says guiltily. “I forgot…”

Diggle makes a noise that sounds very much like a word she doesn’t want to repeat, and Theo gapes at her some more, tapping Laurent on the shoulder. “That’s Miss Miracle. We know Miss Miracle? Did I know we knew Miss Miracle?”

“Hi, Theo,” Iris says absently, trying to keep away from Dig’s death stare. “I like the hood. Red suits you.”

“Miss Miracle knows _me_? We’re friends with Miss Miracle?”

“Iris,” Olivia says, stepping forward. “Thanks, Freddie told me you were coming.”

“What’s up, Iris?” Laurent enquires politely, as if his tonfas aren’t covered in blood. “Anything interesting?”

“…you could say that.”

***

“Vandal Savage,” Barry says, bringing a picture up on the projector. It shows a painting of a woman leaning in to talk in the ear of a man in purple robes and armour. “Rome. Circa fifty…six? Fifty-six BC. The Gallic Wars. Which means that the man in the war robes she’s talking to is-”

“Julius Caesar,” Jesse splutters. He looks around everyone gathered in the Foundry. “She was talking to _Julius Caesar_?”

“Yup. She didn’t call herself Vandal Savage back then, obviously, but according to my notes, she helped him through the Gallic Wars.”

“Pity she couldn’t help him with the whole backstabbing thing,” Chesca mutters. “Bet the disappearing act would have been useful then.”

Barry laughs. Once Iris got everyone back and the rest of the team arrived, they decided it would be best to get everyone acquainted so they could figure out what was going on. Once Barry got over the hilarity of watching Olivia take off her mask and ask Jesse whether he would like Thai or pizza, he got to work. He clicks again so another picture appears next to the last one, of a woman in a cloak as she walks down the street. “Vandal Savage, 8th of September, 1888. Hanbury Street in Whitechapel, London. The high society papers that came out the next day said that she was on her way to an opera, which gave her an alibi, because it was widely believed that she helped the man who killed Annie Chapman.”

“Who’s Annie Chapman?” Linda wants to know. Barry takes a deep breath.

“Jack the Ripper’s third victim.”

There’s a collective gasp. “Okay, not feeling this lady at all,” Iris says. Barry nods. “Yeah, neither am I. Another one…Vandal Savage, Berlin, 1939-”

“Stop!” Liv says. “I think we all know where that one is going. Okay, so what’s the deal with this woman? Why is she after Carter?”

“Yeah, and what does that have to do with the Hawkgirl story?” Iris adds. Barry clicks some more and a series of newspaper articles come up – some are yellowed with age, some aren’t, and some aren’t even newspapers, just bits of writing.

“Well, once I started scouring archives for any mention of the Hawkgirl, I kept getting pictures of Savage as well as mentions of a woman with wings in the sky. I didn’t notice anything until it happened three times. She’s been everywhere – she trained Houdini, she hung out with Robin Hood…”

“And I bet she controls the weather and wrote the screenplay to _Glitter_ , too,” Theo mutters. Chesca grins. “I love that show.”

“Vandal Savage,” Barry continues, “appears to be immortal, though I’m not sure how. She might be invulnerable, so nothing can kill her, or ageless, so she gets to a certain point and her body will not break down with old age. She could be both. She could die and then come back. The same goes for Hawkgirl. What they want with you, Carter,” he says, turning to him, “I have no idea, but someone who considers Jack the Ripper, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan as people she could meet at her reunion is not someone I’d be hanging around with.”

“And you thought we could help with this?” Laurent enquires. Iris nods, adjusting her glasses.

“Well, you guys are dealing with Dana Darhk, and this feels like that to me. The way she used her powers was off. And the way she disappeared.”

“ _You_ disappear,” Freddie points out, but Iris is shaking her head.

“Yeah, but it’s different. When Calamity used her powers, I could feel it, kind of like a disturbance.”

“In the force?” Chesca tries.

“Kind of, actually. Like, one ‘miracle worker’ to another, I could feel the vibrations from when she did things. But with Vandal it’s blank, even though she can throw knives and disappear at will. It reminded me of the whole draining souls to power magic that you told me Darhk does.”

“She does what?” Jesse demands, and Chesca rolls her eyes.

“This is why you should listen to me.”

Liv throws her shoulders back. “Well, you came to the right place. We’ve held off Darhk before, we can help protect your friend until we figure out what they want. Right now, though, we should get some sleep.”

When Iris wanders downstairs to the lobby of Olivia’s mansion the next morning (where she spent the night in a room with Chesca), she finds her sipping coffee and studying their security feed. “Where is everyone?”

“Laurent and Theo are in the kitchen; Dig’s going to meet us at the office.” She lifts a plate. “Croissant?”

“ _So_ glad you kept this place.”

She shrugs. “Freddie thought it might be nice to hold parties here.”

“Is that what Freddie says?” Iris grins, and Liv narrows her eyes at her.

“I will still shoot you, you know.”

“I just find it cute that you’re totally in love and living with Freddie now, even though your whole domestic bliss thing got cut short. What is it you said last year? ‘Girls like us don’t get a Prince Charming’?”

“I was wrong about that,” she shrugs simply. She eyes her. “You should remember that.”

“What?”

“Sometimes I’m wrong, Iris.”

Iris frowns briefly at her, and then turns when she hears people coming down the stairs – Barry, Chesca and Jesse, who’s marvelling at the opulence of the Queen Manor. “I don’t _know_ whether it’s an original Goya, Dr Asshole,” Chesca says irritably. “Go eat a croissant and leave me alone.”

“Why Iris keeps sticking me with you, I’ll never know.”

“Aren’t they great?” Barry says cheerfully. Liv stands just as Theo and Laurent come out of the kitchen. He smiles at Barry. “Ready to go?”

“Where are you guys headed?” Theo asks.

“My dad’s a visiting professor at Star City university,” Laurent explains. “He actually usually works in Central, but he’s here today.”

“Professor Lance, Laurent and I are going to see what else we can dig up on Hawkgirl and Savage,” Barry says. “I figure a professor of ancient history can help with someone who’s apparently been alive for thousands of years.”

“Quentin’s always been a big help when he can,” Liv says firmly, and she turns to everyone else. “Chesca, Jesse? What are you guys doing?”

“Updating your tech, for one,” she answers. “Freddie never listens to me. I bet that’s why you guys had to move the Foundry, too. Jesse’s going to update your medical protocols as well.”

“I don’t think Freddie would-” Liv begins, but Iris stops her.

“Do not get involved. You’ll lose an eye.”

“Thanks for the warning. Iris and I are going to Queen Consolidated with Freddie to see what we can do there – why don’t we meet there this afternoon?”

“What about me?” Theo asks. “What am I doing?”

“You’re going to stay here with Linda and look after Carter.”

“Babysitting? That’s all I get to do?”

Liv gives him an unimpressed look. “Yes.”

“Hey, I am a vigilante just like you, why don’t I get an important, cool job?”

“Because I said so.”

Theo rolls his eyes. “For the record, having a sister sucks.”

“Seconded,” Chesca adds. Iris is about to say something when she feels a tug under her ribs so sharp that she gasps, and everyone looks at her. Except for Barry, who’s looking at the ground with an odd expression on his face. “You okay?” Jesse asks, worried. Iris clears her throat, adjusting her glasses.

“Sorry. Um, stomach ache. But I’m fine.”

As everyone leaves, though, she knows that Barry is most definitely not fine.

***

As much as she loves her job and the CCPD and everything it has to offer, there’s no doubt that all the budget cuts that have been happening means that a lot of her equipment is out of date. There’s the microscope that Barry got for her for Christmas last year, which is still her favourite thing, but the equipment at Queen Consolidated outdoes everything else in her lab by miles.

Iris looks up from her work and focuses on Freddie, pulling off her gloves. “The knives don’t come from this century – they don’t even come from the last one. From what Barry is telling us, and the fact that these knives don’t seem to have _any_ radiation in them, so we can’t see how old they are, Savage is nothing like we’ve ever faced before. We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

Across the room, studying the map that they created with the information that Barry gave them, Olivia says. “So what we have is an immortal magician who throws knives for shits and giggles, stalked by a woman with wings, and for some reason wants a Wayne Industries sales rep from the Midwest?”

Iris takes off her goggles. “I don’t get it either. How’s he doing?”

“According to Theo, okay,” Freddie answers. “A little freaked, but when superheroes from _two_ cities decide that they’re going to do whatever it takes to protect you, that tends to make a person feel better.”

“Yeah, and if she shows up, she’ll meet with two heroes ready to kick her ass,” Iris grins. Olivia looks at her.

“One hero and an amateur.”

“Look, I almost killed you once. You want a reminder?”

“Why are the two of you always threatening to kill each other?” Freddie wants to know, and Liv shrugs.

“Honestly, it’s fun.”

Just as Iris stops herself from telepathically hurling something at her with her mind, an assistant comes into the lab. “Ms Queen?” he asks. “There’s a Barry Allen here to see you.”

Iris frowns just as he walks in, carrying his overnight bag and wearing his jacket. “Barry, are you okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he answers. He runs a hand through his hair, which is wet from the rain. “It’s just, there’s kind of an emergency at work and they need me back in Central by this evening. Laurent and I found some stuff about Savage, and I made some notes to explain everything.”

“I – oh,” Iris says. She’d been hoping that they could talk, but then she realises that the best time for a heart to heart isn’t when they’re dealing with immortal magicians. “Well, that’s cool, if you need to go back.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m the only one they can use for something like this,” he sighs regretfully, looking out of the window. “It’s going to suck trying to get a cab in this weather.”

“Don’t worry about that, Barry,” Olivia says. She walks quickly to the intercom. “I’ll get you a town car, it’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Olivia. Did you guys find anything?”

“Apart from the fact that this woman probably helped build the pyramids?” Iris asks, and Freddie snorts.

“Actually, she probably tore them down, if her track record is anything to go by.”

Barry and Freddie devolve into a conversation about what they found, and Iris watches her best friend closely. She knows _something_ is wrong with him, knows it in her bones, and not just because Scott told her something was up with Henry. She’s always known how to read him, to know when he’s lying or keeping something close to his chest, so she knows exactly what it looks like when he’s trying to hide it. But an unspoken rule has sprung up between them in the last few months. She has asked him how he is, whether he needs anything, and now that Scott has told her that Henry came to visit him, she’s sure it must be something to do with that. Iris loves him even without romantic undertones, she knows that, and he is her family, but Henry isn’t. He is not her problem unless Barry gives her permission for it to be so, even though she very specifically told Waller they he wasn’t going near the Allens again, and so she has to wait for him to come to her.

That doesn’t mean it’s not killing her, though.

“Ms Queen?” the assistant says, poking his head around the door. “The town car you ordered is here to take Mr Allen to the station.”

Barry nods, before stepping forward to hug Olivia and then Iris. “Call me when you get home, okay?”

“Sure,” he says quietly. “See you soon, sunshine.”

“See you soon.” He lets her go and shakes Freddie’s hand, who gives him a rueful smile. “I’m sorry we couldn’t catch up, we should get a coffee the next time I’m in Central.”

“You mean if we don’t die?” Barry laughs.

“Yeah. If we don’t die.”

Barry leaves and Olivia follows him. Iris bites her lip, watching the door as it swings shut, and Freddie taps her on the shoulder. “He seems…quieter than usual,” he says carefully. “Is he okay?”

“No,” she sighs. “He’s not.”

***

_WORLD’S FINEST – MISS MIRACLE AND THE GREEN ARROW DEFEND FROM OTHERWORLDY THREAT – Dr Barry Allen_

_In a far cry from the rivalry that was seen last Christmas, Miss Miracle and the Green Arrow prevented what was sure to be an unprecedented disaster as an unknown woman possessing powers befitting the most powerful Central City’s metahumans almost caused an explosion at a local church after a series of similar incidents across Star City. However, the combined efforts of the Golden Grace and the Emerald Archer, as well as what may be some new allies, stopped this threat before it could become insurmountable. While we do not know whether we have seen the last of this woman, it is…_ (continued on page 3).

Barry files the article into his portfolio and makes a note of the time, date and story type. It’s not his first front page, but it is the first with both Iris and Olivia on it after they figured out how to stop Savage. The biggest revelation, that Carter is actually a reincarnated Egyptian prince called Khufu, and moonlights as a superhero called Hawkman, should be more shocking than it is. But they’re taking an alien back to his earth tomorrow, so Barry isn’t that surprised at what happened when he went back to Star City last week.

“Allen, do you have the notes on the psychology of a metahuman versus the psychology of an alien?” Erica asks, leaning on his desk. He searches it, then spots the article he wrote for features last night.

“Right here, boss,” he says easily. “Had to do some pretty crazy research on Superwoman, but it was worth it.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it. And you’re certainly easier than dealing with Missy, who’s throwing some sort of diva fit over one of the interns.” She shakes her head. “Honestly, you win a couple of Pulitzer’s and suddenly you become the Queen of England. You know, half the interns want to dress up as her for Halloween?”

Barry laughs, shaking his head, and she walks off. Missy throws tantrums all the time – he’s just grateful that she isn’t mad at _him_ for whatever reason. Though the idea of someone dressing up as Missy is hilarious. He moves some stuff around on his desk, wanting to organise it before he heads out for lunch, and his eyes fall on the scrawled number attached to his computer screen.

“If you think of anything,” Henry had said, pressing the piece of paper into his hand, “please call me.” And then he’d left as quickly as he seemed to come, and just as quietly, leaving Barry staring after him.

His stomach twists and he swallows. It’s been like this in the month since Henry told him, and now everything reminds him of the secret he’s keeping. Whether it’s Iris telling everyone that secrets put everything in danger, or Diggle lamenting how ridiculous it was that everyone on their team was keeping a secret from each other last year. And then there’s his mother going shopping with Francine and regretting Malina dying. It allows him to think of what _they_ would have been like, him and Malina. Would they argue, like Chesca and Danita? Tease each other like Theo and Olivia? He doesn’t know, he never got the chance to find out, and then when he dwells on it he gets sick at the thought. Because the logical part of him figured that the people Calamity kidnapped were dead, that there was no way to get them back, and now every time he thinks one of them is the sister he never got to know, he feels like he’s going to throw up.

Barry shakes his head, clearing up his stuff. He’s supposed to be meeting Iris for lunch so they can discuss their latest breach adventure. While they definitely want to visit Earth-2 and find out how they can stop Killer Frost, they figure it’s best to practice on a breach, so they’re taking an alien that wandered through a few days ago, and then analysing Iris’ reaction and the effects it had on her before they went anywhere else.

He does not think of the fact that his sister might be on one of those earths.

***

“…Lin, I am telling you, that’s exactly what happened. Uh-huh. Rolled up to Carter, me and Liv, swept him off his feet, and flew off,” Iris says into the phone. “And then when we found them and figured out what she wanted, Kendra straight up pushed him off a roof, because they’re soulmates and that would make him remember her, apparently.” Iris pauses, eyeing the brownies and cookies and cake that are all over her desk. “Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Yeah, I can’t believe it either.”

Iris pauses when she sees Barry walk in and smile at her, and she smiles back, holding up a finger. “Well, they said they were taking a trip, but as long as there are no more knife-throwing maniacs – well, we put Double Down away, remember. Yeah, it’s breach day tomorrow. No, it’s cool, you and Wally have fun…” She glances at Barry and her whole expression changes when she sees that he’s got the most stricken look on his face. “Lin? Linda, let me call you back, alright?” Iris dumps her phone on the desk and goes to him. “Barry? Hey, Bar, what’s wrong?”

His face crumples and his chest heaves, shaking his head as he looks around the room. “I’m sorry, Iris, it just – I can’t keep this in anymore…”

“Keep what – Okay, Barry, look at me,” she says gently. She reaches up to grasp his shoulders. “ _Hey_ , look at me. I promise, whatever it is, we’ll fix it. _I will fix it_. Now, come on, tell me what’s wrong.”

Barry takes a deep breath. “Henry came to see me.”

Iris drops her hands. “Yeah, I know. Scott told me.”

“He did?”

“He was worried about you. Is that why you’re upset? Because I asked Henry not to-”

“I know,” he says quietly. “But it was important. It was about my sister.”

Iris blinks, thrown. “Malina? What is it?”

“When she d-died, we…we thought it was like a stillbirth or something, and the hospital asked my mom if she wanted to see her. She said no, because it was too painful. But Henry says that they were counting on it.”

“Who were counting on it?”

“The people on the wrong side of that fight thing they all talked about,” Barry manages. Iris’ heart twists – it’s like he’s choking on the words. “They…knew that Henry married someone who wasn’t an agent or someone vetted, and I guess they were mad at him, so they hired people to impersonate the doctors and told my mom Malina was dead.”

She stares at him. “And she – she wasn’t?”

Barry shakes his head. “No, she wasn’t. They kidnapped her, and Waller found out about it. They got her back, but by that time Henry left my mom, and it’s not like he could come back and explain everything. So then Malina grew up with him, him and Eddie, and she became an agent like them. Except Henry used a different name, so she became Malina Thawne.”

“Oh my God,” Iris breathes, and Barry nods despondently.

“Yeah. And then she was sent here before you went into the coma to find out whether there was a metahuman in the area, except Calamity kidnapped her, and that’s how Colin got Eddie to do what he wanted. Because he had his… _our_ sister.”

“I can’t believe this.”

Barry walks over to the window, restless and worried. “When I found out I told him to leave,” he says, his voice breaking, “because I didn’t want anything he did to hurt us again. But Iris, I feel like this is… _hollowing_ me out, and every time I look at mom I feel like I’m hurting her. I just, I really…God, I don’t know what to do…”

Iris looks up at him. “I think you know what you have to do.”

“I can’t – I _can’t_ , it’s going to kill her…”

“No, it won’t,” she says gently. “And you don’t have to tell her yourself, we can tell her together. Did Henry say anything else?”

Barry wipes his eyes, his breath shaking. “Just that if we knew how to find her, we should call him to help.”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, we’ll find her.”

“Iris, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You don’t need to ask.”

“It could take forever; we don’t know which earth they’re on-”

“Barry,” she interrupts. She puts her hands on either side of his face. “This is your _sister_. I will go through all fifty-two earths blind to find her. Fifty-two million, if I have to.”

“But what if we haven’t got a breach open there?”

Iris shrugs. “Then I’ll open one.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Barry Allen, do you forget you’re talking to Miss Miracle? Miracles are kinda my thing.”

She pulls him into a hug. His arms come up around her quickly, his breath still coming fast. “Shh, it's okay,” she whispers, stroking the back of his hair. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

Barry has always been the one to protect her, facing bullies with her and fixing her broken glasses and providing a safe refuge from the world, but he has a tendency to forget that he needs protecting as well. So when he folds himself on top of her small body, burying his face in her hair, she knows that he must truly be hurting. He wraps his arms around her back tightly, like he’s afraid he’ll fall or break or get lost without her, and she holds him back just as tightly. After a second she notices something. “God, Barry, you’re shaking.”

“S-Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Everything will be fine, okay? I promise.”

“’Kay,” he mumbles into her shoulder. She holds him for a while longer, feeling his heart slow against her own as he calms down, and he clears his throat. “Iris?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you… hold up Jitters on your way to work or something?”

Iris frowns, before letting him go and turning to where his eyes are fixed on her desk and the trays of cookies and cake that are there. “Oh, right,” she laughs. “Apparently Linda really wants me to forgive her for telling Carter I’m Miss Miracle. She actually baked me brownies with gummy bears in them, and about three dozen cookies. _And_ she sent some to the house – I had to give a few to Nora. I figured we could have them as dessert when our sandwiches came.”

“That sounds awesome,” he says. He wipes his eyes. “And – look, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before, I know you said secrets weren’t going to help-”

“Barry, I meant like the time Nora and I didn’t tell you I was Miss Miracle,” she points out, “because that secret put you in danger. But this was only hurting _you_. Do you feel better?”

“A little.”

“Good. Now, our sandwiches should be here in a little bit, so do you want a Halloween cookie? There are ghosts, pumpkins, and I think muffins with little sugar witches on them.” She picks up a brownie. “I really should make Linda feel guilty more often, it might get me fed for a good month.”

And Barry laughs for what feels like the first time in a long while.

***

The end of the workday sees Iris at STAR Labs, visiting to make sure everyone is ready for breach day. Chesca is in the Cortex, studying the potential effects of what could happen when Iris is supposed to go through the breach the next day. “Yo, Chess,” she says, and her friend turns away from the simulation.

“What up, Miss Miracle? How’s your day?”

Iris takes a second to answer. Barry left after lunch, promising to come back so they could tell Nora together, but she is still getting used to the idea that Malina, the little sister that they rarely talk about, is alive on another earth somewhere. She smiles. “Good. You? Everything ready?”

“Tomorrow afternoon we will be all ready for take-off. How’s our alien?”

“You mean the White Martian?” Jesse calls as he walks into the Cortex. “Unpleasant, growly, and unreceptive to anything but beef enchiladas-”

“Respect,” Chesca interjects.

“But fine,” Jesse finishes. He peers at her. “How about you? Are you alright? Tired? Hungry, or – we could do this another time-”

“I’m fine,” Iris says. “You’re starting to sound like Barry, worrying about me all the time.”

Chesca keeps her comment about that to herself, but Jesse is unfazed. “How are your glucose levels? I might have to do another urine test; the last one was anomalous-”

“I had a cookie, and _no_ more urine tests!”

“You had four,” Chesca corrects idly. “And you could always do a blood test.”

“Besides, this was Wally’s idea. He felt guilty about not being here and he sent me lots of ideas for your health plan. I like him,” Jesse adds.

“Because you’re both surgeons who like to poke holes in me,” Iris mutters. “Look, I just wanted to make sure we’re all good with the plan, so let’s go through it one more time.”

Chesca pulls up a diagram of the breach and the portable Speed Cannon. “Saturday, 1500 hours. We take the Speed Cannon up to the roof to meet the breach that will take us to what we have identified as Earth-3. Iris and the White Martian will step into the breach, and Iris will take him back to the authorities of that Earth. When Iris is finished, she will re-enter the breach and return to our Earth. Then Jesse will fuss over her in case she’s caught an infectious disease or something and everything will go right back to normal.”

“It isn’t _fussing_ ,” Jesse scowls. “We decided that Iris is the most experienced metahuman so she’d be going through by herself. And we only have one Iris.”

That decision had come after hours of arguing, but they weren’t going back from it now. They didn’t have anyone to guide them through the earths except the metahumans themselves, and since Iris was the only one who could deal with any potential threats by herself. Nobody’s thrilled with it, including her mother, but they made the decision and tomorrow Iris is taking the White Martian back to Earth-3.

(And as soon as Barry unloaded to her about his sister, he went right back to worrying about her going through the breaches).

“And nothing will happen to me,” she says firmly. “Have you modified my suit for the journey?”

“Does Beyoncé own this ass?” Chesca answers. “Brand new gloves to withstand fire, friction and ice, a defibrillator that will activate if your heartbeat becomes irregular, and heating and cooling pads to modify your temperature.”

“Those were all very intelligent modifications,” Jesse adds, going back to looking at Iris’ medical scans, and Chesca laughs.

“Look at what we can accomplish when we’re not yelling at each other.”

“Does that mean you’re going to stop yelling at each other?” Iris asks.

“No,” they say together.

“Of course not.”

Barry messages her then, so she makes her way back to the station to wait for Nora. Barry is sitting in a chair when she gets there, and he returns her encouraging smile when she sits, though it is brief and tight, and she can see his hands shaking. They both sit up when they hear Nora’s familiar heels clack in the corridor.

“Okay, what did you two want to talk to me about?” she asks as she walks in. Then she takes in their serious looks, Iris adjusting her glasses and Barry playing with his hands, and gives a little nervous laugh. “Okay, the two times I have seen the two of you like this involved Lance Burke and his broken nose, and a meeting with Becky Cooper’s mom.”

Barry opens his mouth but no sound comes out, and Iris sits up. “Nora, we have something to tell you-”

“No,” Barry says quietly. He stands. “I have something to tell you. Henry came to see me at work a while ago, and he told me something about…about Malina.”

Iris recognises the shock and hurt and pain that flickers across Nora’s face at the mention of her not-dead daughter, and she’s not sure how Barry can keep going. He looks at her, biting his lip, and she nods encouragingly. He turns back to his mother and continues. “He told me that when she was born, some of the people who were on the other side of that fight that he had – they took her and made us think that she was dead.”

She can’t watch. She can’t watch either of them, but it doesn’t matter, because their thoughts are loud and painful and angry, and even though she’s trained for a year to block them all out, they’re pushing at her defences. She doesn’t need to hear their thoughts to know how much they’re hurting. Nora’s looking at Barry like she doesn’t recognise him, like she can’t comprehend his words, and this isn’t even the worst part.

“She’s not?” Nora gets out finally, and Barry shakes his head.

“N-No,” he says. “She – Henry found her, but they couldn’t really come back after everything, so he was raised with Henry and Eddie. And Henry was still using the name Eobard Thawne, so they call her-”

“Malina Thawne.” Nora takes several deep breaths and walks to the window, looking out onto the fall evening. “She’s alive. _My daughter’s alive_.”

“Mom,” Barry says, and Iris hears that his voice is unsteady and he’s about to start crying. Nora looks at him. “She’s not…okay, mom.”

“What do you mean?”

“Malina was sent here on some sort of mission before Iris went into the coma, and she was t-taken by Calamity – that’s how Colin was able to make Eddie do what he wanted. But then when Waller caught Calamity they had to cut her lose because she was compromised. So she’s somewhere with the missing people that she took.”

 _If she’s still alive_. Because that’s another thing that no one likes to talk about: in trying to catch Colin they’re hoping these people will be with them, but there’s no guarantee that will be true. Nora buries her head in her hands and Barry looks helplessly at Iris, a single tear tracking down his cheek. Then Nora straightens and makes to leave. “I have to get to work – there’s been a breakout at the prison.”

“Mom,” Barry says quickly, “wait-”

She holds a hand out. “Stop. I just…Let me sit with it. I need to sit with it.”

They watch her leave and Barry slumps in his chair, spent. Iris lets out a deep breath. “Barry. Bar, come on, let me take you home.”

They are silent in the car and Iris keeps looking at him. She has always kept her promise not to read his mind, despite their closeness and the weirdness that happened when she was fighting Calamity and she could suddenly hear him in her head despite their distance. She leads him inside, opening the door with her spare key, and he speaks up. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

“I do,” she says firmly, and Barry gives her a surprised look as he follows her inside. She shrugs. “It’s a lot to take in, even with everything we’ve been through this year. I just think she needs time to process it.”

Barry opens his mouth to reply, but then they hear someone talk. “If I knew the cookies were this good, I would have come visit sooner.”

Iris’ eyes widen when she recognises Captain Cold holding a plate of Linda’s Halloween cookies, which she then puts on a side table. “You’re out of cocoa, Barry. Would have gone great with these cookies.”

Iris flashes across the room, holding her up against the wall by her shirt. “Snart – What in the _hell_ are you thinking, breaking into this house?” she snarls. But she just shrugs.

“Careful, Iris,” she drawls. She gestures to her hand on the cold gun. “I’ve made an upgrade to the cold gun – if I take my hand off the trigger, the core goes critical. Miss Miracle might make it…but I can’t say the same for her best friend.”

Iris makes a noise like a growl in her throat, but lets her go. “And to answer your question,” she continues, reaching for another cookie, “I was looking for you. You weren’t at your apartment or your mother’s house.”

“ _You went to my mother’s house_?”

“The décor is lovely.”

Iris breathes out through her nose as Snart powers down her gun. “You’re supposed to be in _prison_.”

“And my mom was supposed to love me so I’d end up writing articles about the changing psychology of the criminal over the past three decades like Dr Allen here. Nice prose, by the way.”

“Ramblings of a homicidal maniac,” Barry says sarcastically, dumping his bag on the floor. “Guess I can stop shooting for that Pulitzer now.”

“Iris, you’re supposed to tell him about my rough childhood.”

“Rough childhoods don’t belong to you anymore than oversized parkas do.”

“Why are you _here_ , Snart?” Iris wants to know. “And how did you get out of prison?”

She shrugs, choosing a brownie. “Jules Jesse and Elsa Walker got one of their psychiatrists to break them out. Think Joker and Harley Quinn, but less baseball bats and green hair. Relax,” she adds. “Nobody died. Though the shrink does keep rocking back and forth and saying ‘dreidel’.”

“And they broke you out too?” Iris tries.

“Mm. They’re after you, but I didn’t think it’d be any fun.”

“You mean there’s no money in it for you,” Barry corrects, and Snart shrugs.

“Non-profit is good for the soul, bad for the pockets.”

“So what, you’re just here to warn me? Why don’t you tell me where they are?”

Snart laughs. “Because I have no idea. They want you surprised; they couldn’t risk telling me in case I didn’t join them.”

Barry frowns, looking between the two of them. “What do you mean ‘surprised’?”

“Well, all pulled a Prison Break,” she explains. “So now everyone knows the Tricksters broke out of prison. Who’s going to be the first one alert? Miss Miracle. The best way to get caught would be to run in while Miss Miracle is paying attention and pissed. So watch this space.”

Snart makes to leave and Iris rolls her eyes. “You are so fucking full of it, Snart. We helped you save your brother from your psychotic mother, and you can’t even give us a little help?”

“I’ve never wanted to be a hero.”

“Well, you’re doing a lousy job of being a villain this week.”

Snart gives her an inscrutable look, before shrugging again. “Happy Halloween, you two.”

She leaves and Iris sits on the table across from Barry on the couch as he chews a cookie. “Somewhere out there,” she says tiredly, “there is a group chat called ‘Rogues Gallery’ where they all discuss different ways to make my life hell.”

“What are you going to do?”

“For now, nothing,” she admits. “The Trickster took years to catch, and if Snart’s right – which she probably is – they’ll be lying low. We have enough to worry about right now; we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Besides, I think Singh will – And look, like clockwork,” she adds as her phone beeps. “She wants me at the prison to help figure out how she broke out. Which will be weird since I already know, but…”

“Go,” Barry says quietly. “I’ll be fine, I promise. I kind of want to be alone for a while.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.”

Iris nods and squeezes his hand, before she leaves him, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling.

***

Barry isn’t sure when he fell asleep, exactly, but the next thing he knows he’s being shaken awake by someone. He’s so disoriented he mumbles, “Snart?”

“What?” his mother asks. She switches on the lamp and he sees that it’s just her. He rubs his eyes, sitting up. “Sorry. Snart-”

“Broke in and ate all the cookies,” his mother interjects. She rubs her face. “Yeah, Iris told me. Is it possible that even Halloween hates us?”

“Apparently,” he says quietly. His mother regards him and it hits him how much she’s aged in the past year. Between Iris in the coma, the commitment that is Miss Miracle in all of their lives, Patty and her craziness, and now this, he can’t help but think of how this is affecting her. “Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I just didn’t know how.”

She shakes her head, taking his face in her hands. “Oh, Barry, my beautiful boy. You have no idea how much I love you.”

Barry gives her a kind of half smile and she continues. “How are you? Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better.”

“It’s a lot.”

“I know, that’s why I didn’t tell you. We don’t know whether she’s alive or what, and I don’t want us to get our hopes up if she’s not.”

Nora nods and her hands drop to his knees. “We’ve been through a lot, you and I,” she says slowly. “Survived a lot. I know how strong you are, stronger than you’ve needed to be. But I know that if we don’t at least try to find her, we’ll never get over it. We’ll always be wondering. So I think we should.”

“Me too,” Barry says immediately, and it’s like a weight that’s been lifted, because he wants it as well. Ever since Henry told him he’s wanted it, and now his mother telling him that she wants it too is like she’s giving him permission to hope.

“But we have to tell the others,” she continues. “I know that Iris already knows, but we have to let the others know why we’re in this, or it won’t be fair. They have to know we won’t be giving up even if it gets dangerous.”

Barry nods at that, too. There was always that thought, that they didn’t truly have to go through with this, but now they have something – some _one_ – to make sure they stay in it. His sister. She reaches for him and he goes, holding her tight. “I love you, my boy.”

“I love you too, mom.”

***

“Just one more.”

“No.”

“Iris, I am your physician-”

“Jesse,” Iris says with what little patience she has left, zipping up her suit. “I respect you. I might even actually like you. But if you stick one more goddamn needle in me, I will scalp you. Understand?”

Jesse mutters irritably but lets her be, instead opting to check her vitals through the computers. A little way away, the portable version of the Speed Cannon they have chugs away happily in front of the breach that’s sitting on the roof. Barry and Chesca are downstairs getting the White Martian, while Nora and Francine are here looking around worriedly at the whole thing. Once she’s sure Jesse isn’t going to surprise attack her with a syringe and a glucose test, she walks over to them. “You guys don’t have to look like that,” she says reassuringly, “I’ll be fine.”

“Iris, my only child is jumping through a corridor into another world,” her mother says. “I’m not going to stop worrying.”

“Feels good to have someone share the worry, though,” Nora adds, and Francine smiles at her. Right then, Chesca and Barry bring the White Martian through the doors to the roof. She marvels at him for the millionth time, wondering what kind of earth she’ll be going to where this is the norm. He is at least eight feet tall, pale white skin with pulsing red veins underneath, and a reptilian face with lips pulled back from his rows of razor-sharp teeth. Her stomach churns at the thought of going through the breach with only him, but then she sees the look on her mother’s face and she throws her shoulders back. “Martian.”

He growls at her, straining against the industrial handcuffs that Linda built. She braces herself for a final check from Jesse. Then she grabs him by the handcuffs, trying not to squirm at the fact that he could probably kill her if he managed to break out of the cuffs. “Everyone ready?”

“Ready,” Chesca says, checking the frequency of the breach and the Cannon.

“Ready,” Jesse adds.

“The breach stays open for forty-eight hours,” she says. “Although I don’t think I’ll be gone that long. If a metahuman comes through or I don’t make it back, close the breach. Understand?”

That’s another thing that nobody liked, but Iris can’t risk random aliens turning up in Central City. But she’s confident she’ll be back. _Totally_ confident. She adjusts her glasses. Barry detaches himself from the group and stands over her, and she only vaguely notices that everyone has stopped looking at them. “You’re going to be careful, right?” he asks softly, and nods.

“Duh. Who’s going to kick your ass at Assassin’s Creed if I don’t come back?”

Barry grins at her and she nods at them all. “Let’s go.”

So Iris leads the White Martian to the breach, takes one last look at her friends, takes a deep breath, and leaps through.

***

Barry isn’t the only one who gasps when he sees Iris jump through the breach – it is so final, so complete. It’s hard to believe that breach hasn’t swallowed up her life completely. And it’s almost like he feels her absence, like a physical thing under his ribs. But that’s not weird, it’s just anxiety.

Right?

“She knows how to get back, right?” Francine says uncertainly. “You talked about that before you left?”

“Yes,” Jesse says confidently. “She knows how to work a breach, so as long as everything goes well, we should be seeing her walk through as soon as she’s done.”

“Right,” Francine answers, and Barry smiles encouragingly at her.

“She’ll be fine, Francine. She’s faced much worse than this.”

That feeling soon wears off, though. Soon Jesse is muttering about platelet counts, and Chesca is throwing a wrench between her hands, watching the pulsing breach morph and swirl. His mother taps her foot, Francine keeps her eyes fixed on it, and Barry paces back and forth, feeling a gnawing in his stomach. He’s grateful when his pacing pisses everyone off and he’s sent to collect their Big Belly Burger orders from downstairs, because he hopes that when he gets back Iris will be smiling at him and telling him how easy it was. But she isn’t, so he just starts pacing when she eats.

“She’ll be fine,” he says to no one in particular. “It’s fine. This is new, that’s all.”

“She is on another _earth_ ,” Chesca adds. “It’s just a lot.”

“For once, your annoyingly chipper optimism isn’t unwelcome,” Jesse mutters, though his eyes are flickering uneasily to the breach as well. Chesca rubs her temples.

“Barry, come look at this with me. I think if I look at the stroboscope-”

“AHHHHHHH!”

A high scream emanates from the breach, and a figure comes flying out before landing on the floor. “God, that landing is killer.” Iris sits up, fixing her glasses and looking around, and Barry is moving towards her before he knows what he’s doing. “Wait!” Chesca shouts. She eyes Iris warily, who’s up and watching everyone.

“We are sitting on the couch in my apartment,” Chesca says, pointing a finger at her. “ _The Wrath of Khan_ has finished and the popcorn has all gone. You turn to me. What happens next?”

Iris blinks, and then raises her hand in the Vulcan salute. “ _I have been – and always shall be – your friend_.”

“It’s her!” Chesca squeals, and then Francine hugs her, followed by Barry, and then everyone else in a messy celebration. “What was that about?” Jesse asks.

“Well, in this movie I watched, one of the heroes went off on a mission and was replaced by an imposter.”

“Which movie?” Barry asks.

“Toy Story 2. The scene where they took the wrong Buzz? Classic.”

“Right,” Iris laughs. “Well, it’s me, and I’m good. Well, apart from a sore coccyx. How long was I gone for?”

Chesca looks up at the timer they’ve brought upstairs. “About two hours.”

“Really? I thought I was gone for six.”

“That’s to be expected,” Jesse assures. “Temporal warping.”

“So as you go to different earths, her perception of time will be different?” Francine asks, and he nods.

“One hour on this earth must mean three on Earth-3. But that’s nothing major. Everything go okay with the Martian?”

Iris frowns. “Yeah, but it…I kind of met someone.”

“You did?” Nora asks. “Who?”

“Kaden Danvers. But he called himself ‘Superboy’.”

“Super _boy_?” Chesca repeats. “What, is that Superwoman’s son on that earth?”

“No, he says he’s her cousin,” Iris explains. “And that’s another thing – I ended up in National City, which exists here, but has no superhero. And we don’t exist over there.”

“You met a superhero called Superboy,” Nora clarifies, “and none of us exist.”

“I guess things are different on all the earths. We might not exist on them all. Kaden helped me with the White Martian, though, and I might actually go back to visit. He works for CalCo, actually. But I guess we know the other earths thing is easier than it looks.”

“Well, this is all cool,” Jesse says, “but I do need to do a medical check on her.”

They make their way downstairs and watch as Jesse does a medical work-up. He takes off her blood pressure cuff. “Well, apart from that sore coccyx, you seem fine. You feel fine?”

“Fine,” she shrugs. “Little hungry.”

“We’ll get you some Big Belly Burger,” Jesse says. “But now we know what we’re doing, we’re one step closer to finding Colin, freeing those people, and getting Aunt Helena out of prison.”

“It’s on, bitch,” Chesca adds, and Barry clears his throat.

“Actually, we have something to tell you about that.”

Iris is surprised when she sees Barry and Nora explain everything to them, leaving nothing out. She is proud of them, of course, since it must be taking a lot to tell everyone. Jesse, the only one who never knew about Malina, gapes at them. “Your sister?” he repeats. “Colin took her to keep Eddie compliant?”

“Yeah,” Barry nods, and Chesca stands.

“And you’re telling us this because you think we might give up otherwise?”

“We wanted you to know the whole truth, but yeah.”

“My god,” Jesse mutters. “You _are_ an idiot.”

“JESSE!” Iris and Chesca say together, but he continues.

“You’re part of the team, Barry. And you as well, Nora. Something like this makes it _more_ worthwhile. You’re not the only one trying to get your family back.”

“So you’re all in agreement?” Francine asks firmly. “Because speaking as someone who lived her entire life thinking she was going to lose her daughter for years, I can’t imagine what it feels like to be given this hope.”

“I’m glad we know,” Jesse says.

“One hundred percent,” Chesca adds. Everyone looks at Iris, who just rolls her eyes.

“ _Duh_.”

Later, when everyone is leaving, Chesca catches Barry as he’s packing up his stuff. She gives him an odd look and he swallows. “Everything okay, Chess?”

“I…You can tell me things.”

“I’m sorry?”

She sighs. “I noticed you were kind of off lately. Iris did too, but you kept saying you were fine, and she didn’t want to push you. I know why, and I’m not mad, not at all, because this is a big deal. And I know you and Iris are…well, _you and Iris_ , and you’re tight and each other’s rock and stuff. But you’re my friend too. I want – you can tell me things, if you want. Big or little. I’ll listen.”

Barry is speechless for a full five seconds, before he reaches out to hug Chesca, thankful that he has so many people determined that he never feels alone.

***

There is no correct way to prepare for a spy coming to your house, Iris realised soon after Barry called Henry, but she figures you can never go wrong with copious amounts of food. That is why Barry is bringing out trays of mac and cheese casseroles and biscuits, and waiting for the pot roast to be done. Her mother sips her wine as Iris comes back into the kitchen from setting the table. “This is weird.”

“I know, mom, I’m sorry,” Iris says quickly, rubbing her eyes behind her glasses, but her mother laughs.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ve been watching my daughter do impossible things for a year, including taking an alien back to his home planet. I think we can all handle one dinner…if that’s what we’re calling it.”

Barry called Henry the night she came back through the breach, and he agreed to come back to Central City to see how he could help. Now that they know how to move through the breaches – and that nothing untoward happens to you apart from maybe a bad landing – they can start being proactive about how they go about this. Iris has gone through three more breaches since, though they are waiting until they have a definite plan before going to Earth-2. And having a spy with invaluable knowledge on how to deal with metahumans _and_ normal criminals wouldn’t exactly hurt their chances.

“Yeah, I just thought,” Iris continues, “with everything that happened, this was a nice, neutral space. Because Henry kind of sort of broke into STAR Labs, and he used to live with Nora and Barry, and my apartment’s not really big enough, and it’s not like we can have _all_ of our meetings in Jitters.”

“I can imagine,” her mother agrees. “I never met the man, but it would have been hard to see him in the house that he left me and my child in. I can see why Nora didn’t want that.”

Iris nods, watching Nora as she studies her mother’s vegetable garden. She and Barry came over a couple of hours ago to talk about what was going to happen, and then Wally and Linda came in to help set the table. Linda herself calls Iris in to help her, and when she gets there she sees Linda standing with her hands on her hips, watching Barry and Wally as they grip the sides of the dining table. “Lin?” she asks. “Why are you moving our dining table around?”

“Because she hates us,” Barry groans. “Seriously, I think we’re back where we’re started.”

“It doesn’t _look_ right,” Linda says, tipping her head to one side. “Don’t you think it doesn’t look right?”

“I think it looked right before,” Iris points out. “When the movers spend hours putting it together.”

“Yeah, but it blocked the view of the flowers.”

“No, it didn’t…you moved the flowers, didn’t you?”

“The fragrance was getting in the way of the scented candles.”

“There are _scented_ -”

“Linda, babe,” Wally says slowly, “maybe – and this is just a crazy idea – we should leave everything the way it was?”

There is silence for about a second before the doorbell rings. “I’ve got it!” Barry says immediately, and speeds out of the room. Iris takes Linda’s arm. “Lin, I really appreciate you trying to make this place as welcoming as possible,” she says carefully, “but my mom spent a really long time decorating this place, and I think she’d like to recognise it when she comes in for dinner.”

“Sorry,” Linda says guiltily. “When your mother is an interior decorator, who want to feng shui everything in sight.”

“I brought taquitos!” someone sings, and Iris sees Barry leading Chesca inside. She’s wearing a sundress and jacket, and grins when she sees everyone. “Hey, guys! Whoa, are we redecorating?”

“No,” Linda says quickly. “You look awesome, Chess.”

“Yeah,” Iris says, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. She peers at her. “Did you get highlights? And are those earrings new?”

“N-No,” Chesca replies unconvincingly, but she’s saved by Barry.

“Yo! Hanging in limbo with a 10-person dining table, here.”

“You guys can move the table back now,” Linda tells him. “And the flowers. And the picture frames.”

“You moved our – you know what?” Iris shakes her head. “Don’t even worry about it, I don’t want to know. You guys need any help?”

“No, we’ve got it,” Barry and Wally say together. Iris, Chesca and Linda watch them, fascinated. “You think their man-feelings are making them too proud to accept help from the woman who can move things with her mind?”

“Probably,” Chesca says. “But that’s why we keep them around.”

“It’s a good thing our boys like us so much,” Linda says, and Iris nods.

“Right. Not,” she adds quickly, blushing, “that Barry is my boy, he’s not my – anything, really, we’re not – Chess, why don’t you come say hi to my mom?” Anything to get the smirks off their faces. Chesca grins when she sees Francine and Nora talking into kitchen. “Mama Allen, Mama West, you both look wonderful,” she says, hugging them. She gives them an encouraging smile. “So, they’ll be here any minute. This should be fun, right?”

“Mm,” Nora says, and her mother laughs.

“I think the word we’re going for is ‘interesting’.”

“Well, worry not, because my taquitos always make everyone feel better. And if that doesn’t work, I brought tequila. Including the 250-proof stuff that gets Iris buzzed.”

“I think we should wait until maybe things are dire for that. But I’d like to talk to Barry and Iris alone – could you get him for me?”

“Sure. Hey, beanpole! Your mom wants you, big guy.”

Barry is rolling his eyes at Chesca’s nickname when he walks in and they vaguely hear Chesca greet Jesse, before Nora takes a sip from the wine Francine has poured her. “Okay, you two. I know this will be weird, but we can do it. I just want to be clear on a few things before they get here.”

“Sure,” they say together.

“Iris, be nice.”

“What?” Iris says indignantly. “I’m always nice!”

“Becky Cooper.”

“That was _one_ time and…Fine, I’ll be nice.”

“Barry, you are not allowed to threaten him.”

“…okay,” he mutters, folding his arms, and Francine laughs.

“God, the two of you haven’t changed a bit, not since you were kids.”

“That’s not true,” Barry pipes up. “Iris grew an inch.”

“See if I ever save you from hitmen ever again,” Iris grumbles, just as the doorbell rings. Everyone looks around at each other, and she stands. “I’ve got it!” She walks quickly to the front door (trying not to say anything when she sees the rest of her friends are hiding in the dining room) and opens it to two very tall men in dinner jackets. “Henry,” she says quietly. He nods at her, even tries for a smile, and it reminds her of Barry’s so much that she smiles back. “Eddie. How are you both?”

Henry’s ‘son’ could not look less like a spy if he tried – he looks instead like a choirboy, the grey jacket offsetting his blue eyes. “Good,” Henry answers. “Thanks for inviting us, we – Chesca.”

Iris turns and realises that her friend has appeared right behind her, her eyes fixed on Eddie’s face. “H-Hi. How have you been?”

“Good,” he answers hoarsely, and then clears his throat. “Good, I’ve been good. You?”

“I’ve been good too.”

 _No wonder she got the highlights_ , Iris thinks, amused. She suddenly feels very invisible, until she feels rather than sees Barry’s solid form behind her. His features are schooled into a neutral expression as he holds his hand out to them both. “I’m glad you both could make it,” he says quietly, and Iris gives him an encouraging smile.

“Thanks for inviting us,” Henry says sincerely.

“Um, Henry, Eddie, this is my mom, Francine,” Iris says as her mother comes out of the kitchen. “This is our house, and she made most of the food.”

“It’s great to meet you, Mrs West,” Eddie says quickly, shaking her hand. “I’m happy Iris got you out.”

“Well, I hear you had something to do with that,” she says easily. She turns to Henry. “And it’s nice to finally meet you, Henry.”

“Likewise. Thank you for letting us into your home.”

Iris takes a deep breath when she sees Nora emerge from the kitchen, her own expression neutral as well. And Iris thinks that everything will be fine, and that they really will get through this, when Henry says with a surprisingly amount of warmth, “Nora. It’s really good to see you again.”

And Nora punches him.

Her fist lands in his nose as the timer for the oven goes off Eddie catches him, Nora curses and clutches her wrist, and Barry and Iris glance at each other, trying not to laugh. “Pot roast is done!” Iris says in a strangled voice. “I’ll get it!”

“I’ll help!” Barry adds, and Wally and Jesse step forward.

“I guess we’ll get the bandages.”

A few seconds later, when Wally is checking Nora’s hand, she looks at Iris and Barry as they get the pot roast out of the oven. “Not one word.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Iris says.

“At least you didn’t break your thumb like I used to,” Barry says. Nora turns to her mother.

“Francine, I am so sorry-”

“Oh, honey. I would have hit him, too.”

***

Thankfully Henry’s nose isn’t broken, so after Nora stiffly apologises, the dinner isn’t as awkward as it could have been. Actually, it’s less. Eddie brought her mother and Nora a gift, and Henry got some really expensive wine that Iris can’t pronounce but that is really popular with everyone, even if it can’t get her drunk. Chesca and Eddie somehow (read: Linda totally had something to do with it) end up sitting across from each other, and Iris, who is sat next to Barry at the head of the table, tries not to laugh at them making eyes at each other. “This pot roast is delicious,” Henry says to everyone.

“Mom made it,” Iris says, and he smiles at her.

“Well, it’s wonderful.”

“Thank you. Do you cook?”

“Not well. Eddie here is trying to get me to learn – he keeps getting me cookbooks.”

“Because the only thing you know how to make is steak, dad,” Eddie laughs, and everyone sort of looks at Barry, who just cuts up his vegetables. Iris clears her throat.

“You know who’s a great cook? Chesca.”

“Right?” Wally adds helpfully. “She taught me how to make churros. And she made the taquitos.”

“I did,” she says. “I did make the taquitos.”

Eddie grins at her. “I really like the taquitos.”

“Oh, I bet you do,” Jesse mutters. Linda kicks him under the table. “So, Barry,” he carries on, trying to ignore the pain in his leg, “how’s the metahuman newsbeat treating you?”

“Yeah, I hear you’re writing about metahumans and aliens now,” Henry adds. “I saw it in the paper.”

“You read my article?” Barry asks, surprised.

“I read all your articles.”

Barry blinks at him before his mother gesture for him to continue talking. “Yeah, well, aliens is still Superwoman’s thing. Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Long story,” Nora says. “I don’t think we could do what Superwoman does on a daily basis.”

“But wouldn’t that be so cool?” Chesca sighs. “She’s amazing! With the flying and the heat vision and the super strength! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone more incredible.”

“Am I invisible?” Iris ponders. “I feel invisible.”

“Not invisible,” Jesse corrects, passing Eddie the mac and cheese. “Short.”

“Jar,” everyone but Henry and Eddie say. Jesse frowns. “There’s no jar here.”

“Then give me the dollar,” Iris tells him, and everyone laughs.

“But we’re not meant to be,” Chesca continues regretfully. Wally frowns at her.

“You and Superwoman? Why not?”

“She wears a cape. Edna from the Incredibles had a point. Besides, can you imagine you with a cape? You’d probably leave it in CCPD.”

“I am not that bad!” Iris says.

“You are pretty forgetful, honey,” her mother says, not unkindly.

“Maybe I should paint the target on my forehead so you can all reach it better.”

“Jokes aside,” Eddie says after everyone has finished laughing, “I’ve never seen someone with as much power as you, Iris. Do you remember the plane?”

Linda gasps, her hands over her mouth. “Oh God, the plane. That whole thing gave me chills.”

“We all watched it at the hospital,” Wally adds, his voice filled with awe. “When you did that thing where you got all the people out…everyone just lost it. It took us hours to calm everyone down.”

Chesca snorts. “ _You_ had to calm down? I was having dinner at my mom’s house and suddenly I see this one beating up Captain Cold and Heatwave on my TV. I had to pretend I was getting the flu so I could get back to STAR Labs and make sure she wasn’t hurt.”

“The best part,” her mother says slowly, “was the plane under the bridge. I think that’s the only time the whole prison was silent. When you slid it under the bridge and landed it in the bay…I think my heart stopped, I really do.”

Barry grins at Iris, who’s adjusting her glasses shyly. “Well, you know, it’s not a big – I was just, um – hey, it’s what I do, right.”

“And you do it pretty damn well, sunshine.”

Iris beams back at him. “Thanks. Hey, who wants dessert?”

Dinner goes on like that, nobody discussing anything too heavy or anything like that, but eventually they have to talk about why they came to the meeting. “So, I guess we can’t put it off any longer, huh?” Chesca says carefully, and Iris nods.

“No, we can’t. Um, let’s go into the lounge, there’s more room.”

Iris has organised all of their charts and pictures on a chart in the lounge, and she stands next to it as she explains everything. “The first thing we have to talk about is how much danger we’re going to be in,” she begins. She looks at Eddie and Henry. “I think we all know that Waller isn’t the biggest fan of me, so I need to know that he’s not going to turn up and shoot me or something because we’re working together.”

“Well, as you all know,” Henry says quietly, “I am his second-in-command. I have been for over a decade. I answer to him, but that doesn’t mean he knows what I’m doing all the time. I go where I please.”

“Eddie?”

“Dad is my handler,” he says simply. “I go where he tells me to go.”

“And where are you right now?” Jesse wants to know, one eyebrow raised.

“A remote island off the coast of Fiji investigating one of Aqualady’s enemies.”

Everyone stares at them. “…okay,” iris says finally. “Good to know. Well, you guys know that the whole reason I even have powers is because Colin used tachyons to manipulate Dr Wells, and then when he stole her powers he escaped to another earth.”

“She never told us that when we took her in,” Henry frowns. “She confessed to all of her crimes.”

“Because she wanted to get my mother out of prison,” Iris says quietly. “Technically, she did kill my dad, but it was under orders of someone else. But since we don’t have that person, she decided to confess.”

“But can’t you guys come up with an explanation?” her mother suggests. “You can tell them how Colin did it and then maybe they would let her out.”

“Not when she confessed and all those people are still missing,” Barry points out. “I’m guessing Waller wouldn’t want to let her go unless he at least had a taped confession as well as all that proof, not when this city was so scared of her.”

“Which is what we’re trying to do,” Chesca tells them. “We need to find Colin and then find those people, and once we do that we’ll have enough proof.”

“You think they…” Henry swallows, and Iris realises what he’s about to say a split second before he says it. “You’re sure they’re all still alive?” _He means Malina_ , Iris thinks.

“I think they are,” Linda says quietly. Everyone looks at her. “Colin _created_ metahumans and used people to make them do what they wanted. The ones Iris hasn’t recaptured are still running around Central City. Killing them would be a waste.”

“And none of you guys saw him, not like I did,” Barry adds. “I’ll never forget the way he spoke. He’s a power-hungry sociopath, and he always liked to torment people. If they were dead, he would show us.”

“What do you mean he liked to torment people?” Francine frowns, and Barry looks down at his hands.

“When he was telling me his plan, he showed me this newspaper. It said that Iris d-died, and then he showed me a video of all of us at the funeral. And he kept telling me about how he easy it would be to hurt all of you if I didn’t listen to him.”

Francine looks horrified – Iris never told her any of this. Nora squeezes his hand and he gives her a sad smile that barely lasts. “If they were dead, believe me,” he continues, “we would all know about it.”

“So what do we do next?” Wally asks. “I mean, no offence, but I don’t know how I can be of any help here.”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you all about,” Iris says. “One of the things I learned this past year is that I keep underestimating people. I don’t want to go after him until I know exactly what he can do, which is why I have some ideas.”

She walks to the board and writes ‘Killer Frost’ and ‘Calamity’, listing what she knows about their powers in turn. “I’ve seen Killer Frost in action so I kind of know how his power works, but he’s not here, and he’s not attacking me.”

“Usually we’d figure out some way of combating him based on the way he fights,” Chesca explains. “But he’s gone.”

“Exactly, which is why we’re going to Earth-2. But he has Calamity’s powers as well, and apparently the power to move between worlds. I need to know how to tackle _that_ part.”

“How do you want to learn that?” Linda asks, and Iris looks at Henry.

“I need you to take me to see Dr Wells.”

“What?” Jesse explodes, looking around at everyone. They’re all wearing similar expressions of disbelief. “Can she do that? Can you do that?”

“I can do that,” Henry says firmly. “Helena is being very cooperative, and I have free reign over prisoners. I can take you to see her, if you want. You want to talk to her?”

“I need to know everything she can do,” she shrugs. “She’s the only expert we have on powers like mine – _I_ don’t even know everything I can do. Unless you guys have someone?”

“Well, there was the real Jay Garrick,” Eddie suggests, looking at his dead. “But she died in the sixties, and her powers are minimal compared to Iris’.”

“Oh, there’s a real Jay Garrick on this earth too?” Jesse asks, and Henry and Eddie stare at him.

“What do you mean ‘this earth’?” Eddie wants to know.

“Baby steps,” Chesca says. “Anyway, back to this whole kamikaze mission into an organisation that isn’t supposed to exist?”

“I’m wondering that myself,” Nora says in a hard voice. “How do we know she won’t be hurt? How are we supposed to trust you?”

“Because I have hurt each member of this family enough,” he says simply. “I swear, if Iris agrees to this, I will do everything in my power to bring her back.”

Iris is watching Henry, and realises that he’s not talking to any of them – he’s talking to Barry. Something seems to pass between the two of them that she can’t read, but Barry just nods.

“And Henry,” her mother adds. “I do not care who you are or how many years I’ve been in prison; if my child is hurt in all of this, I will kill you.”

“That’s fair,” Henry says so affably that Iris can’t help but smile. Surprisingly, Nora is trying to hide a smile of her own. “What else?”

“Well, Barry had this idea,” Iris continues. “When all those people went missing, Barry started an investigation into them to try and figure out where they went and which metahumans they were. Except Calamity attacked CCPN so he had to stop.”

“You want to start that again?” Jesse asks, and Barry nods.

“Yeah, it’s the best way to figure out what we might face. He could still have some of the metahumans with him. And with you here, Eddie, we have another person who knew what was going on, like Linda.”

“Plus,” Iris adds, “there’s me going through the breaches all the time, so I’ll need some backup when it comes to catching metahumans. And since Eddie is like some sort of superhuman ninja spy, that’ll be a big help.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say superhuman,” Eddie admits, but Chesca shakes her head.

“Please. You busted out some pretty cool moves and you saved my life. I’d call that superhuman.”

Eddie blushes and they all pretend they haven’t noticed. “Well, I can help. It’ll be nice getting to do that part of my job for once.”

“Great!” Iris says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Is everyone okay with this? I know it’s a little weird, and we’re kind of flying by the seat of our pants…”

“I’m good with it,” Barry says firmly. He turns to his mother, before looking Henry in the eye. “I am if you are.”

“I’m in.”

“Me too,” Wally says. “As much as I can.”

Everyone agrees in the affirmative. “Good,” Iris nods. “Guess we should get started. How soon can I see Dr Wells?”

“Are you free tomorrow?”

“Damn, y’all work fast,” Chesca mutters, and Jesse snickers.

“Well, I have a day off the day after,” she tells him. “Tuesday?”

“Tuesday it is.”

Henry and Eddie leave then, exchanging contact details and address. Barry, Iris and Nora walk them to the door. “We appreciate all of your help,” Barry says, and Iris doesn’t even think it feels forced. He shakes both of their hands again.

“Thanks for inviting us,” Eddie says. “I know you didn’t have to.”

“Hey, even the Modern Miracleworker needs help sometimes,” Iris shrugs. Both she and Barry look at Nora, who clears her throat. “I…I’m sorry I punched you, Henry.”

“I think I deserved that.”

“You did,” she says without preamble. “But I’m still sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Sixty percent.”

Henry smiles. “Well, I guess it could be worse.”

Once he leaves, Iris looks at them both. “Well, that was fun, huh?”

***

The second Tuesday of November is frosty and still, and Iris meets Henry outside of STAR Labs in jeans, boots and a leather jacket. He is alone, dressed in his usual suit and tie, and she once again marvels at how unassuming he looks. She imagines bringing him to CCPN and saying, ‘This is Barry’s dad, he sells insurance’, and he is so innocent-looking, they would all believe her. He nods and smiles when he sees her. They had agreed to this date and time, and this early, because it will take time to drive to where they are keeping Dr Wells. She’s surprised when he hands her a coffee cup and a brown bag with a panini in it. “How did you know to get me this?”

“I’m a spy, Iris.”

She blinks at him and he sighs. “That was a joke, though I see now it wasn’t very funny. Barry told me what you like for breakfast. I thought it might be a good way to break the ice.”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, consider the ice thawing, I guess. Ready?”

“I am if you are.”

“If by that you mean I’ve fielded about a dozen calls from everyone this morning, then yeah. I’m ready.”

She had shown up at STAR Labs to get a tracker, camera and a headpiece, in case something went wrong and they needed to locate her. Nice as Henry appeared to be, she’s glad that they have a backup plan when it comes to her safety. Jesse did one last health check on her, her blood pressure, her heart rate, even packing extra pairs of spare contact lenses and glasses. “Have you eaten?” he’d asked. “Here, take this banana.”

“I don’t want a banana.”

“I don’t care, they’re good for you.”

“Jesse, I – dude, quit it.” He’d sighed and put the banana away (though it did make its way into her bag somehow), and then folded his arms. “Make sure you tell me everything.”

“I will,” she’d assured him.

“Don’t leave anything out. And make sure she’s okay. And that she isn’t – I want her to know-”

“I will let her know everything you’re doing for her,” she’d promised. They’ve decided against letters or anything, since someone could find it. Iris sips her coffee as Henry pulls onto the interstate. “So, um, remind me how this works again?”

“Dr Wells is being held in a detention facility for metahumans in Coast City,” he explains. “She’s depowered, so low-risk, but in solitary confinement because of how dangerous she was previously. As the Deputy of the organisation, I have authorisation to see her whenever I want. Today I will be trying to see whether I can get anything out of her that will make those powers manifest in anyone else. Don’t worry,” he says quickly. “She is very stubborn and hasn’t given us anything yet. I don’t think she wants the power abused.”

“She’s a good person,” Iris says quietly. “Or at least, she was. Anyway, what else?”

“You have that headpiece and camera? Well, I will go in with one connected to yours, turn off the cameras, and then you can see inside the room to teleport. Once you’ve gotten what you need, you leave and the cameras go back on.”

“Got it.” Iris doesn’t want to think about why it’s so easy to turn off cameras to a prisoner’s room. “Um, I’m not going to get shot, am I? Because that’s happened to me before, and I don’t really want a repeat performance.”

Henry laughs as he drives. “Well, Iris, after the conversation I had with Barry when I came back to Central City, I don’t put much stock in my ability to walk if I bring you back with even a hair out of place.” He pauses. “My so – Barry,” he corrects quickly, “is very…protective of you.”

“He is,” she agrees. She glances at him and hesitates, adjusting her glasses. “Did you know that Barry gets panic attacks? When he’s worried or scared, but it’s usually when he’s scared the people he loves are going to leave him. He told me they started after you left, and Malina died. Well, you know what I mean. Like when we got in the car accident, and when Nora had to go to a school shooting, and when I was in the coma, probably. He’s only ever had the two of us. So I let him worry and fuss and overreact, even though it’s annoying as hell sometimes, because I know how scared he is, and it makes him feel better. Barry’s protective, and yeah, sometimes it’s overprotective, but it’s the only way I can think of to protect _him_ from all that worry. So I wouldn’t worry about it too much, it probably wasn’t personal.”

Henry glances at her. “Are you sure?”

“Well,” she amends. “Maybe it’s a little personal.”

He laughs and they continue the journey in a silence that is not quite pleasant, but not unpleasant, either. Iris frowns when they reach an abandoned flour factory on the outskirts of Coast City. “This is your detention facility?”

“No, this is a flour factory.” He gets out a map and points to the space underneath it. “This is our base of operations. These windows are tinted, so you stay in the car until I tell you, okay?”

She nods. “Done.”

“I will need that tracker, Iris.”

“What tracker?”

“Nice try,” he says wryly, “but I’ve been doing this longer than you. Hand it over.”

Iris sighs and gives it to him. “How did you know?”

“Call it secret agent intuition.”

Henry gets out of the car then, and Iris prepares the camera and headset, watching the video on her phone. Henry goes through security and then is driven down a ramp that opens up inside the building. They all nod at him but very few speak to him, and it hits her how important he must be to this whole enterprise. Finally, just when she thinks he can’t walk anymore, he comes to a door with two guards outside of it and one sat at a table watching monitors. He says something to that one, and he switches them off, before they all live. Then Henry walks inside, the door banging shut behind him, and approaches the figure curled in the cot.

“Helena.”

She turns. “Agent Thawne.”

“How are you?”

“Not looking forward to whatever this is.”

“I think today might be a little different.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I’ve brought someone to see you.”

That’s her cue. Iris visualises the room and shuts her eyes. When she opens them, Dr Helena Amelie Wells is staring at her in shock. “Iris?”

“Hi, Dr Wells.”

***

Barry lays out his notes as Chesca chews on a breakfast muffin. Linda, who brought the muffins, throws her hand up in the air. “You know those were for everyone, right?”

“Wally had one already.”

“And you’ve had _three_. What if Eddie wants one?”

“Eddie doesn’t like breakfast muffins.”

“Oh, is that what he told you?” Barry laughs, and Chesca blushes.

“Hey, I had to feed him for months, that’s all.”

Barry just smiles to himself. They thought it was a good idea to have everyone do the talks right now, since they didn’t want to be distracted by worrying about Iris going to a bunker with Henry. His plan is to get a good narrative of what Colin did so they know what to expect if and when they find him. Nora comes back into the lounge with coffee, frowning. “Weren’t there more of those?”

“Look, I’m nervous, okay?”

“You’re not the only one,” Barry mutters. Eddie is his dad’s son, his sister’s brother, but he’s not quite sure he’s comfortable calling him _his_ brother quite yet. Linda rubs his shoulder. “You okay, big guy?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he shrugs. “Gotta do what you gotta do, right?”

Almost as if on cue, the doorbell rings, and Nora gets up to answer it. He hears Eddie greet his mother in that harmless, friendly way that Eddie has, so different from when they first met, and then he walks into the room. “Morning, everyone.”

“Eddie,” Linda says cheerfully. “Ready to be metahumans again?”

“I guess. Morning Barry…Chesca.”

“Morning, Eddie,” she smiles. Barry briefly wishes Iris were here to witness this, and then clears his throat. “Well, I guess there’s no point beating around the bush. I’m going to ask you both about your experiences being under Calamity’s control, and whether you saw anything that could be useful, and we can go from there. Okay?”

“Sure,” he says.

“Now, Linda, I already know about you – she took you, then Wally, manipulated people into thinking everything was normal. Do you remember anything else?”

“Nothing more than we told you. I mean, my powers were all external, not like Eddie’s.”

Barry nods, noting that down. He knows he wasn’t expecting Linda to say anything different, but it never hurts to ask. He turns to the blonde man sat across from him. “Eddie? You okay to talk?”

“I’ll do my best.” He pauses, taking a sip of the coffee Nora has poured him. “Thanks. Well, I came here after Malina’s reports started sounding weird. When we have missions like this, agents are supposed to send periodic messages to let us know that she’s fine. But then about seven months after the explosion, I realised that her notes were odd. Later I found out Calamity was getting her to write messages to us to make us think she was safe, but I read in between the lines and figured out something was wrong. She was sending me a coded message.”

Barry feels a little twinge of pride at that, that his sister was smart enough to do that, even though she must have been scared out of her mind. He writes that down. “So you went after her?”

“Yeah. Look, I’ve been doing this for longer than she has, and this kind of thing happens all the time. I figured I’d go in, assess what happened, and call backup. But Calamity was waiting for me.”

“She found you?” Chesca asks, and Eddie nods.

“Yeah, she was waiting for me in her apartment. I found out that Malina wasn’t reported missing because it looked like she dropped out of school and moved. So she took me, injected me with something.”

“Tachyons,” Chesca says. “And then she gave you the mask, right. Do you still have your powers?”

“No, but the gun is gone, and that’s why I had them. Have you found the others?”

“The other metahumans?” Barry asks. “Well, there’s Miriam Farooq – Blackout, her son was taken, Girder, who’s uncle went missing…”

“Do you have Shawn Baez?”

“The ADA?” Nora asks. “The one who told me you stole the watch?”

Eddie nods. “He was there with me, and Colin turned him too.”

“Wait, I thought he was dead,” Linda says. “I thought they declared him dead.”

“That only happened because we couldn’t find them,” Nora points out. “Are you sure he’s alive, Eddie?”

“Positive. She didn’t kill everyone that night.”

Slowly, they compile a story of what happened the night Calamity attacked, what happened since, and what’s likely to happen. “Okay,” Linda says finally. “Christmas evening, Calamity takes Iris and…well, she takes her. She breaks into people’s homes, all of whom were involved with the task force, and kills half, making the others metahumans to do her bidding.”

“But those metas are artificial,” Barry points out. “They’re made with a machine, they don’t have the meta gene like Iris and Chesca.”

Eddie frowns at her. “You’re a metahuman?”

“Yeah, it’s…new.”

“We call her Vibe,” Linda adds cheerfully. “Hey, why don’t you vibe on Eddie?”

“Because my powers don’t work like that!”

“And we don’t want to freak him out,” Barry says, trying not to laugh. “Thanks, Eddie, this was a big help.”

“Uh, no problem.” He looks around nervously. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I kind of wanted to talk to you and Nora. Alone.”

Linda and Chesca share a look. “Well, that’s cool,” Chesca says. “Lin and I have breach work to do anyway. See you guys later.”

They wish them both goodbye, and Eddie turns back to them, his expression strangely nervous. Then he reaches into his pocket. “I’m probably not supposed to do this,” he says quietly. “But I wanted you guys to at least know what she looks like.”

And Barry is speechless as he puts a picture of his sister on the table.

***

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

Dr Wells looks between her and Henry, who backs away. “I’ll be outside. You have two hours.”

Iris sits at the small table, gesturing for her to do the same. “We don’t have a lot of time, but just know that he’s a friend now. Kind of.”

Dr Wells just shakes her head. “You’ve always been full of surprises, Iris, but this takes the cake.”

“Ready for one more?” She pauses. “Jesse is here. He’s here, and he’s helping us.”

She gasps. “Jesse? Terrence’s nephew?”

“Yeah,” she beams, infected by her joy. “He’s incredible. Brilliant, and he wants to capture Colin to get you out.”

“Iris-”

“No. I will not let an innocent woman rot in prison. Not again. But we need your help.”

Dr Wells regards her, and then shrugs. “I can see I won’t be able to stop you. What do you need?”

“I need to find out how to defeat someone like me.”

Dr Wells thinks, and Iris takes the opportunity to really look at her. She looks older, and her thick brown hair has lost its sheen. But her eyes are still the same brilliant blue, teeming with ideas. “You don’t need to defeat someone like _you_ , Iris. You need to defeat a Killer Frost with your abilities.”

“We know how we’re going to defeat Killer Frost,” she counters. “We’re going to Earth-2 to ask Madam Miracle, and then we’re going to look through all the other earths for him.”

She laughs. “Goodness, you have been busy. But that’s not what I mean, Iris. Our powers, yours and mine, were a gift. Colin’s were stolen, they’re not natural on him. If it were you or me, I’d suggest a weapon like the one you used on me. But Colin _is_ Killer Frost, so it wouldn’t work. So it needs to be something he can’t withstand.”

“Like what?”

“Lightning.”

“Lightning?”

“That’s the one thing we have in common.” She shrugs. “The lightning that leaves us, that we fought with, that came from within us. Colin may be able to use it in small amounts, but it’ll never be natural. Without a natural inclination for it, or a lightning rod, being hit by lightning will defeat him.”

Iris frowns. “What’s a lightning rod?”

Dr Wells steeples her fingers. “How long did Agent Thawne say we had?”

“Two hours. Why?”

“Because I need to tell you about the Mindscape.”

***

 _She looks like him_.

Him and Nora, but mostly him. Her eyes are blue and her teeth are a little straighter, but that’s his sister. They have the same chin, same nose…God. He’s mother looks like she wants to touch it but is afraid to. “It was so weird, seeing you both,” Eddie laughs, “because you look so much like her. But I was locked in my own mind because of Calamity, and I couldn’t tell you.”

She’s smiling into the camera, holding some kind of book and laughing, and Barry wants to know what it is, whether she liked it – he wants to know everything about her. But his mother is the only one who can vocalise it. “What is she like?” she breathes.

“Oh, Lina’s the best,” Eddie says immediately, and Barry likes the nickname already, it suits the carefree in her eyes, her pretty auburn curls, the little freckles on her nose. “Really, really clever, and funny. Kind of a know-it-all, but we all are where we’re from. And she’s just… _nice_. I mean, she’s annoying as all hell, but I’m glad she’s my sister.”

They stare at the picture some more, Barry drinking it in like a thirsty man in a desert. “What did you mean?” Nora asks.

“When I said what?”

“That you weren’t supposed to do this.”

“Oh.” He runs a hand through his short blonde hair. “Well, just that up until I showed you those, Waller might still give me leniency. But I compromised an agent – if he finds out, I’ll probably never see my dad or Malina again.”

“So why did you?” Barry wants to know.

“When I was a kid, there was no disguising where I came from. Who I was,” he adds, gesturing to his light hair and electric blue eyes. “But I never felt like and outsider when Lina was around. She’d tell everyone that I was her brother, even when people would tell me about all the evil stuff my dad had done. And I knew you guys existed, and so did she. I wanted you to see her and hear about her. You get to love her, too.”

And Barry curses Eddie and his honesty and his earnestness, because he believes him. It sounds like him and Iris, that fiercely protective love, thought of course Iris isn’t his sister. She’s his Iris. His mother has tears in her eyes. “I want – can we keep this?”

“Of course,” he says easily. “I have more.”

His mother gets up to put it away and Barry laughs. “Sorry. We’re not usually this sappy.”

“That’s cool. And I never said, but I’m sorry about Patty.”

“Some people’s girlfriends key the car, mine tries to kill me,” Barry jokes. Eddie frowns.

“Ex.”

“Huh?”

“She’s your ex. I mean, you’ve let her go, right?”

“You trying to psychoanalyse me, Thawne?”

“No. I just…Look, Barry, believe me when I know what it’s like to think you’re okay with something when you’re not. And I think you should make sure you’re okay with this, because it’ll stop you from moving on otherwise.”

***

“You mean the thing Colin used?” Iris asks. Dr Wells waves a hand.

“Yes, but not that aspect. A lightning rod is necessary for people like us. The Mindscape calls to our souls like sirens, and we can’t resist – our powers want to draw us to the place of our birth. But we can’t give into that, because we could die. Think of it as heaven for miracle workers.”

“Right,” Iris says slowly.

“A lightning rod makes sure we are grounded in reality, not the addictive call of the Mindscape.”

“I thought the Mindscape was a good thing. You know, when not used by sociopaths.”

“It is,” she admits. “But every good thing needs to be taken in moderation. The lightning rod is a physical manifestation of a tether to this earth. You’ve seen our lightning? Yours is green, mine black?”

“Yeah. Does that have something to do with it?”

“Mine is black because I lost my own lightning rod,” she says quietly. “In my grief and rage and despair, my connection to the Mindscape decayed. I still had my powers, but they were warped by tragedy. The lightning rod is a source of hope and light and strength; without it, and without support, I was lost.”

Iris thinks for a moment. That certainly makes sense. She has never been in it or interacted with it, but when she thinks of how invincible she feels when she’s fighting, when something is singing so loud in her veins she feels she can jump out of her own skin, it’s good that there is something grounding her. “How can I tell what it is?”

“The lightning rod differs person to person. But usually you can figure it out. It starts off as a strong emotional connection, but you might be able to hear their thoughts from far away. You can also tell their location and their feelings, despite distance. Anxiety or stress, for example, is usually a tugging sensation under the ribs. Happiness might make you happy. Is there anyone like that for you?”

“Barry,” she says, recalling that feeling specifically. It happened during the fight and intermittently since. And that explain why she got it whenever he was worried about something. “But I don’t understand – why would it be him?”

Dr Wells gives her a knowing look and a sad smile. “I think we both know why the Mindscape chose Barry to be your lightning rod, Iris.”

Iris sighs, her head in her hands, because even the Mindscape knows that what she feels for Barry is so strong, that he’s such a huge part of her, that they had to go an invent a whole new concept of soulmate. What's the point of anyone else, when the universe has even made the most incredible part of her about how she feels about him? And how in the world is she supposed to explain that to him?

_Hey, Bar, just wanted to let you know you’re my reason for being. And you still have my iPod._

“Right,” she sighs. “And Colin doesn’t have one? A lightning rod?”

“No, so he’s vulnerable. I wish I could be there to teach you, Iris,” she says ruefully. “But I have faith in you. And the others.” She pauses. “I have said this before, I know, but it bears repeating. I was proud, that’s why I’m here. I was blessed with these powers and I wanted more, and look what I did. But I maintain this – you and Chesca and all the work we did at STAR Labs have been my greatest achievement.”

***

Barry walks up to Iris’ apartment, lost in thought. Eddie left later that afternoon, and Iris told everyone she was back, so they’re going to hang out a little before work tomorrow. But he is still thinking of what Eddie said.

Barry has never thought that he held any feeling to Patty, but then ‘girlfriend’ slipped out like it was natural. And he realises that he still calls her that until someone corrects him. He thinks of all the stuff from their apartment, still in his mother’s garage with a promise to sort them, and thinks it’s maybe it’s time he did something about it.

“Hey,” Iris says when she opens the door. “You’re in luck – the pizza just got here. How was your day?”

“Good. Learned some pretty interesting things. You?”

“I learned a whole lot,” she replies. “I think I…might have a way to defeat Colin. Dr Wells gave me a lot of ideas. It’ll take some work, though.”

He smiles down at her. “Well, you are the Golden Grace, sunshine. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. So, what season are we on?”

“Three,” she answers, leading him to the lounge. “Also known as ‘The Season Dean Became the Worst’.”

“ _Dean_ ,” Barry shudders. “Hated that guy.” He takes off his jacket and throws it on the couch. “Look,” Iris says, giving him a look, “until you pay rent in this place, that jacket goes on a hook.”

“Sorry, Iris,” he grins sheepishly. He does as she asks and plops down next to her, opening a pizza box as _Gilmore Girls_ starts. “Oh, by the way, Eddie and Chesca are going to be a thing, right?”

“Totally,” Iris agrees. “They’re so cute. All adorable smiles and compliments, like no one notices.”

“It’s just so obvious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so some of that lightning rod stuff is from the Flash: Rebirth (READ IT), but there will be more Mindscape stuff from that in a few chapters. Malina's backstory is a cross between Malcolm Thawne - who is Barry Allen's twin that the hospital gave to the Thawnes when the Thawne baby died - and Wally West. And, of course, Jay Garricks everywhere. Hope you liked it, and let me know what you think.  
> EDIT: someone asked me whether I had fancasts for these people, and here they are:  
> Dr Wells - Bridget Regan  
> Chesca - Gina Rodriguez  
> Colin - Mathhew Daddario  
> Jesse - Drew Van Acker  
> Julio - Santiago Cabrera  
> Malina - Violett Beane (oops)  
> Waller - David Harewood  
> Olivia Queen - Jessica Stroup  
> I haven't thought of anymore, but let me know if you have any!


	25. Don't Tell Anyone, But Your Voice Is My Favourite Sound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry fails to convince everyone that fishing is fun, and Barry lets go of some weight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is late people, been unwell. Reposting the fancasts in case you missed them:  
> Dr Wells - Bridget Regan  
> Chesca - Gina Rodriguez  
> Colin - Mathhew Daddario  
> Jesse - Drew Van Acker  
> Julio - Santiago Cabrera  
> Malina - Violett Beane (oops)  
> Waller - David Harewood  
> Olivia Queen - Jessica Stroup  
> I haven't thought of anymore, but let me know if you have any!

“I’ve got sunshine, on a cloud day…la, la, _la_ …month of May…mm, hm…My Girl, talking ‘bout, my girl…” Iris hums to herself as she sorts the last of her case files for the day, and then crosses the room to turn off the record player. Seeing as she’d spent her day off infiltrating a secret government facility and talking to the scariest person to come to Central City on her day off the day before, she’s surprised she actually got all that work done. But then she supposes being called ‘Iris West, Crime Scene Investigator and Metahuman Specialist’ makes her want to live up to the term. Raise doesn’t hurt, either.

“West?”

Iris to see Captain Singh is at the door – smiling, strangely enough. “Your mother is here to see you.”

“Mom!” she says happily, as her mother walks into her lab. She hugs her. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I had a free lunch, and I thought I’d come see you.” She looks at Singh. “Your boss said it was alright.”

“Of course, Mrs West,” she says war. “It’s always nice to see you.”

Iris whistles after the Captain has wished them both goodbye. “You should come visit me more often – she’s never this nice to me.”

“Really?” her mother asks as Iris clears a space for them to eat their lunch. “She’s always saying such great things about you, and how the Captains from all the other cities want you because you do all the work in the department.”

“Aw, the other captains are jealous of me? Cool!” She sits across from her mother and takes the food that she’s offering. “So how was work?”

“Good,” she nods. “There are some really talented kids at the university – they just need some guidance on how to use their budget properly over such a long period. But then I guess that’s what a publisher is for.”

It’s not a huge job, but the settlement got them enough money that they own their home now, and it’s more than enough for utilities and to live on. She’s doing what she did before Iris was born, managing the budget and recruiting people to make sure that the paper had all the best people running it. “But you like it, right?” she asks. “Because I’m sure if you didn’t you could get another one, at a bigger paper, or-”

“Iris, honey,” her mother interrupts. “We have talked about this. I am perfectly happy where I am.”

“But you…” she sighs, adjusting her glasses. “You were this big publishing executive before dad died, you should be able to work anywhere you want-”

“The only thing I should be able to do is have lunch with my daughter and plan our weekend together,” she says firmly, and Iris sighs again before nodding. They have had this discussion before, but her mother is unwavering on it. She’s always been much more zen about the situation than Iris has, who focused her job and her life and even her superhero identity to getting her out. “Anyway,” she continues, “I was thinking a movie or the county fair.”

“Which movie? There’s a new James Bond out, if you’re interested.””

“Seriously? I feel like those come out every year.” She pauses, chewing her food. “Anyway, I was thinking of inviting Barry and Nora.”

Iris snorts. “Oh, then the movie definitely. Barry’s afraid of horses.”

Her mother frowns. “Really?”

“He doesn’t trust them, he says they’re watching him.” She runs a hand through her hair. “But this thing with Malina is really messing with them.”

“Right, I forgot to ask, how was everything yesterday? Henry brought you back in one piece, so I suppose I don’t have to kneecap him.”

“Mom.”

“You pick things up in prison.”

“MOM.”

But her mother just shrugs. “Miss Miracle or not, you’re still my baby. Now, catch me up. What went on?”

Iris pauses, pushing pasta around her plate. Truth be told, Dr Wells’ meeting had been crazy enlightening, and she thanks whatever twist of fate that put Henry in their lives at the time. Enlightening – and terrifying.

***

Iris looks at Dr Wells, about to leave, and then – “Teach me.”

She blinks. “What?”

“Tell me what to do,” she says quickly, glancing back at the door. “We have time, and I’ve done it before, remember? I didn’t know how to control it before, but you can tell me how you did it.”

“Iris, I-”

“Please, Helena. We are…We’re so _close_.”

She regards her for a moment, and then takes a deep breath. “When we fought, that night, the lightning came out of you because I threatened Barry and it made you emotional.”

“And it happened again when Colin did the same thing. Is that it? Is it the…” she swallows, still not sure how to talk about it. “The lightning rod thing?”

“Yes and no,” she admits. “Lightning like that, at this stage of your powers, comes from the fact that you’re in a highly emotional state. Eventually, you will learn to reach down inside yourself and pull out that feeling whenever you need it, even if you don’t feel those emotions. However, for now, you will have to make due with the build-up of electricity from the kinetic energy that manifests when you transport.”

“What, you want me to teleport around until I make electricity?”

She nods. “Precisely. In a polygon shape, preferably. Thenm once you have enough, you’ll be able to catch the lightning and throw it at a target.”

Iris sits back. “Wow. The Mindscape weren’t fucking around when they made us, were they?”

“You’ll manage it, Iris. I have faith in you. Now, tell me about this other earths situation. Are you being capable?”

Iris explains how they are stabilising and identifying the breaches, which impresses her. “That is inspired,” Dr Wells laughs, when she explains the part about the boomerangs. “I never would have thought of that.”

“Thanks,” she smiles. “Look, I know what Colin did to you, but is there any chance you remember where he went?”

“None,” she shakes her her ruefully. “If I had any idea, I would have told you already. We travelled to so many different earths, they all blend together. He never exactly let me get my bearings.”

“Right.”

“So what are you doing about their memories?”

“Their memories?”

“Of the people you’re sending back.” When Iris keeps frowning, she leans forward. “Iris, you cannot have people of other earths knowing that these ones exist. You have to use your powers to make the ones you’re taking back forget.”

Iris feels her blood ice over. “Y-You mean…”

“Yes, Iris. Mind control.”

She hasn’t thought about it since that time she did it by accident, and she’s kind of been pretending that she can’t do anything that Calamity did. Dr Wells seems to understand. “Iris, I know it’s…difficult, to have that responsibility, but the chaos that could ensure if people knew there were ways to travel through the corridors between earths is unimaginable. You have a responsibility.”

Iris takes off her glasses and starts cleaning them. “Great. That’s…great. Look, Dr Wells, this whole ‘lightning rod’ situation. It doesn’t ever go away, does it?”

“No, Iris,” she smiles. “To my knowledge, it does not.”

She puts her glasses back on. Story of her life. “Okay, well, thank you. I have to go, but I promise, we’re going to get you out. Just hang in there.”

As she gets up, Dr Wells grabs her hand. “Wait, Iris.” She hesitates and then looks up at her, and Iris sees that there are tears in her eyes. “Please tell Jesse that I love him, very much.”

Iris squeezes her hand. “I will. I promise.”

***

“Goodness,” her mother says quietly. “Mind control?”

“Yeah,” she agrees. She has conveniently left out the part about Barry being her lightning rod, because she has no idea what to do with that. “I have a meeting with the team today, so I’m going to tell them about it. And Barry’s going to tell everyone about what he talked about with Eddie.”

“Eddie,” her mother repeats. “That would be Henry’s son, but not Barry’s brother?”

“I think that’s what we’re going with,” she admits. “Between Henry and Eddie and Malina and Jesse, and you, frankly, the ‘missing family member turning up’ trope is hitting a lot of home-runs this week.”

Her mother laughs, standing up and grabbing her bag. “Will I see you for dinner tonight?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she replies. She kisses her mother on the cheek and then watches her leave, a stupid little smile on her face at the normalcy of it all. She makes her way down to STAR Labs after work, grateful that everyone has gathered to listen. Chesca takes one look at her and bounds up to her, brown eyes sparking with indignation. “There you are, Bambi Eyes. Tell Dr Asshole that he’s wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

Barry, sipping coffee while watching Jesse work on something in the medbay, is the one who replies. “Jesse says on average you swallow about seventy bugs per day while flying.”

“Wrong!” Iris says immediately, wrinkling her nose. “ _So_ wrong! Also, EW.”

“…and Chesca says you swallow about ninety.”

“CHESCA!”

“I’m sorry!” Chesca says, not sounding sorry at all. “You fly at an average of two hundred miles per hour when you really get going – the bug swallowing has gotta be at an all time high.”

“You’re both getting socks for Christmas,” Iris grumbles. “How is everyone? Ready to find out how to catch a sociopath?”

“Right,” Nora says. “I’d like to know what Dr Wells said.”

“How was she?” Jesse asks, hazel eyes worried. “Is she alright?”

“As well as she can be. Henry says she’s being cooperative, and there are no plans to…They want to keep her there,” she hedges, not wanting to put it in starker terms. Jesse pales, but nods. “And she told you how to defeat Killer Frost?”

“Yeah,” Iris says slowly. “Does everyone know about the Mindscape?”

“Isn’t that an online game?”

“No, that’s _Runescape_ , you noob,” Chesca corrects. “Of all the nerd things to know…”

“Anyway,” Iris says pointedly as the two of them start glaring at each other, “the Mindscape is this metaphysical entity that gives people like us our powers. It’s the reason we can read minds and move things and fly and stuff, but what Colin did was steal those powers from someone else. People like me and Dr Wells – and I’m guessing the Jay Garrick that used to work with Henry’s organisation – because we got our powers naturally, can withstand things like lightning and mind control. Colin stole his, so even though he can use them, he’s still vulnerable. Dr Wells says if I hit him with a big enough lightning charge, it will disable him.”

Iris isn’t ready for everyone to know about the lightning rod concept just yet, especially Barry, who’s still getting over Patty, and especially when they’re trying to be normal. Chesca, however, has picked up on the implication in her words. “When you say ‘disable’,” she says slowly, “you mean…kill. Right?”

“I think so,” she replies quietly, and the silence remains. She’s never thought of it going this far, of her turning into the very thing that she was afraid of. “She didn’t say it explicitly,” she admits. “But it’s probably a possibility.”

“Did she say anything else?” Barry asks her.

“Yeah. She said – you know how we’ve been identifying the breaches, and I’ve been taking some of them back?”

“Yeah, the alien from Earth-3.”

“Right. But she mentioned how dangerous it would be for people to know that other earths existed, because I get the feeling that they won’t be so determined to preserve the status quo as us. And she thought that the best thing would be for me to use my…” she trails off, before deciding to plunge right in. “Mind control powers to make sure that they don’t say anything.”

Everyone just looks at her. She told them about her powers, somewhere in between the haze of rage and pain she felt after Colin escaped and that they developed the day Eddie attacked the bridge, but there hasn’t really been any time to talk about it since. Those powers terrify her and everyone else – with good reason. The only ones who know the full extent of what those powers could become – that power that Calamity used on all those people that night – are Barry and Nora, and she has no desire to ever let them get to that point. They all glance at each other. “Do you…have those powers?” Jesse asks carefully. “Do you know how to control them?”

“Yeah, it’s a lot easier than I thought it would be.”

“Show me.”

“What?”

“I was never here, remember?” he points out. “You guys had all that stuff with the metahumans controlled by Calamity without me. Now, I’ve read your case files, and you’ve all kept up a pretty good record of Iris’ powers as they’ve gotten stronger, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about them.”

“Yeah.” Iris rubs her eyes. “Okay, just…I don’t know – they’re not perfect. So everyone, if you start to feel cold, I’m sorry.” She concentrates on the blonde doctor. “Jesse, this isn’t an order, but I need you to sit in this chair.”

He sits down across from her and she takes a deep breath, willing the cold to come from within her, feeling her powers reach out for open thoughts. “ _Jesse_ ,” she says in a voice that seems to come from her gut, “ _what is your middle name_?”

Jesse’s eyes are glassy and his voice is level. “Liberty.”

“ _Liberty_?” Iris repeats in surprise.

“Family name,” he replies tonelessly.

“ _What is your greatest regret_?”

His chin wobbles and he hesitates. Iris presses, gripping his mind tighter. “ _Jesse_.”

“I didn’t visit my aunt Helena. I…I left her alone.”

Iris lets his mind go and she sees Jesse exhale and look around, his hand over his heart. “T-That was,” he stammers, and then stops. “How did you _do_ that?”

“Yeah, that’s some straight Professor X shit, Iris,” Chesca says. “What did it feel like?”

“I could hear Iris asking me the questions and I didn’t want to answer them, but my body did it anyway. And it felt…”

“Cold?” Iris finishes, and he nods. “Yeah, I know. I mean, I get what she’s saying, totally, it’s dangerous to have that kind of knowledge out there. We got lucky with the White Martian because I took him to Superboy, someone who knew about all this freaky stuff. But a criminal, or even a civilian…”

“That kind of chaos, I don’t know that we could fix it,” Nora agrees. Iris wraps her arms around herself, closing her eyes, and Jesse clears his throat.

“This has to be a team decision,” he says firmly. “We all have to decide whether to use lightning like that, and the mind control powers.”

“And we all have to share the blame,” Barry says quietly. Everyone looks at him. “You’re right, this is a team decision. But we can’t leave Iris to face it by herself, because this isn’t agreeing to fight Calamity or teaming up with Olivia and those guys to fight Vandal Savage.”

“Barry’s right,” Chesca nods. “If we do this, it’s on all of us. Whether it works or not.”

They all agree and then go their separate ways. Jesse and Chesca stay to do some work, and Barry tells his mother he needs to talk to Iris, leaving her to go home. He catches up to her as she walks back to her house. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “Thank you for that, by the way. I don’t know whether I can do that to a person, just take away their free will like that. And then the lightning…”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?”

“Oh, I meant to tell you – Eddie and Henry got a place uptown,” she says. “It’s better, since Eddie is still supposed to be missing, but they’ll be at the next meeting.”

Barry nods slowly and she looks up at him, shiting her bag to her other shoulder. “Are you doing okay with that?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.” He sighs. “It’s like, Henry isn’t my dad, not really, and I’d be okay with that, but…Malina. She’s a whole person and she had this whole other life with a dad and a brother that wasn’t…that wasn’t _me_ ,” he finishes quietly. “I don’t want to blame Eddie because it isn’t his fault, but I do.”

“Barry, you have to feel how you feel,” she tells him. “It’s not fair to yourself to keep that bottled up. Let yourself feel them, and then work through them. What is it you want out of all of this?”

He pauses. “My sister. With us, or at least around us, so we can see her. Eddie too, maybe? And…And I guess not to be so mad at Henry anymore.” He sighs. “But I don’t think I’m very good at letting go of things.”

“Why do you say that?”

He looks down at her, hesitating. “I don’t know whether I should be telling you this.”

Iris just rolls her eyes. “Barry, I have seen you with chicken pox. We have a metahuman in the basement who only eats tortilla chips, and only in even numbers. Try me.”

“Well, he said I may not be over Patty.”

Iris nods evenly, and though he’s not the mind-reader, he can see her mind going to the boxes in the garage, still with Patty’s things in it – the things that M.A.I.M.E.D. didn’t take, anyway. “And what do you think?”

“Well, I guess I’ve been trying not to think about it, but I don’t think I have. I just kept avoiding my feelings about it and pretending like it didn’t exist, but I think it’s making it hard for me to move on. I guess it’s because I never got closure.”

Iris thinks for a moment. “Well then we need to get you closure.”

Unfortunately, this is where their discussion ends, because as they’re walking through the street, they hear a loud crash and a car flies into the air. Without thinking, Iris twists her fingers and slows its descent, landing it safely on the street even as people start to run away screaming. Barry sees it first. “Shark – _Shark_! What the hell!”

“Queen Shark,” Iris corrects grimly as the figure comes into view. Is it possible that the woman is bigger than the time she tried to strangle Iris to death? And she’s certain someone was supposed to cart her off somewhere. But there’s no time to worry about that; she ducks into an alley and disappears, reappearing with her suit. “Run,” she tells Barry. “Get somewhere safe and call the others.”

Barry races off and Iris flies towards Queen Shark, who by now as scared off all the pedestrians on the residential street. “Hey, Queenie!” Iris calls. “Remember me?”

Queen Shark growls at her, rows of teeth shining in that black hole of a mouth. “I’ve been looking for you, Miss Miracle.”

“Yeah? Take a number, dory.”

Iris flies out of the way of her swinging punch and teleports around her, intending to confuse her. It works – for a while. Queen Shark whirls around, trying to catch her, before launching a volley that sends her careening into a car. Iris blinks, seeing stars, and Queen Shark leans close. “I’ve never been a fan of _miracles_ ,” she growls, “ _and you’ll never catch me_.”

She leaves and Iris rises slowly, blinking and groaning, and looks around. They are most definitely going to need a bigger miracle.

***

Jesse wraps up the wound in her leg when she gets back to STAR Labs and she hops down from the bed, wincing slightly. “Okay,” she asks the general room. “Anyone wanna tell me what happened?”

“Queen Shark escaped,” Chesca says.

“Well, I know _that_. What I mean is how. Liv said that A.R.G.U.S. came to put her away.”

“You mean with that giant escaped jellyfish?” Jesse asks, and she nods.

“What can we do about it?”

Barry, across the room at the terminal, is shaking his head. “I’m trying to get Liv, but she’s not answering,” he says. “Not even Freddie – all their messages say they’re out of town.”

“Well, since I’m currently two-for-two on being defeated by a giant can of tunafish, how are we going to do this without them? Liv is the only way I can get to Dig and Lyle.”

Chesca clears her throat, and everyone looks at her. “I would like to point out,” she says slowly, “that we’re supposed to use all the weapons we have available.”

“Chess…” Iris says.

“And this is the closest we have to A.R.G.U.S. agents.”

“What did you do?” Jesse asks, but Nora frowns.

“No. Who did you _call_?”

Barry realises it next. “You called Henry and Eddie?”

“They told me they have some knowledge into what A.R.G.U.S. do!” Chesca says desperately, looking around. “And it’s a _giant shark_ , we don’t have a lot of choice!”

Iris turns to Barry and Nora. “Are you okay with this?”

They glance at each other before nodding, and Iris shrugs. “Okay, Chess, where are they?” As if in answer, the guest alarm beeps, and a few seconds later they both walk in carrying takeout bags. Jesse frowns.

“Were you guys getting dinner, or…”

“Chesca told us to bring food,” Eddie explains.

“We’re going to need the fuel,” Iris points out. Barry notices that whenever Henry and Eddie are in a room with them, Iris makes sure to plant herself in between them, him and his mother. It makes him want to hug her. “So, I guess this is your first official team mission.”

“Chesca said there was a problem with an escaped animal?” Henry says carefully. “Or was I hearing wrong.”

“Nope,” Iris says as everyone starts eating. “Henry, do you happen to know anything about Queen Shark?”

“Queen Shark? Yeah, I’ve heard of her. She’s supposed to be under the jurisdiction of the Extremely Large Animal Division.”

“Well, she escaped, and – there’s an ‘Extremely Large Animal Division’?”

“Very specialised,” Eddie says.

“Wait, is that where the jellyfish went?” Barry wants to know. “And that giant manta thing that Aqualady fought?”

“…that’s classified.”

“How do you know about that?” Nora asks. “I thought you both worked in a completely different organisation.”

“I’m Waller’s deputy,” he explains, “so I need to be in the know about a lot of stuff. When Iris was attacked by Queen Shark the first time and she called Joanna Diggle and Lyle Michaels to capture it, we all got the memo. She’s supposed to be in a secure facility in Coast City, but she must have escaped.”

“Any idea how?” Jesse asks, and Eddie nods.

“I heard through the grapevine that some of them wanted to turn her into a weapon, but Waller wouldn’t agree to it. So they decided to go ahead and only tell Waller when they got results. My guess is they bit off a little more than they could chew. Thing is, she was really obsessed with killing someone in particular.”

“Let me guess,” Iris says dryly, “the chick with telepathy?”

Eddie shrugs apologetically and she lets out a breath. “Well, I like being alive, so, ideas?”

“We need to track her and get her back under their control,” Chesca says, nodding towards Eddie and Henry. Barry snaps his fingers.

“Isn’t there some special way that sharks communicate?”

“Electroreception?”

Jesse stares at her. “That’s a movie.”

“That’s _In_ ception, genius – Iris, we need to do another team evaluation.”

“What’s electroreception?” Nora asks.

“Sharks perceive electrical stimuli,” Chesca explains, tapping on some keys. “It’s why they like saltwater so much, it’s a better conductor than air. And it’s probably why she found Iris so easily – Miss Miracle is essentially a walking lightning rod.”

Iris bites her lip, and Barry peers at her. _Everything cool?_

 _Yeah, fine. Just worried about a shark eating me_. “Do we want to use me as bait?” Iris suggests, but Chesca shakes her head.

“We need to be smart about this. At some point, she’s going to want to hang out in saltwater to refresh herself, and that’ll be the best way to defeat her.”

“By electrifying the water,” Jesse realises, grinning. “Water’s a brilliant conductor, saltwater or not, and then we can put her away.”

“I can make some calls,” Henry adds. “Make it known that I’ve heard of Queen Shark in the area and that we’ll need a team on standby if Miss Miracle captures her.”

“And I can help,” Eddie tells them. He looks around STAR Labs. “I get the feeling I’m going to be hanging out a lot here, since I’m supposed to be dead and all.”

Chesca’s cheeks go bright pink. “Well, that’s – that’s good, we need you. For the team.”

“Mm-hm,” Iris says, amused. “So how are we electrifying the water?”

Everyone except Henry and Eddie look at her and she takes a step back. “You guys, I literally just found out about this! I haven’t even had time to practice!”

“Well, start practicing,” Jesse says firmly. “We need to get this thing under control, and we’re going to need a bigger fish.”

“And he joins the club!” Chesca says triumphantly, and Nora sighs.

“You’re all going to give me grey hairs.”

***

Barry always forgets how many boxes there are.

That’s what he’s thinking when he slips through the garage the next day to drive to STAR Labs, about all of his and Patty's stuff still sitting unsorted in the garage. It’s a Saturday, and the ground is covered in frost as he drives. Eddie’s words about Patty echo in his head, again, and he wonders whether he’s doing the right thing in asking to talk today. But there are things he needs to know, things he’s not quite ready to ask Henry about yet. He hits Jitters first, grabbing them lunch, and then meets him outside the car park. Eddie’s shock of blonde hair is easily recognisable, as are his blue eyes and strong square jaw. He remembers that half the baristas at Jitters had a crush on him when he was ‘alive’, and he can see it. For some reason, he wonders what Iris thinks about him, and then remembers that she went on a lunch date with Julio a few days ago. And he’s happy for her, really. He’s totally not dwelling on the fact that Julio is three inches shorter than him.

“Barry,” Eddie says evenly. “How are you?”

“Pretty good. Thanks for coming.”

“I get the feeling the Miracle Workers don’t call unless it’s urgent. Apart from Iris and Chesca with food, apparently.”

Barry laughs as he lets them in with his keycard. “I really need to ask Chesca to make you one of these.”

“It seems like she’s got a lot on her plate – she does a lot. With the feeding the metahumans, and building the tech, and helping Iris…”

“Yeah, she’s something, our Chesca.”

“She’s amazing,” Eddie says immediately. Then he swallows. “I just meant she shouldn’t worry about that. Not for me. If she’s busy.”

“Uh-huh,” Barry says, trying not to smile. “Look, I want to check on them first, since they said they were going to practice having Iris throw lightning around the place.” He leads Eddie down to the ‘Mind Palace’ (a title that causes an internal struggle within Chesca since technically they’re using it incorrectly), a large domed chamber where they practice Iris’ powers. Jesse and Chesca are sat at a little table while they watch Iris on a monitor, which is showing her run around the top level of the chamber. Green lightning flashes and sparks, illuminating the room. Barry comes up to greet them.

“How’s it going?”

Before anyone can answer, they hear several loud thuds and the lights go out. Barry sees Jesse lean over and pull back a large lever, and they come back on again. “Slowly.”

“Fuck,” they hear Iris snap over the intercom. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

“You want me to talk to her?”

“No need,” Chesca answers, not turning around. She points to the upper level, where Iris is already teleporting in a circle again. “She’s off again. And we only let her have coffee about an hour ago, so she’s not in the best mood.”

“You took Iris’ coffee away from her?” Eddie asks, making Chesca jump slightly. “When I was at the precinct, that was the one rule we were supposed to follow about Iris.”

“Eddie, I didn’t know you were coming!” Chesca squeaks. He frowns.

“Really? Barry said he called Jesse to let him know we’d be using one of the research offices.”

“I’m sorry,” Jesse says, sipping his own coffee, the smile evident in his voice. “I must have forgotten to tell you.”

“Well, Eddie and I will be upstairs if anyone needs anything,” Barry says before he witnesses a murder. “Tell Iris I’m around if she needs to talk.”

Barry leads Eddie up to the research offices that Iris designated to him after they reopened STAR Labs and clears a space for him and Eddie to sit down. “So the reason I called you is that we need to figure out what kind of people we’d be bringing back from whatever Earth Colin has them,” he explains. “I’ve got a list of people and the person they’re related to, so I thought we could figure out what we’d need to do with them for when they got back.”

Eddie takes the list. “Toni Woodward – Eli Woodward, uncle. Miriam Farooq – Sami Farooq, son…Wow, this is insanely thorough. You did this by yourself?”

Barry shrugs. “Benefits of doing a PhD – retaining stupid research skills. So if my timetable is right, these people have been missing for two years or less. They’re going to need counselling and stuff like that.”

“We can take care of that,” Eddie says easily.

“Really?”

“Yeah, we have to deal with stuff like that all the time. When Braniac kidnapped all those people and brainwashed them, Superwoman called us to help them with deprogramming them. My friend Andy Ognats works in that department, actually. We’re going to need therapists, specialised doctors, depending on how long they were there. And financial support, of course. Lina will probably get about a year off, even though she won’t take it.”

Barry nods and is quiet for a little bit. “She was still new,” Eddie says, knowing what Barry is thinking. “It was one of her first missions. Dad and I wanted her to stay in the softer missions, like recon or shadowing people, but she never wanted to. The graduate student thing was real, though – she’s pre-law.”

“Really?” he grins, despite himself. “She’s pre-law?”

“Yeah, they make us take lots of classes, and she graduated high school early. We all have some basic knowledge of all kinds of law for missions and stuff, but Lina’s always been interested in that stuff, so…”

“Do you guys work a lot with metas?”

“At the more senior level, mostly. I mean, we all learn about how to deal with them when we’ve seen their powers before, but only the most senior people get to deal with metahumans on a consistent basis. I did it before about a year before I got taken, but dad’s been doing for – oh, sorry.”

“No, it’s cool,” Barry shrugs. “He is your dad.”

“You don’t have to feel pressured or anything, you know.”

Barry tips his head. “What do you mean?”

“With Henry. You don’t – he gets that you’re mad at him. That’s why he’s giving you space, he doesn’t want to pressure you into anything with him.”

Barry looks down at his hands, thinking of what Iris said. _Feel how you feel_. It is exhausting, being mad all the time, at Eddie for being the son that his dad raised, at Henry for leaving, and at Patty for…well, everything.”

“That is…good to know,” he says carefully. “And what you said, about Patty-”

Eddie smiles. “Been thinking about that?”

“Apparently,” he laughs. “I just thought that avoiding it would be the best thing, you know? Just don’t think about it, act like it never happened.”

“Barry, believe me, as someone who’s dealt with psycho spies and criminals my entire life, you need to really think about this. Iris may have superpowers and she may be used to people screwing with her on a daily basis, but you were coerced into a relationship by a woman who’s wanted you dead since she was a teenager. At the very least, you need several tequila shots.” They both laugh and Eddie gives him a knowing look. “Or maybe you should talk to her.”

He suddenly finds the files on his desk very interesting. “I have no idea how I could do that, Eddie. Patty’s gone.”

“True. Maybe you should talk to Beverly Lewis.”

Barry’s a beat too late, and he knows it. “Who’s that?” he asks, feigning surprise.

“Save it, Barry. I heard Iris talking on the phone to Freddie someone called Beverly Lewis. Given that none of you know anyone called Beverly Lewis, and Iris almost dropped her phone when I asked her about it, I figured out who it was.”

“Look, I know what she did to you, and all of us, but-”

“It’s okay, Barry,” Eddie shrugs. “Believe me, I don’t want everyone knowing, either. That’s why I’m not telling dad about it, because as soon as Waller finds out about it, she’s a goner.”

“I’m supposed to hate her, aren’t I?” he wonders. He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m supposed to want all these bad things to happen to her – I’m supposed to want her dead.”

Eddie pauses. “Well, do you still love her?”

“…no. I don’t think I do. But I have to still feel something for her, or I’d want you all to find her.”

“Barry, not wanting someone dead doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. It just means that you have compassion, which is never a bad thing. Why do you think I haven’t told dad? We are who we are, who we work for, but that doesn’t mean we like all the killing we have to do.”

Barry remembers the night in the town hall then, that Eddie shot Eleanor to save them all. He did it without hesitation, and Barry hasn’t even thought about what that must have been for him. He suddenly gets the feeling that no one has asked Eddie about it at all, maybe apart from Henry. He’s also surprised at how easy it is to talk to him, this quietly dignified and friendly man with a job that shouldn’t exist. ‘Brothers’ is still too strong a word, but friends definitely isn’t.

“You just need to let her go, Barry,” Eddie shrugs, bringing him out of his thoughts. “Sometimes it’s that simple.”

“Thanks, Eddie.” Then Barry glances towards the door, where they can still hear sounds of the others practicing with Iris, and decides something. “Twizzlers are your best bet for surprise snacks. If you get Red Vines, she will never look at you the same way again and you’ll have lost your shot. She likes it when you laugh at her jokes, which won't be hard, because she's funny. And watch _The Wrath of Khan_ , more than once, and take notes.”

Eddie blinks at him. “Barry, what are you talking about?”

“Eddie, my PhD is in psychology, not super secret spy shenanigans, but it doesn’t take James Bond to notice you like Chesca.”

Eddie goes red under his blonde hair. “Well, I, uh…thanks.”

“No problem,” Barry laughs, getting back to work. “Oh, and Han shot first.”

“Han shot who first?”

“Oy, we have a lot of work to do.”

***

Iris slams straight into a wall with a sickening thud and lands on her back, stars dancing before her eyes. She hears the door to the top level open and then sees Jesse leaning above her. Or rather, three Jesse’s spinning above her in a circle. “Iris? Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Then Chesca appears next to him, holding the iPad with the questions to test how serious Iris’ head injury is. “Name?”

“Iris Ann West.”

“Occupation?”

“CSI for Central City’s Police Department.”

“Which _Hamilton_ song is Barry currently obsessed with?”

“’Wait For It’.”

Iris tries to stand when the room stops spinning, and looks around the room in frustration. “We’ve been at this for hours – why am I not getting this?”

“I really don’t know.” Jesse takes the iPad from Chesca and cues it up to where Iris was just teleporting. She sees herself work up a ring of electricity that bounces off the walls, but the minute she breaks away to try to catch it, it disappears. “Maybe you’re not doing it properly?”

“I don’t know, do we have a book on how to properly catch lightning?”

“I’m just saying-”

“Why don’t you take a break?” Chesca suggests before they get into an argument. “You’re right, we’ve been doing for hours and you haven’t had a rest. Your body must be exhausted.”

“Okay,” Iris agrees, shrugging. The minute she starts to walk, she feels what Chesca is talking about – every muscle in her body feels like it’s on fire, and her head is pounding. They lead her down to the ground level. “What have you guys been up to?”

“Well, per my brilliant realisation, we figured out that sharks like big beacons of electricity, right? So…” She wheels out a stuffed mannequin of Miss Miracle attached to a pole. “If we electrify _this_ baby and put it in a body of saltwater, BOOM! We got our shark.”

Jesse rubs his ear, wincing. “Yes. Eddie’s going to drive out there with us so we can place it, and Henry already called Dig and Lyle to get some people watching all the bodies of water in the city. We’re all set.”

“If only I could actually get the hang of this,” she says in frustration. “I don’t get it, I can make static electricity, and I restarted Barry’s heart that time after the Bug-Eyed Bandit sicced his bee on us, but if it’s any bigger I can’t do it.”

“You’ll get the hang of it, _mama_ ,” her friend says confidently. “Modern Miracleworker, right?”

“Right. Um, Chess?”

“Yup?”

“Why do you have a life-size stuffed mannequin of me?”

“Well, the cardboard one burned down and I lost the smaller stuffed one when we were looking for Vandal Savage.”

Iris blinks. “You know what? Forget I asked. I’ll be back, okay?”

She makes her way back up the stairs and looks at the proximity map. Barry and Eddie are in his office, talking about how to deal with the people once they rescue them, and Chesca and Jesse are still downstairs. The five breaches that are around STAR Labs – Earth-2, Earth-3, Earth-17, and two unidentified – are labelled as well. Then Iris’ eyes fall on the room below the Cortex and, before she can really think it through, she’s in the room with bumps on the walls. As if he hears her, a voice sounds from the walls.

“Hello, Iris,” Gideon says cheerfully. His head appears out of the disembodied panel and floats above it. She nods at him and sits, crossing her legs on the floor.

“Gideon. How have you been?”

“I am currently operating at seventy-three percent capacity, but that number will decrease rapidly if I don’t get some new power cells soon.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

“Thank you. And how have you been?”

“Okay, I guess. Remind me what the deal is with you, again?”

Iris hasn’t been down here since the day they threw her in the Pipeline. She was still punishing herself for everything that happened, and that included sneaking down her to see _Iris West-Allen_ plastered all over the place. But she stopped that months ago, even if she kind of wants to talk to Gideon now.

“In one of the futures seen by Dr Colin Snow, you created me, with some assistance from another like yourself.”

“Someone like me? Who?”

“I should warn you at this point that telling you that information will cause changes to the future.”

“Okay, forget I asked.”

“Dr Snow saw this, and how I was created, and created me in his present to aid him. But I still possess loyalty to you, to Barry, to Linda, to Chesca, and others I cannot yet talk about.” He laughs. “In a way, I am a kind of paradox.”

“So you still know about what’s going to happen in the future? You can tell me?”

“Yes,” he replies, a hint of wariness in his voice. “But I believe you asked me not to do that. You said it was something to do with Mr Allen.”

“You’re right. I’m supposed to be good about that.”

“And you have a coffee date with Julio later.”

“Yeah, I – how did you know that?” Iris demands. Gideon makes a nonchalant face.

“I know everything.”

“Of course you do,” she laughs. He’s right, she does have a date with Julio, her third one since she noticed he was actually flirting with her. He is nice and funny and just enough for her, but there is a little part of her that feels she’s just marking time until something else happens. Namely, someone with green eyes and stupidly broad shoulders notices her, even though she’s starting to think that’s never going to happen. Plus, between the breaches and metahumans, she kind of feels like she’s just using him to not have to deal with her actual responsibilities.

“Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Can you teach me to throw lightning?”

He tips his head. “That was always difficult for you. In any future, it was always likely that you would have trouble with throwing lightning.”

“But I guess you can’t tell me how to fix it?”

Gideon pauses for a moment. “No, I cannot,” he says. “But I can give you some advice.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You are not Miss Miracle because of your powers, Iris. You’re Miss Miracle because of what you’re trying to do.”

Iris stares at her. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Think about it. Why are you trying to throw lightning?”

“To kill a shark.”

“Deeper.”

“I’m a superhero.”

“Warmer.”

“I want…I want people to be safe? To not be afraid. To be assured that there’s someone who’s always going to make sure they’re safe.”

“Bingo.”

“That’s it? That’s the advice?”

“It’s good advice,” he tells her. “Though I might be biased.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s the advice that someone gave you that inspired you to create me.”

***

Barry and Eddie make their way back down when they’re finished to find Iris flashing about the place again. “Any luck?”

“Not yet,” Jesse says. “Though I have to say, Iris brings new meaning to the term ‘hard-headed’. She should have a grade three concussion right now, but there she is, flying around like a good metahuman.”

They watch in silence as Iris teleports in a circle again, and then curses under her breath when she fails to catch the lightning. “Maybe we should go in and talk to her?” Chesca suggests, but Barry frowns.

“Wait, a second.”

They see Iris stop, close her eyes, and mouth something. Her fists are clenched, and then she disappears, reappearing somewhere else, again and again. She keeps going, building and building…until suddenly a green bolt of lightning shoots out of her hands and into the target mounted on the wall. Everyone gasps in surprise, and then Iris appears in front of them, her face alight with joy. “I did it! Did you see? I did it!”

Chesca and Barry race forward to hug her, but then in her excitement another flash of lightning arcs out and hits the wall, which immediately catches fire. Without hesitation, Eddie grabs a fire extinguisher off the wall and sprays the wall.

“Um,” Iris says once the fire is out. “Sorry.”

“Nicely done, Eddie,” Barry says admirably, and he shrugs.

“Shooting first worked for Han, so…”

Chesca stares at him and Iris lets out an excited squeal. “But I can do it now! We can go after Queen Shark!”

“What happened?” Jesse asks. “Did something change when you were trying to get the lightning to work?”

Iris shrugs. “I think I just had to…really think about what I was doing. And why I was doing it.” Barry thinks that Iris’ eyes linger on him when she says this, but then she’s walking to the computer terminal. “Now we can place that mannequin thing in the sea and draw her out. You guys have a way to track her?”

“Reprogrammed the STAR Labs satellite to look for signals this morning,” Chesca says, tearing her eyes away from Eddie.

“Lyle should be here tonight with a transport in case we catch her,” Eddie adds.

“Oh, believe me, we’re are catching this baby _tonight_. Between Iris giving off electricity like a skunk giving off stank-”

“Love you, Chess.”

“-you’re welcome, and fake Miss Miracle over here, Queen Shark’s going to smell something in the water.”

Barry, meanwhile, has just noticed the mannequin. “Chess, you don’t have these for all of us, do you?”

“You have your hobbies, Bartholomew. I have mine.”

***

That night sees Iris, Eddie, Henry, Barry and Nora at a pier, waiting anxiously to see whether their plan will work. Iris’ lips are chapped and she hops from foot to foot, trying to keep warm as the cold bites at her. Cold is bad for her, makes her body lethargic and her reactions slow, so she hits the control to make sure her suit warms up.

“Remind me again,” Barry says, lowering his binoculars, “why we’re over here in front of the fake Miss Miracle, and all the A.R.G.U.S. agents are all around the other places? I wanted to ask Dig and Lyle about Baby Sam.”

“Because Jesse decided it would be better for people to try to reel her in when she took the bait,” Iris explains. “We can’t do that from here; _this_ pier is too short. Dig and Lyle are up there…” she points to two figures about a hundred feet away on a different, wider pier, who wave at her. “When she eats it, we’ll see if we can catch her and put her in the transport straight away. If not, well…enter Miss Miracle.”

“The real reason we’re here at all is because Iris doesn’t want to be here by herself,” Nora tells them, and Iris huffs.

“The reason you’re here is because Chesca and Jesse won the coin toss.”

“Damn straight,” Chesca says, and they laugh.

“I’m starting to think those coins are weighted.”

“Of course not, Barry,” Jesse says in mock outrage. “That would be cheating.”

Everyone laughs and Barry gives Iris a small smile. Coin toss or not, they never leave her out here alone. “Plus, Eddie is supposed to be in…Fiji, was it?”

“Oh, right. Hey, this shark thing isn’t going to eat us, is it?” he asks.

“Nope, just me,” Iris says cheerfully. “You’re all safe.”

“I don’t see why, she’d hardly be getting any meat,” Nora deadpans.

“What’s that? Nobody wants any of my delicious Christmas brownies this year? _Nobody_.”

“Alright, that was low.”

They share another smile and Iris scans the sea again, listening to the bells of boats and watching the lighthouse swing its lantern around. “You know, this is a perfect night for fishing,” Henry says after a while, and Eddie groans.

“Dad, come on. You say that every time we’re near water.”

“But look! Peaceful water, the right amount of wind…”

“A dozen secret agents with guns trained at the sea surface,” Barry adds, and Henry laughs.

“I can’t believe you dragged that boy out fishing with you, Henry,” Nora says.

“Nobody said that!”

“I could hear it in his voice. I’ve had that voice before.”

“My dad always loved fishing, too,” Iris says wistfully. “I never got it. Present situation excluded, of course. Shark fishing is clearly a lot of fun.”

“Especially when the bait looks-”

“GUYS!” Chesca interrupts. “ _Incoming_! She’s going for the bait!”

“All agents on standby,” Henry says into a small headset, and Iris sees the agents spread around them get into position, Eddie included. Iris watches the water carefully, waiting for her to leap out. Suddenly, she launches herself out and takes the Miss Miracle mannequin in one bound.

“She took it!” Jesse says, and Iris gives the signal to Dig and Lyle, who reel her in. They all watch with baited breath as the rope is pulled into the pier…and then nothing happens. “Shit,” Iris breathes. “Guys, she’s not there!”

“Where’d she go?” Eddie demands.

“Docks! She’s headed for you guys!”

Iris looks at Nora and Barry. “Go! Get back to the truck – _go_! You two,” she adds to Eddie and Henry, “get ready to fire!”

The words are barely out before Queen Shark jumps out of the water, spray hitting Iris in the face, and then landing with a thud that shakes her bones. The air is loud with the bangs of bullets as Henry and Eddie fire, but it’s no use.

“Those guns won’t stop me, Miss Miracle,” she growls. “First I’ll kill _you_ , then I’ll kill _them_!”

“Oh yeah!” Iris shouts, rising into the air. “First you gotta catch me, tunafish!” And she races away across the sea, Queen Shark bounding after her. Eddie, back at the truck with the others, watches as she gains on Iris, who’s flying across the sea in a shower of green sparks, never quite managing to catch her. “Iris knows what she’s doing, doesn’t she?” Henry asks, worried. “That is a pretty big shark.”

Barry knows what he means – there’s nothing quite like watching Iris go up against all these things by herself. But he did give her that name for a reason. “Well, sit back, Henry, because you’re about to watch your very first miracle live.”

Iris is flying in a circle now, creating a vortex that is lit up with green electricity. It grows larger and larger and then, at the apex of its power, Iris does a sort of twist and then somersault, before catching the lightning in her hands and launching it straight at her chest. Queen Shark lets out a roar that seems to make the very air vibrate, and then Iris appears in front of them, woozy and disoriented. “You know,” she pants, “I think I get it now. Bet you never caught one like that before, huh, Henry?”

“Can’t say that I have,” he says, chuckling. He gives the order to reel in the shark and Barry comes up to her. “You good?”

“Yeah,” she says, still breathing shallowly. “You guys head back, I want to talk to Dig and Lyle.”

They nod and get in the van, and Iris teleports to Dig and her husband, who’s the actual A.R.G.U.S. agent. Dig, for her part, doesn’t look so surprised to see her. “Thanks for coming, guys,” Iris says sincerely.

“Well, when Henry Allen calls,” she shrugs. “You okay? We haven’t spoken since…”

“Yeah, I’m fine. How’s Liv?”

“Right here,” Olivia herself says, and Iris blinks.

“What is it with you and shadows? Is that the only way you can enter a room?”

“Eh, it’s fun.”

“Where have you been? Barry and I tried calling you for ages.”

“Hell.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “I know you don’t like to give a lot of detail, Liv, but-”

“No, I mean literally in hell. I owed Connie a favour.”

“See, this is what you get for making friends with an exorcist. We’re lucky she brought Sam back from the Lazarus Pit in one piece. Anyway, what are you doing here?”

“Apart from making sure you don’t fuck this up?” she laughs. “Good job, though, seriously. But I wanted to tell you about your Captain Cold problem.”

She frowns. “The last time I saw her, she was in Barry’s house eating Halloween cookies.”

“Right. Well, I got a call saying she, Heatwave and some friends of ours took a trip. Won’t be back for a while.”

Iris peers at her friend. “Liv.”

“Yes?”

“How much do I not want to know about this?”

“Oh, a whole lot of ‘don’t want to know’. Believe me.”

***

“…I still don’t understand why you can’t tell us about the Extremely Large Animals Division,” Chesca says once they’re back at the lab.

“Because it’s not my department!” Eddie laughs. “And it’s all classified.”

“I bet that’s where you’re keeping the aliens, too,” she mutters, and everyone laughs. Jesse throws an eraser at her.

“On a more serious note, how did shark extraction go?”

“Dig says Lyle is taking her to a more secure facility,” Barry explains. “And making sure no one tries to do anymore experiments on her.”

“Yes, hopefully they find her a nice aquarium to swim around in,” Nora adds. She hesitates, and then looks at Henry. “Thanks for your help today. It was nice having another adult around.”

“Hey!” Chesca says indignantly. “We’re adults!”

“Please,” Jesse scoffs. “I’m an adult. You watch superhero cartoons every day, Beanpole Showtunes is always singing, and then there’s the daydreamer over there,” he adds to Iris, “who’s probably forgotten we’ve got breach work to do tomorrow.”

Iris, who’s been staring at her suit with her arms folded the entire time, barely turns. “Huh? Oh, yeah, sounds good.”

Nora gives Barry a look, who nods, and then she clears her throat. “Maybe we should all head home, huh? We’ve got work in the morning.”

Everyone leaves and they’re left alone. Iris is standing with her hands on her hips, biting her lip, her eyes trained on her suit. “Hey,” he says softly. She looks around.

“Where did everyone go?”

“Home, probably. It’s been a long day. You okay?”

“Not really.”

“What’s up?”

She hesitates and then sighs. “Look, Barry, I know we all said we’d agree to take the blame if anything went wrong with the lightning and the mind control, but I don’t know if I can do it. It’s a lot to have on your conscience.” She pauses. “You know you were the first one I saved after I got my powers?”

He gives her a surprised look. “Yeah,” she continues. “We were on a walk, and we were talking about Patty, and I was thinking ‘wow, worst oversleeping on a power nap _ever_ ’. And then those cars just came out of nowhere, and it was like the world stopped and we were the only ones in it. I didn’t even know what I could do at that point…but I knew I could save you.” She sighs, looking back at her suit. “Now I have all these powers, and a suit, and a mask, and a name, but if I’m electrocuting people and using mind control on them, I don’t even know what kind of hero I’m supposed to be. You know, the power to make fish fricassee aside.”

Barry doesn’t say anything for a moment, before smiling. “Do you remember the day we met?”

“Barry Allen and the Cashew Nuts?” she laughs. “Yeah, I remember. In first grade. Why?”

“Because _that_ was the first time you saved me,” he tells her. “You were the only one who knew that I was choking, even though were so small. And then you took me to the nurse’s office and made sure they checked me afterwards, even though you could have gotten in trouble.”

“I still don’t know why you thought that was cool, Barry,” she mutters. “Who tries to swallow cashew nuts without chewing them?”

“My point is,” he laughs, “your powers aren’t what make you a hero, or me writing about you, or even everyone loving you so much. It’s the fact that you’ve always known when to do the right thing, even when it was hard or it hurt or you didn’t think you could do it. That’s the kind of person you are.” He shrugs. “I don’t think you have to worry about whether or not you’re a hero, Iris. You’ve always been one to me. Since the day that I met you.”

Iris shrugs and looks down at the ground, adjusting her glasses out of habit, and he pokes her. “Come on.”

“Barry, stop.”

“I can tickle you. You want me to tickle you?”

“Don’t you dare.”

He grins at her. “Come on. Smile for me, sunshine.”

Iris smiles, despite herself, and shoves him. “God, I hate you.”

“You hate me because I’m right.”

“Jackass.”

“Nerd.”

They make faces at each other and then Iris hears a beeping noise lets them know that someone has accessed the building. “Who’s coming up the stairs?”

Barry shrugs and they both watch the door for the figure that walks in. “Mom?” Iris frowns. Her mother is giving her an unimpressed look.

“Iris, I know your job is a hectic, but it’s a little terrifying to find out on Twitter that your daughter just went up against a giant shark.”

“…I forgot to call you,” Iris winces. “And we were supposed to have dinner tonight." Her mother nods.

“You did, and we were. Hello, Barry.”

“Hi, Francine.”

“I’m okay,” Iris promises. “And we put the shark away.”

“Oh, Iris,” her mother sighs. She kisses her on the forehead. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Well, I’m looking forward to that dinner you mentioned…”

Francine shakes her head and Barry laughs. “I’ll call you later,” Iris tells him. “What we talked about…”

“Yeah. I’ll think about it. Want me to lock up?”

“That would be great.”

Barry watches them leave, their conversation becoming quieter as they advance down the corridor. “Is it my turn for dinner or yours?” Iris asks.

“It’s mine.”

“What are we having?”

“Seafood jambalaya.”

“Figures.”

***

Opal City is quite different to Central City. It is not as big and nowhere near as cosmopolitan as Central City, and since the buildings are all pre-war, it has more of an old feel to it. It’s also more industrial, home to factories and plants rather than the big businesses in Gotham or the newspaper magnates of Metropolis. That’s why Patty picked it.

They don’t call her Patty, though. The name on her employee card, on her driver’s license, on the lease she signed a few months ago, is Beverly Lewis. She is an accounting clerk at Kord Industries. She’s in a book club. She goes to the movies. And she tries to have some semblance of her normal life even though her world was ripped apart mere months ago.

It was hard, those first few weeks. Not just because her mother was dead, but because her cover was blown. Iris has blown into that room with all the force of a hurricane, and from the way she’d looked at her, her normally friendly brown eyes glowing like hellfire, she really thought the woman was going to kill her. Iris knew who she was, and somehow Eddie, who Patty had recognised the minute he stepped foot in the precinct, was helping them. So when he shot her mother and they all got distracted by that big hole in the sky, she ran. She went back to their house, took all their belongings and their money, and escaped.

The grief hit her in waves, even though she can barely remember it now. It has been like losing a lung, losing her mother, but not for the most obvious reasons. Eleanor was never particularly nurturing, but she did give Patty her purpose: to kill Nora and Barry Allen. Now that they had failed in that, and now that she’s dead, Patty has to pick up the pieces and figure out what to do next.

So Patty’s decided to be normal. It was hard, at first, since she’s always been who she is, but it got there. She, of course, took steps to cover her tracks and change her appearance. But she has a routine now, and she sticks to it. She does her grocery shopping on weekends, goes swimming on Wednesdays, has her book club on Mondays. Work is fine, rote, something to pass the time and to keep from going insane. It is a nice life, she’s finding, when you aren’t devoted to murdering your boyfriend. She likes her routine.

Which is why she’s so angry when it’s ruined.

It starts off as a normal day. Patty goes to work and has seven invoices to verify and correct before sending back, and that’s all before lunch. She works steadily, completing all the tasks, when one of her co-workers, a friendly young woman named Angela, appears at her desk. “You are so damn sneaky.”

“Sneaky?” she repeats with a confused laugh. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you never told us it was your birthday!”

Patty frowns. No, she hadn’t told them that, because she never tells anyone about her birthday. “I mean…I’m just not a birthday person, Ange.”

She shrugs. “I figured. That’s what I told her.”

“Who?”

“Your friend, she came to take you to lunch for your birthday. Iris…West, Iris West.”

Patty’s heart stops. “Iris?”

“Mm, she came to visit you. I said you didn’t seem like a birthday person, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

She follows Angela to the lobby to find Iris standing in a group with all her colleagues, chattering away about something. When she sees Patty, her smile widens. “Hi, Beverly!” she says cheerfully.

“Iris. What are you doing here?”

“I was just telling everyone about what we did on your last birthday,” she answers. She twists her phone around, and Patty sees a picture of the two of them at a police baseball game. “I can’t believe you never told everyone it’s your birthday. Well, actually, I can. Bev’s never been the biggest sharer.”

“It is so sweet that you came all the way from Central to see her,” Angela continues blithely. Iris shrugs.

“That’s what friends are for. You guys don’t mind, do you?”

“Oh, no,” Patty says quickly, “we were going to go to the bakery-”

“We can go to the bakery any time. How often does someone travel across the country to see you?”

Patty cuts her eyes at Iris, who still has that innocent look on her face. _Try anything at all_ , Iris says in her head, _and I’ll call every police officer in the city_.

“I guess we’re going to lunch,” Patty says, and everyone cheers.

“We’ll have a cake waiting for you when you get back,” Angela promises.

“Make sure you get butter pecan,” Iris tells her. “It’s her favourite.”

***

Iris tries not to be a petty person.

But seeing Patty’s face when she walked into the lobby and spotted her is worth an entire year’s pay check. Besides, it was either be petty or succumb to the rage that surfaced when she saw the woman again. So now they’re here, in this diner sitting across from each other, where Iris has just ordered spaghetti and meatballs and Patty’s ordered lasagne. The place is quiet, which is why Iris picked it.

“Do you think the sauce is good?” Iris asks. “It always makes or breaks the meatballs, the sauce. I hope it’s good.”

“What are you doing here, Iris?”

“I came to visit you for your birthday, of course. You always said I was welcome. Of course, you were talking about your and Barry’s apartment, but I was taking it as a blanket thing.”

Patty regards her, blue eyes hard. “You remember that?”

“I do.”

“So that whole ‘haha, I’m so adorably forgetful’ thing was just an act.”

“It was a lot less of an act than your ‘haha, I’m so perky and perfect and _totally_ not a murderer’.”

“What is it?” she asks tiredly. “You want to hurt me?”

“Yes,” Iris says simply. “But that’s not why I’m here.” She pauses, taking a sip of her water. Patty looks the same, apart from the fact that her hair is a different colour and she doesn’t talk a million miles a minute or smile so much. “You have a pretty nice life here.”

“It is what it is. You here to turn me in?”

“Would you be surprised if I were? You shot me.”

Patty shrugs. “You were in my way.”

The waiter comes with their food then and they both smile, pretending like they both truly enjoy each other’s company. After he leaves, Iris picks up her fork and turns back to her. “Waller’s still looking for you.”

“Not surprised. Are you working for him?”

“Of course not. But I want to keep you safe, and I came to make you a deal.”

“A deal?”

“You know who I am,” Iris says. “What I can do. And I know everything about you, and I could ruin this for you in a minute. So I was thinking, how about we keep those little secrets to ourselves?”

Patty rolls her eyes. “Iris, I really have no interest in you or your secret. I’m not going to tell the world who you are.”

“You are a liar, Thalia,” she counters, losing the faux-friendly demeanour she’s had so far. “You shot me, you kidnapped my best friend, and you helped a sociopath almost ruin our lives. Don’t you dare ask me to trust you.”

She raises an eyebrow. “’Best friend’? Is that all we’re calling him?”

“Yeah, that guy you tricked into dating you. You’ve probably forgotten his name, seeing as you’ve usually always referred to him as ‘assassination target one’.” She pauses. “Right now, there are only five people who know you’re still alive – me, Freddie Smoak, Olivia Queen, Eddie Thawne, and Barry. That number will remain at five if you stay away from us, stay in this life, and do not cause any trouble. You also won’t tell anyone who I am, and in exchange, Freddie will keep you hidden. If someone’s hunting you, I’ll let you know and you can leave. Eventually, they’ll get bored and stop looking.”

Patty sits back and folds her arms. “This is certainly friendly, Iris. You’ve never liked me, why are you helping?”

“Because Amadeus Waller will have someone kill you if he finds a trace of you. Henry Allen will kill you with his bare hands if I even hint that I know where you are. Nora Allen will shoot you and go to jail and be happy about it, and I’m not going to do that to Barry. But make no mistake, one slip up and I will tell them.”

Patty considers this and Iris eats like she hasn’t just threatened Patty’s life in as many words. “Do I really have a choice here?”

“Of course,” Iris answers, eating her pasta. “You could agree now, or I could use my mind control powers to make you agree. Lots of choice.”

“Well, consider me complicit. Though like I said, I really don’t care about you or your friends.”

She starts eating then, and Iris looks at her. “He loved you.”

“I know he did.”

“He loved you, and you… _you hurt him_.” She takes a deep breath. “Do you have any idea what you did to him? How much he’s been hurting since you left?”

“I find that hard to believe. He never hurt much when you were around.”

“Don’t,” Iris warns. “I mean it. You tried to kill him, because of some stupid feud that had nothing to do with you-”

“My father died-”

“ _We all have dead fathers_! Fathers who left or died, or-”

“God, Iris, I am not like you, alright?” she snaps. “I was never built like you. I never had the best friend who adored me and would do anything to protect me. I never had a Nora. I had what I had, and this is who I am now. We’re not the same. And it’s not as if any of this, me doing what I did and you being Miss Miracle, brought our dads back, is it?”

They quieten down when they realise how loudly they’ve been talking, and Iris looks down at her hands. “If this goes right, I never want to see you again,” she says. “And I hope I don’t.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“But I’m sorry about your mother.”

“For her death?”

“For what she did to you,” she says simply. Iris looks at her watch. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Freddie is redirecting any cyber-attacks on you.” She gets up, and Patty sighs.

“Look, Iris. If it makes Barry feel better, you can tell him I’m sorry.”

Iris looks at the door, where a familiar figure has just walked in. “Tell him yourself.”

Patty spots him and her eyes widen in shock. Barry folds his arms, looking at the floor, and Iris grabs her chin, her brown eyes burning into Patty’s blue ones. “I am not going far, Thalia. If you threaten him, I will know. If you hurt him, I will know. And if you do either of those things, this…” she grabs a fork and holds it in her open palm. It floats upwards where only they can see it, before bending with a barely audible whine until it resembles a right-angle. “… _will be your spine_.” Not missing a beat, Iris lets go of her chin and flashes a smile at a passing waiter. “Excuse me, could I get another fork for my friend? I was showing her something and I guess I broke it.”

“Whoa,” he says. “You bent this thing good!”

“Guess I don’t know my own strength.”

“Hey, maybe you’re a metahuman,” he jokes.

“Ha! That’ll be a miracle.”

***

Barry sits in front of Patty, his hands folded on the table, and studies her as the waiter comes by to give her another fork. Iris had mentioned that she was going to see Patty once Eddie told her that he knew she was alive, so he took the opportunity to come and talk to her as well. He wants closure. Being here with her is making his hands shake and his heart beat like a drum, but he’s safe in the knowledge that Iris is outside.

“You dyed your hair,” he says quietly.

“Had to,” she replies. “The blonde was too conspicuous.”

“Right.”

She swallows. “I…do you want to eat something?”

“Not hungry.”

Barry keeps trying to find her in there, the woman that he loved once, but he’s starting to realise that she was never in there. That person was a creation, a mirage, and they no longer exist. Trying to find her is like trying to hold water. “I thought of all these things to say to you,” he tells her quietly. “If I saw you again. Why did you do it, or how could you, but I know those things. There’s never going to be a satisfying answer.”

She reaches for his hands. “Look, Barry…” But he takes them away and puts them in his lap, looking down at them. He can see the hurt look in the corner of his eyes, and it’s kind of satisfying, but still. It is not enough. It will never be enough, not to heal him and all the anger he’s feeling right now.

“It wasn’t you,” she says quietly. “It was never you. You were just a target until I met you. But you, Barry – God, do you know how hard it was? You’re so…so _Barry_. You weren’t supposed to be like this.”

Barry doesn’t answer. Then he lets out a short laugh, and his voice is more bitter than he expected it would be. “I always liked these stories. On TV or in movies, or books. What’s the family vendetta? Why do they want revenge? Is it going to work? But people like you, you’re the most interesting character. Nobody cares about the schmuck who got duped because everyone cares about the one with the revenge story. There’s a reason _The Whole Nine Yards_ is a comedy.”

“Barry-”

“Did you ever love me at all?” he demands, and he hates how raw and hurt his voice is, because that means acknowledging what she did to him, how she broke him, and how much it hurt. “Or was that just acting?”

Then it’s Patty’s turn for silence, and she looks away. Barry thinks she isn’t going to answer, but then it comes, low and hesitant, almost like if she says it quietly enough, it won’t count. “Every day,” she says quietly. “Every day I was with you, the harder my job got.”

It’s like a punch in the gut, not because he wants her back, but because he’s realising what a waste it was. That they wasted all this love on something that turned out to be nothing in the end – him on someone who didn’t exist, and her on something that was a means to an end. “That doesn’t help.”

“I know it doesn’t.”

“I don’t want to be mad at you. I can’t do it anymore, it’s too much. It's not...good, for me.” He takes a deep breath and looks her dead in the eye for the first time. “Did Iris tell you about Freddie?”

“Iris made it perfectly clear that I had to agree with her.” She pauses. “Thank you. I know she’s only doing this because of you. I guess the two of you-"

"Thalia," he says in a voice he's never heard himself use before, "I will not be discussing me and Iris with you. Is that clear?"

She looks at him for a minute before a faint smile appears on her face. "You wanna know the exact moment I knew I didn't stand a chance in getting you to love me for real?"

"I did love you for-"

"No, Barry, you didn't. You loved me," she contends. "But it wasn't - there was a ceiling. The moment I realised I'd never be the most important person in your life was the night after Miss Miracle attacked us in the street. It was Iris, of course, but we didn't know that at the time. And we were going to have dinner with your mom, like we always did - and Iris called you crying, saying that she couldn't make it. We'd just been targeted by an insane metahuman, I was almost killed - and you still would have dropped everything in a second to go to her. You kept looking at your phone, and asking us all through dinner whether anything happened at work to upset her." She shrugs helplessly, that sad smile still on her face. "Iris West is hurt and Barry Allen comes running. And you always looked at her like you would move heaven and hell to protect her. How was I supposed to compete with that? There were three people in our relationship, Barry - hell, the only reason we were even  _in_ one is because Iris got struck by lightning and you had to pay attention to girls not named Iris. I was never going to be first in your heart, Barry. So I just took comfort in the fact that-"

"You at least still got to kill me?" Barry interrupts flatly. "I told you I'm not discussing me and Iris with you, apart from to reiterate what she said. Freddie is protecting you and we'll let you know if there's any danger."

"Well, like I said," she replies. "Thank you."

“Don’t thank me. I don’t enjoy death, that’s all.” He stands, before reaching into his pocket. “Your mother is buried in this cemetery,” he tells her, handing her the piece of paper that Eddie gave him. “If you want to see her.”

Patty takes it and he sees her, for just a moment. The tears in her eyes are from the person he loved, not the killer she really is. “Barry,” she whispers, her voice wobbling. “I really am sorry.”

Barry just nods a couple of times, before leaving. He leans against a wall in an alleyway, willing his heart to stop pounding. He knows she’s there before she says anything, but doesn’t open his eyes until he’s ready. “Hey,” Iris says quietly. “Get what you came for?”

“I…think so.”

“Good.” She reaches for his hands. “Let’s go home.”

In the next second, they find themselves in Barry’s kitchen, and Iris lets go of his hands. “I’m going to go back to STAR Labs,” she says. “We’re going to Earth-2 soon and I want to get some more breach practice in. Want to come with?”

“No, I’m good. I have some stuff to figure out.”

“Okay.” Iris squeezes his hand and leaves, and he steels himself before going into the garage, ignoring the dread in his stomach, because he is letting go. Then he sorts through everything that came out of his and Patty’s apartment. Clothes and kitchen stuff go to Goodwill, DVDs that he wants to keep go to his collection; the others he’s going to give to Linda and Wally or Chesca. He works for hours, declining his mother’s help when she asks, because he has to let go on his own, and then loads all the boxes into a car. The drive to the local Goodwill station isn’t long at all and he’s patient while the woman takes stock of all his stuff, because this is what happens when you let go. “Thank you for your donation,” she says warmly. “Would you like a sticker?”

“Uh, sure,” he shrugs, so she puts a smiley face with ‘I DONATED’ on his shirt and wishes him a nice day, which makes him laugh. Then, before he gets in his car, he dials a number.

“Hello?”

“Henry,” he says quietly. “It’s Barry.”

“Barry?” he repeats. “Are you alright? Did something happen?”

“No, not really. I just…So I have a day off tomorrow, and I thought you might want to get like a coffee or something.”

Henry pauses. “I would like that.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow.”

Barry gets in his car, feeling lighter than he’s felt in a long time. He moved out of their apartment, he got rid of all their stuff, he got closure. He doesn’t have to be defined by it. So Barry Allen closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and when he lets it out, he finally – _finally_ – lets her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gideon will explain who gave Iris that advice. I hope you enjoyed Barry's closure. Also, heads up, I am adapting S2, but not in the correct order, and I am outright cutting episodes (so no Grodd or Zoom, obv). Next chapter is Christmas and a first glimpse of Earth-2...let me know what you think!


	26. Baby, You're Like Lightning in a Bottle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three ghosts visit at Christmastime, causing far too much trouble to miss. The Tricksters are pissed, but Iris persists, and Barry remembers a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am in no way ashamed of that rhyme.

“Iris.”

“Not a word.”

“Iris, he’ll forgive you.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Iris says, “because I didn’t forget.”

She looks up and down Jitters, waiting for Julio to arrive, and hears Chesca sigh over the phone. Between the sharks and the immortal magicians and the breaches, Thanksgiving and now Christmas, she hasn’t had a lot of time to herself. She’s waiting for Julio so they can grab some coffee and walk back to work, but she also has some breach stuff, a weapons things with Linda and Chesca, she has to make the brownies for the dinner everyone’s having at the Allens, and do all her work before she goes on vacation.

“It’s understandable,” her friend continues, “since we’ve been dealing with so much shit.”

“Chesca, in twenty years of friendship, I have never once not gotten something for Barry for Christmas. Just because it’s not under the tree, doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten.”

She hears Chesca mutter something in Spanish, and she knows that she’s calling her stubborn because she’s said it enough times and Iris once translated it. Chesca is the third person to think that she’s forgotten to get Barry’s present, after her mother and Nora. It might have something to do with the fact that none of them have seen her shopping for it, it isn’t under the tree in STAR Labs, the tree at her house or the one at Nora’s, _and_ when she got Barry the fountain pen and watch set the previous year, she couldn’t stop talking about it. And they’re right, she doesn’t have it right at this moment, but it’s on it’s way and she’s very proud of it.

“Hi,” someone says, and she turns around. Julio smiles down at her, wrapped up in a blue scarf that compliments his eyes.

“Hey! I was just ordering our coffees, and then we can go on that walk.”

“Sure,” he says easily, and she beams at him just as the barista comes out with their orders. Julio grabs them and then looks around. “Hey, there’s Barry. Wanna go say hi?”

There is no godly reason that Iris would say no, except that Barry is having coffee with Henry at this moment and they’re still very new. She’s about to decline, but then Barry spots her, smiles, and waves them over. “Hi, guys,” he smiles pleasantly. Henry nods at them. “How’s your day?”

“Just grabbing a coffee before heading back to work.”

“Good idea. Oh, this is Henry,” he says to Julio, who shakes his dad’s hand. “Henry, this is Detective Julio Mendez, he works with Iris at CCPD.”

“Nice to meet you,” Henry says pleasantly. Iris gives Barry a proud little smile when she sees this, and then clears her throat. “Well, we have to get back to work. My mom says everyone should get to our around seven tomorrow.”

“Cool, we’ll be there. I’ll see you later.”

Iris and Julio walk slowly back to CCPD, careful to pick their way through the icy streets and past the Santa’s workshop that’s giving presents to little kids. Christmas is in a few days and their vacation will be starting soon. Julio is telling her about what his family does in the days after Christmas, and she’s telling him what she does on a _normal_ Christmas vacation, because she gets the feeling that ‘going to another dimension to figure out how to defeat an evil metahuman’ doesn’t rank up there with holiday sales and watching _Home Alone_.

“Wait, you did what to your aunt?” she laughs. Julio shrugs.

“We didn’t food colouring worked like that! Besides, green hair is very festive.”

“I don’t think she appreciated her _wig_ being turned green, Julio.”

“But she looked so good!” Julio points out, and Iris laughs again. They reach the entrance of CCPD and throw their empty coffee cups away. “How much work do you have to do before you go on vacation?”

“Not that much, actually,” she admits. “And then I have dinner at my best friend’s house, some days off, and then Christmas.”

“Great,” he nods. She looks down at her, his brown eyes earnest. “Because I was thinking that we could get dinner before then, or something.”

Iris blinks and then smiles. “Oh! I – that sounds great, actually. Can I call you? My house is going to be pretty hectic between now and then, but I’d love to go to dinner with you.”

It might be her imagination, but she thinks she catches the edge of disappointment in his thoughts. But he just smiles warmly and kisses her on the cheek, and they go their separate ways – her to her lab, and him into Captain Singh’s office. Iris is immediately sucked into the various cases that usually spring up around the holidays, and doesn’t think anything about it until she gets to STAR Labs. Jesse is working in the medbay going over everyone’s medical records with headphones on, while Linda and Chesca are in the corner working on something.

“Hey hey,” she greets them, setting her bag down. “All good in the Miracle cave? Everyone enjoying Great-Uncle Rudy’s eggnog?”

“Hey, Bambi Eyes,” Linda says easily. “Oh, yeah. That shit is _good_. How was work?”

“Eh. Blood, skin fibres, strands of hair. You know, Tuesday. So, what’s this brand-new toy that’s going to help us on Earth-2? You’ve been screaming about it in the group chat all week.”

“Well, you have come at the right time, young grasshopper,” Chesca says. She lifts what they’ve been working on off her workbench. “Because we’re done.”

Iris peers at the object in her hands. “How are Ray Bans going to help us on Earth-2?”

“’Ray Bans’,” she mutters, insulted. “My God. You’re lucky you have superpowers, Bambi Eyes.”

“They’re not Ray Bans,” Linda laughs. “You and Chesca mentioned something about her powers and yours that got us thinking. You said that she can feel vibrations whenever she touches an object, and when you threw a boomerang through the breach, you could identify which earth it was based on the vibrations.”

“Right…”

“So we were thinking,” Chesca continues, “what if we could turn those vibrations into something that Chesca could _see_ , so we’d know what the othr earths looked like? Because then when you guys go through the breach, you’re not wondering around blind. Plus, it’s a way for Chesca to practice her powers.”

Iris raises her eyebrows, impressed. “Well, that would be amazing. You guys did this in a month?”

“It would have taken less time, but the whole Vandal Savage, shark, yada-yada. I tell you, I need a damn vacation.” She shows them to Iris. To be fair, they are heavier than normal glasses, with thicker lenses. “We put a wavelength trigger in them,” Linda explains, to help with the whole other earths thing. I was going to add some gauntlets and see if we could add sonic blasts, but-”

“Whoa, OG Dr Light,” Chesca interrupts. “I’m good with the weaponry for now, there’s no need to shoot everything in sight. I’m not Patty Spivot.”

Linda snorts and Iris suppresses a smile. “I hate you both. How do we try it out?”

“We get Earth-2 Dr Light. He’s just down there complaining about how we have terrible suits.”

Iris laughs and then goes to retrieve him, to find that the Scott Evans of Earth-2 is indeed admiring his shape-up in the mirror of the prison. He raises her eyebrows when she snaps the cuffs on him. “What, we’re going on a walk?”

“Well, Dr Light, you’ll be happy to know that we are one step closer to getting you home. You just have to answer some questions first.”

“Yes,” he smiles, “I am single.”

“Thanks, but I’ve already dated the better version of you.”

“Oh, and there’s that skinny white guy who’s always fixing your glasses. He’s cute.”

Iris grits her teeth, because between this guy and Hailey, she’s had quite enough from metahumans who are always in her business. She doesn’t say another word, dragging him upstairs to where Jesse has joined Chesca and Linda. “Do these work on anyone?” he asks.

“No sir, you gotta be Vibe, like me. And fly as hell, like me.” She winks. “But that’s all natural.”

“Got your guinea pig,” Iris tells them, and Linda nods.

“Just put on the glasses, touch Dr Light, and tell us what you can see.”

Chesca slips on the glasses and touches him, before stumbling slighty. Iris catches her. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just…weird.” She straightens and frowns. “Okay, Earth-2 is beautiful. It’s all sepia tones and…wait, are the highways on stilts?”

“It’s the skyway,” Scott corrects, bored. “Senator Mars ordered a connecting network between Star City and Coast City for us.”

“Is he talking about _Bruno_ Mars?” Linda whispers. Iris shrugs.

“Earth-2, I guess. What else, Chess?”

“Okay, I’m kind of getting flashes. Oh, there’s the police department! It looks kind of different…Okay, we’re out of there. Um, Central City Memorial is the same? And now we’re downtown. Yo, Dr Light, is this your hideout? It’s pretty sweet.”

“I’m very good at my job, sweetheart,” he drawls. Iris’ eyes start to glow and he pipes back down.

“And we’re in the park…Oh. My. God.”

“What?” Linda asks. “What is it?”

“There’s a statue of Madam Miracle in the park, and she looks _dope_. We’ve gotta get on that for you, Iris.”

“Yeah, right after the multiple earths situation, I’ll put in an application for a statue in the park,” Iris says. “What else?”

“Wait, it’s STAR Labs. It’a different shape and the design’s a little different, but…” she breaks off, sniffing suddenly. “Dr Wells is there. With her husband.”

Iris sucks in a breath and looks at Jesse, whose face is unreadable. Chesca lets go and takes off the glasses. “It looks exactly like this place, just with a few details changed. We’ll need new clothes though – it’s like they get their look from the fifties with technology from the future.”

“Well, our good friend Scott will help us with that,” Iris says brightly, slapping him on the shoulder. “That is, unless he wants our first stop to be Iron Heights when we get to Earth-2.”

“You guys have a plan for when you get there, right?” Linda asks. Jesse clears his throat.

“Yes, finally, once we stopped arguing about what people wanted to bring as snacks-”

“If you don’t know what Twizzlers do for my concentration-”

“We have a plan,” Iris interrupts. “Jesse, why don’t you tell Linda what it is? _Without_ the sniping.”

“Fine.” He turns on one of the large monitors, where it brings up a picture of him, Chesca, Barry and Iris. “We agreed last week that the four of us should be the ones to go through the breaches, since we have no one to guide us through that earth apart from a felon.”

“Con artist,” Scott corrects. “Felons get caught; I don’t.”

“My apologies (!) We have one goal – to find Madam Miracle and ask her how to defeat Killer Frost. From what Scott has told us, and from what I’ve just seen, Madam Miracle retired some time about a decade ago. However, she worked very closely with the police department in CCPD – although I don’t know the detective’s name.”

“How did you find all that out?” Chesca asks, and Scott grins.

“Who do you think did the shape-up?”

“You do what you have to do,” he says, but he doesn’t look too pleased about it, and Iris tries not to giggle. “Anyway, we though that Chesca and I could go to STAR Labs and talk to Dr Wells, since she created a metahuman alert app that could detect them after _her_ Particle Accelerator exploded and created more.”

“More?”

“Well, there were natural metahumans before that. They were the ones Madam Miracle defeated. Besides, she’s probably the most likely candidate to believe we’re from another earth. With his journalistic instincts, we thought Barry could go to the paper and CCPD, and find out how we can get in touch with her. And then there’s Miss Miracle.”

“This is fun,” Iris says. “Basically, I’m going there to cause trouble. Madam Miracle is retired, but if another metahuman showed up, I bet she would turn up to see what was going on.”

“So your plan,” Linda splutters, “is improvise?”

“I don’t see what other choice we have. Besides, we also have to consider our dopplegangers. I’ve never been there, but I have seen our dopplegangers on other earths.”

“But there’s no guarantee that they’ll be in the same situations as us,” Chesca counters. “Look at Scott, and Superboy’s earth – we don’t even exist!”

“Besides, we know someone with mind control,” Jesse points out, and Iris glares at him.

“You are _way_ too liberal with that. Anyway,” she adds. “We’re going a couple of days after Christmas, and you, Wally, Eddie and Henry are in charge until we get back. Cool?”

“Cool. Hey, where were you at lunch? I called but you didn’t answer.”

“Oh.” Iris shrugs. “I was with Julio.”

Linda and Chesca share a look and Linda nods at Jesse. “Yo, Dr C. Why don’t you take Scott here back to his pad so he can get back to admiring his haircut in the mirror? And then take a walk.”

Jesse gives them a thoroughly unimpressed look but does as he’s asked, doing his best to ignore Scott talking on the way back down. Iris eyes them. “Guys. What’s going on?”

“I was just curious,” Linda says. “You went to lunch with Julio?”

“Well, we got coffee.”

“And this is the day _after_ you saved everyone from that big bus crash.”

“…I guess it is.”

“You guys got breakfast last week,” Chesca notes. “That was after you helped Olivia with her Dana Darkh problem.”

Iris looks between them both. “Uh-huh… Totally missing it. What’s up?”

Linda sighs. “Okay, I’m just going to say it. Iris, you don’t want to date this guy.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I do, he’s nice.”

“It’s been a month, and I haven’t met him. We spend practically everyday together! He only met Chesca long enough for her to give him that ridiculously weak nickname-”

“It is _flu season_!” Chesca complains. “I’m off my game a little, alright?”

“He hasn’t met Wally, or Jesse. He only knows Nora through work, Barry through Nora, and he hasn’t even met your mom.” She pauses. “And have you noticed you only call him when we’re done with something Miss Miracle-related?”

Iris’ eyes widen. “That can’t be true...We did – I was just…”

“Actually,” Gideon’s voice booms from the speakers, “it is true.” In the next second, the monitors start showing times and dates, as well as pictures of what they’ve done over the past month. “Almost all of your dates with Mr Mendez are very soon after your Miss Miracle excursions.”

“What in HOLY HELL is that?” Linda demands, looking around. “Is he talking to us?”

“Gideon,” Iris says patiently. “When I connected you to all the speakers and computers in this place, I wanted you to help us with things that we maybe weren’t seeing or didn’t understand. Not telling everyone about my dates, and is that – how did you hack into the videos at work?”

The reply comes as if Iris has asked the most idiotic question in the world. “I’m brilliant.”

“AGAIN,” Linda demands shrilly, “ _what is that_?”

“A supercomputer I created.”

“Artificial intelligence,” he corrects.

“You made him?”

“In the future. It’s complicated.”

“Miss Park,” Gideon continues pleasantly. “I was created with specifications from the future accessed by Colin Snow, to whom you all refer as ‘Killer Frost’.”

“Or Dr Asshole No. 1,” Chesca mutters. Linda’s eyes pop.

“You guys really should put a manual at the door. You made him yourself?”

“It was Miss West and…well, spoiler,” Gideon hedges. “But the fact of the matter is, Iris, my primary function is to serve you and ensure your wellbeing. And I don’t think continuing to date a man about whom you are not enthusiastic, and one who you might be using to distract from your own problems, is good for you.”

Linda and Chesca give her looks like they agree and she sighs, taking her glasses off her face. Maybe that’s it, she realises. Maybe she doesn’t really like him and maybe she’s using him, which makes her quite possibly the worst person on fifty-two earths apart from Colin himself. Or maybe it’s that nagging feeling she’s had since she found out about what Colin did to her – that none of this is supposed to be happening in the first place. “I should want him more, shouldn’t I?” she says quietly. “Today he asked me to dinner and the first thing I thought about was all this superhero stuff and how I could lie to him about it. But you’re right, I’m just using him as a distraction. Wow, Miss Miracle is a bitch, that’s new.”

“Now, come on, Iris,” Chesca says. “That’s not true and you know it isn’t. We all want a distraction now and then, and it’s understandable when literally everything in the city has tried to kill you in the past year and a half. But I – _we_ – care about you, and with how your life is, you deserve someone you’re excited about.”

“And when you’re with someone and lying about such a huge part of yourself, you’re not yourself when you’re with them,” Linda adds. “Look, we’re not saying dump him, but…sleep on it. Ask yourself what you want out of this, and whether it’s the same things as him. You have some time – it’s not like anything’s going to happen before Christmas, is it?”

***

Barry watches Julio and Iris leave, their coats sprinkled with snow from outside. Henry clears his throat and Barry turns back to him. “He seems nice,” Henry says. “Is that Iris’ boyfriend?”

“No,” he replies immediately, and then pauses. They haven’t actually talked about it much apart from to mention that’s where she’s going, but Barry doesn’t think they’re serious. He hasn’t even met Francine yet, as far as he knows. “They’re just dating, I think.”

“And are you alright with that?”

He frowns. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, it is Iris, after all. It’s normal to feel a little weird about him.”

“Wait, you think I’m _jealous_? No, we – no, I don’t, no, no, I’m not jealous of Julio. Iris is my best friend, I have no reason to be jealous.”

Henry regards him. “Yes, Barry, that’s what I meant. I’ve seen how close you two are, and I wouldn’t like it if someone monopolised my best friend’s time. But I didn’t think you were jealous, exactly, because, as you said, Iris is your best friend.”

Barry blinks, feeling colour rise in his cheeks. “Oh, right. Well, he’s nice. And she likes him, so…Anyway, you said you had a question? About one of my articles?”

“Right!” Henry gets all excited and pulls out a newspaper article with his name on it and several lines underlined. “I wanted to ask you about this thing you talked about when you wrote that article comparing metahuman psychology and alien psychology when talking about Miss Miracle’s foes vs Superwoman’s foes.”

“Oh,” he shrugs. He takes a sip of coffee. “So it’s pretty simple, when you think about it. Superwoman is an alien raised among humans, while Miss Miracle was created by the Particle Accelerator. Superwoman’s enemies are people like Darkseid, Braniac, Doomsday – they are all aliens or alien-adjacent, and so they feel a kinship in that sense. But Superwoman has pledged herself to protect humankind, while those people think of themselves as above humankind. So their problem is ‘Superwoman has betrayed me’.

“With Miss Miracle, it’s a little different. She was once normal, and now she isn’t. The same can be said for the people she defeats. But she’s the one who gets written about, the one people adore, and what’s more, she gets in the way of people using their powers for evil. So _their_ problem is ‘Miss Miracle is better than me’.” He sips his coffee again. “It’s all about dominance, but it comes from a different place, and manifests itself in a different way.”

Henry just looks at him, and Barry feels a small glow when he thinks he recognises pride in his eyes. “That’s brilliant.”

He shrugs modestly. “Yeah, well. It helps when one of the subjects is always calling you to fix the things she breaks. Makes for some good interviewing opportunities.”

“Still, it must be hard to think of all this stuff.”

“Not really, when you spend years studying it. Besides, aren’t there people like me who work for you? You must be used to this by now.”

Henry shrugs. “Yes, but those people are trained from birth – you use instinct and intellect-”

“It’s mostly good old-fashioned nosiness, but you can go ahead and keep telling me how awesome I am.”

They both laugh, both seem to realise what’s going on, and then peter out. Barry doesn’t want to think about how much he likes this between them, even though it’s not quite easy yet, because there’s still too much between them. He looks at his watch. “Hey, so I’ve gotta get back to work, but I’ll see you at the next team meeting?”

“Yes, Eddie told me there was another earth we had to rule out?”

Barry thinks about this. Iris came back from her latest earth-hopping adventure covered in black goo that took Chesca three days to scrape off the suit. She jumped out of the breach, stomped across the Cortex to the board where they marked the different earths and their details, and wrote ‘we are _never_ going to Earth-22’. Every time he asks about it, she shudders. “Yeah, we’re making progress and we’re going to Earth-2 soon. Should be fun.”

Henry shakes his head. “In all my years of doing this, I’ve never encountered other earths before. I feel old.”

“You _are_ old,” Barry laughs and doesn’t stop himself because it’s the kind of thing you’d say to your dad. He holds out his hand for Henry to shake. “Later, Henry.”

“Goodbye, Barry.”

Barry walks back to work, preoccupied. The first coffee date hadn’t gone as smoothly, with both of them meandering into topics that were unexpectedly thorny for them, but for the next they stuck to safer subjects, like Barry explaining things about Iris’ suit or Henry telling him why they leave Superwoman and the Green Arrow to their own devices when it comes to saving people. He still isn’t comfortable with calling him anything close to ‘father’, but he definitely doesn’t feel like punching him or threatening him, so there’s that. Besides, they do still have to focus on finding Madam Miracle and then trying to locate Malina. Iris has gone to more than a dozen earths and not found her yet, but she promises that it’s just a matter of time.

The next day, when Barry goes back to work, he’s planning to work on a story, sneak a picture of Missy wearing a Christmas hat, and eat cake. That is, until he sits down and turns on his computer. Instead of the welcome message and background, he gets an eerie version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ on a black background. When he looks around, he sees that the same thing has happened to all the other computers. Then two familiar faces appear, grinning into the camera, and he gasps. “Tricksters,” he breathes.

“Merry Christmas, Central City,” Jules Jesse grins into the camera. “Remember us? We’ve come to give you a gift on this occasion of Yuletide…”

“Call the police,” Barry tells an intern. “ _Now_.”

“Some of you may have thought the little girl in the gold costume put us away for good,” Elsa continues, joining her mother. “But you can never keep a Trickster down. What do you say, want a little Christmas cheer?”

“I’ve got just the one – a riddle! Ever heard of _A Christmas Carol_ , citizens? You know with the Scrooge and the death and the cold and the _death_?”

“Did we mention the death?” Elsa adds, laughing. She gets right up to the screen, her blue eyes maniacally wide. “ _First up, dear Miss Miracle, your ghost of Christmas past, find the bomb we’ve given you, or Central City won’t last_!”

The video cuts out, the echoing notes of the song hanging in the air. Scott taps him on the shoulder. “Are we telling Iris?”

Barry swallows around the lump in his throat. “She probably already knows, but we need to ask Erica how we’re reporting this.”

Detectives are all over the place within fifteen minutes, and his mother makes a beeline for him. “I’m okay, mom,” he says after she’s let him go. “Really. It was just a video.”

“My God, this city,” she mutters. “They escaped a couple of weeks ago, but we were all too busy with sharks and breaches to deal with it. You say this happened when you turned on your computer?”

“Yeah, we think she must have done something to make mine the hub, because I’m the most connected to Miss Miracle.”

They both look over at Iris, who is talking to one of their interns about it. His mother squeezes his shoulder. “I’ll be back, okay? I need to talk to your boss.”

Barry looks at the message again. Ghost of Christmas past? That could be anything or anyone, and doesn’t give a clue as to where in hell the bomb could be. He’s already texted Chesca about it and she’s working on it with Eddie, but since Eddie was in a bunker when the Tricksters were around, he’s not sure how much help it will be. Then he feels someone tap him on the shoulder. “Iris,” he says. He looks around, aware of how much they can’t say. “Did you get anything?”

She shakes her head, removing her gloves, as Scott comes to stand next to them. “This was all done remotely. Your boss is sending everyone home to see whether they can trace the leak.”

“But you’re on it too, right?” Scott asks. “You and your friends.”

“Yeah, I’m just not sure how we’re going to find it in a place as big as Central City. She’s graduated to freaking _riddles_ now,” Iris replies quietly, and Barry looks at her.

“Hey, what’s up? You don’t think we can do it?”

“Sorry, I’m just preoccupied. And honestly, I kind of wish there would be a different goal than ‘kill the city’. It’s getting stale at this point.” She tries for a joking tone, but he can feel that she’s freaked out about this. Barry looks at her, suddenly getting the urge to wrap his arms around her and kiss her on the forehead and promise that everything will be fine, and that he’ll keep her safe, even though he has no idea that it will be or whether he can do that. “One step at a time, sunshine,” he replies, and he really might have done all that stuff anyway had he not noticed Missy walking up to catch the tail end of the conversation.

“Sorry to bother your reporters, Ms Bridge,” Iris says, adjusting her glasses. “I just needed some encouragement from my friends. The Trickster kidnapped my mother several months ago.”

“Yes, this city does seem beset by insanity sometimes,” she replies. “But I’m sure Allen has contacted Miss Miracle.”

“I have,” he confirms, and looks at Iris. “She’ll get her. She always does.”

“That’s the spirit, Allen. Now is the time for your incessant optimism if not any other. You two, make sure you get some rest over the holiday. Merry Christmas, Tulip.”

“Merry Christmas,” Iris replies, amused, as Missy leaves. Barry snorts.

“Jesus. ‘Tulip’. She’s not even trying anymore, is she?”

“Nope,” Iris laughs. “She isn’t. Hey, I have to get back to work, but I’ll keep you posted, okay?”

Iris leaves before the other detectives do, and Barry goes back to his desk to get some work for home. That’s when Missy comes back, giving him a curious look. “Missy. Anything you need?”

She doesn’t reply for a moment. “Barry, every Christmas, in the spirit of the holiday, I give advice that I feel will be beneficial to people. Today, you have that honour.”

Barry laughs. “What is it? Think my introductions should be a little tighter? Hate my use of the word ‘ostentatious’?”

“No,” she says simply. “Women to whom we refer as ‘sunshine’ are not merely our best friends.”

***

“…so this woman kidnapped Iris’ mother?” Jesse clarifies.

“While wearing a lot of orange,” Chesca adds, shuddering. “I thought I was watching Willy Wonka.”

Iris paces up and down the Cortex, muttering to herself. “Past, past, _past_ …God, why didn’t I read the _The Christmas Carol_ in school?”

“Iris, it can’t be that literal,” Eddie tells her.

“Yeah, otherwise the bomb would be trying to teach you about all the mistakes you made in the past,” Jesse tells her. “That isn’t it – it’s something else.”

Iris looks around at all of them. She’s supposed to be here asking whether they can help track the Trickster since they have more sophisticated equipment at STAR Labs, while Nora is at home with the excuse that Barry needs to be watched since he’s the closest link to Miss Miracle. “Well, I know the bomb’s big,” she points out. “Because it’s supposed to take out all of Central City.”

“There are only a few locations that could house a bomb that big,” Chesca points out, tapping at the computer terminals. Eddie snaps his fingers.

“Iris, where did you fight them last year? Was it out in the open, or…”

“I – Well, I went to her warehouse, and then they took my mom from the prison, and then they took the town hall hostage…”

“That’s it!” Chesca points at the screen. “There’s an underground bunker that was built there during the sixties in case the Pacific got nuked by the Russians, it was supposed to hold some sort of secret weapon-”

“How do _you_ know about that?” Eddie demands. “That’s classified!”

Chesca grins at him. “Cause I’m fly.”

_Really? Flirting at a time like this?_

_Sorry_. Out loud, Chesca clears her throat. “But after the Cold War ended, it was cleared out and left empty. They could have the bomb in there.”

Iris nods, pulling on her mask. “Call the bomb squad and tell them to meet me there. Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Every diffused a bomb?”

“On three different continents.”

“Good,” she nods tersely. “You’re up. Jesse, I need a picture of that room and it’s coordinates.”

Everyone hops to work, and soon Iris is faced with a picture of the town hall on one side and an old bunker on the other. Closing her eyes, she wills herself there, and then finds herself in a dark, musty, and cavernous room. She switches on the glow in her eyes and looks around. “You see anything, Iris?” Chesca says into her headpiece.

“Not yet,” she replies, moving slowly. There’s every chance that she could trip this bomb by accident. She reaches out with her mind, gratified to find no resistance. “But there’s no one here waiting to shoot me, so that’s already a good thing.”

Iris pads forward, heart thrumming in her chest, until she suddenly hears a low hum. She lifts off the ground and flies forward, breathing a sigh of relief when she sees a complicated set of wires attached to a device on a table. “Eddie, I found it. God, it’s _huge_!”

“Iris?” Eddie says. “Can you see all the wires, or are they on the inside?”

“Um…Kind of – both. It’s both.”

“Okay,” he says calmly. “The important thing is not to panic.”

“Yeah, we’re kind of past that stage now. What do I do?”

“Tell me what you see. What colour are the wires?”

“There’s a red one, a brown one, a yellow one, and a blue one. Should I cut them in a specific order?”

“This isn’t _Mission Impossible_ , Iris,” Eddie says, amused. “Now, you didn’t mention a timer, which means that it’s going to be triggered remotely. In an ideal world, we would shoot it – cutting the wires is a last resort.”

“Really?” Jesse asks. “Why?”

“Well, she could die.”

“You GUYS,” Iris says. “Could we not speak that into existence? Trying to make it to Christmas, here.”

“Okay, I think I understand the kind of bomb you’ve got there. Is there a camera in your suit or something? I want to be able to see it too.”

“Yes!” Chesca says triumphantly, and Iris feels a warm sensation between her eyes as the camera is turned on. “And you said this would be a bad idea.”

“Chesca, I am diffusing a bomb underneath the city hall by the light of my glowing eyes. It’s not ideal. Eddie, I’m ready.”

For the next agonising few minutes, Iris slowly and carefully cuts the wires the way Eddie tells her. Her fingers shake as she does what he asks, sweat dripping down her brows as she cuts, and wills herself not to think about the fact that if she does this wrong, the entire city could go up in smoke. “Okay, the green one is done. What next?”

“The red one is the live one,” she explains. “It’s the one that activates the detonation, so if we’ve done this correctly, that should render the bomb completely useless.”

“And if we’ve done it wrong?” Jesse wants to know. Eddie clears his throat.

“Hey, we did our best.”

“Okay, on that note…” Iris squeezes the pliers over the wire and holds her breath. For two seconds, nothing happens. Then there’s a flash of light and a bang that rattles her bones, and streamers and banners burst out of all corners of the room. “Iris!” Chesca says frantically. “Iris, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Iris says, shutting her eyes against the ringing in her ears. The streamers are green and gold – Miss Miracle colours, and amongst everything she can see that there’s a little Miss Miracle plushie toy – the kind that have been selling like hotcakes all holiday season – lying on the floor. “Guys,” she says, picking it up. “This was a trap, and the Trickster isn’t done.”

“What do you mean?” Jesse asks.

Iris is studying the toy. It’s small and looks pretty cute. But what isn’t cute is the large pin sticking through it, the ‘x’ over each of her eyes, and the thick red paint dabbed all over it to represent blood. “I mean,” she says slowly, “that the Trickster wants me dead.”

***

“Mom, are you sure you don’t want any help?”

“No,” his mother calls firmly from the kitchen over the sounds of Christmas music. “I promised Francine I would make this pie. I made it for her when Joe was still alive, I can make it now.”

Barry laughs and goes back to wrapping everyone’s presents, while looking through an old photo album of. Erica gave everyone the day off so the police can find out how the Trickster hacked the computers, and his mother told him that the Captain also sent Iris home because the Trickster kidnapped her mother last year. Not knowing, of course, that Iris is currently running around trying to stop the woman from blowing up the city. She called to say that the first riddle was a trap, and now Iris is on standby for the next one.

“How are the presents coming?” she says.

“Well, I’ve got Iris’, Francine’s, Linda’s, and Wally’s done. The others shouldn’t take me very long.” He turns another page of the album, this time landing on a Christmas several years ago when he thought it was a good idea to eat six slices of pumpkin pie because Great-Uncle Rudy dared him to. He still can’t look at it without feeling nauseous. He suddenly thinks of what it would be like if Malina had been there too, whether she would have dared him to do it too, or joined in. It’s her birthday in a few months, and he’s trying not to allow himself to think that, next Christmas, they could all be together.

“So I had coffee with Henry yesterday,” he says, as the song changes to Michael Buble’s _It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas_. His mother glances back at him from decorating the pie before she puts it in the oven.

“Oh?” she says evenly. “What was it like?”

“It was okay. He’s…nice, you know. It’s still weird, but he’s kind of easy to talk to. And he really is obsessed with fishing.”

She comes back in and sits across from him, smiling ruefully. “Yes, he was always such a good listener. And my word, the fishing. If I never have to hear about the wonders of halibut in this life or the next, it will be too damn soon.”

They laugh and his mother clasps her hands together. Barry tips his head. “What is it, mom?”

“I’m thinking of inviting him to dinner tonight,” she says, and he leans forward.

“Mom, you don’t have to – I was just seeing if maybe we could work together-”

“No, it’s for me. Well, for us. I just feel like if – when – we get your sister back, it would be nice if her parents didn’t want to kill each other. Plus, I’ve already punched him, and he told me you threatened him, so we’re evolving at least.”

He gives her a small smile. “Well, I’m okay with it. But we’re at Francine’s so we _really_ can’t punch him.”

“I will do my best.” She glances at the photo album. “What were you doing with this?”

Barry shrugs. “Just looking through it. We haven’t had much time to take a lot of pictures – except the selfies Chesca takes when we’re doing with Miss Miracle, but Iris always takes her iPhone away from her when she does that. And I was just thinking of what it would be like if Malina had been here.”

His mother smiles, before getting up and kissing him on the forehead. “Who knows? We could know what that’s like soon.”

She goes back into the kitchen and he goes back to wrapping the presents. Then he feels a slight twinge when he sees that the next picture is of him and Patty at the ice-skating rink the previous year. He must have forgotten to throw it away. Michael Buble stops singing, and he doesn’t understand why his stomach does this weird swooping thing and his heart starts beating at a mile a minute. Then he hears the lyrics, and he remembers.

_Rockefeller Centre skaters_

_Holiday entertainers_

_Carol singers, Christmas lights_

_Wrapping paper, silent nights._

_Christmas is leading me home…_

Barry walks over to the tree that he decorated a few days ago, just like he did a year ago when this song was playing, and Iris walked in with an expression he had never seen before on her face. She looked like her world was about to end, and in that moment, he hadn’t understood why. But then she had told him she loved him, that she had for decades, and that she had to tell him because she couldn’t lie anymore, and he understood. Because when his best friend told him that she had loved him before she could even define the word ‘love’, she understood that it could ruin them forever. And for a while, it almost had. He remembers that he knew he didn’t love Iris like that – that wasn’t possible when he had Patty, right? But that was a year ago. Since then they’ve been through everything: him finding out she was Miss Miracle, being mad about it, her mother being kidnapped, everything with Patty. They’re good now. They’re best friends. But…

 _Women to whom we refer as ‘sunshine’ are not merely our best friends_.

He’s just looked at Missy in utter bewilderment when she told him that, and she’d walked away. He’s been thinking about it all day, but he can’t make sense of it. But Iris _is_ his sunshine. The nickname comes from the song he used to sing to her to comfort her, true, but he’s never told her that it’s also because she’s always been a bright spot for him. For all that she tells him that she couldn’t be Miss Miracle without him, she’s been his rock more than anything this year. Maybe it’s because she’s dealt with crazy metahumans and killer jellyfish and everything in between, but she’s been the one to shield him from Patty and Henry coming back and everything that did to him, even when she didn’t know it.

 _And then I felt really lucky ‘cause the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen in my whole life wanted to be my best friend, and I got to follow you around all the time_.

That was what hit him the most, because he remembers that day, and asking her to be his best friend, and he loved it too, but not for the same reasons. But now it’s years later and she hasn’t looked at him in quite the same way that she did before she told him, and now he’s starting to wonder whether he wants that. The idea scares him more than anything they’ve faced up to this point. He spots Iris’ present sitting under the tree, the first one he wrapped, and a smile curves his lips because he can’t wait to see her face when she opens it. He still has her present that she gave him, the watch – he wears it every day, feeling naked without it, and he takes the fountain pen with him to work all the time. His phone ringing cuts him out of his thoughts. “Hello?”

“Barry,” Iris says. “Are you at home?”

“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “Uh, yeah, I’m home.”

“Good, I – wait, you sound weird. Are you okay?”

 _Do you still love me?_ “Yeah, I’m fine. What’s up?”

“The Tricksters sent another riddle and I think we need everyone’s help in figuring it out. But if you’re busy-”

“No, it’s cool. If you need me, I’m…I’m there.”

***

Iris sighs through her nose. “Play it again.”

Chesca clicks a button and the video begins to play. The Tricksters are dancing around in Santa costumes, light flickering between them so their shadows are dancing on the walls. “Very well done, little Miss Miracle, you got the first one!” Elsa squeals happily. “Would you like another?”

“Don’t tease her, dear,” Jules croons. She twirls a candy cane between her fingers and then sucks on it. “Alright, golden girl, let’s see whether you have another miracle left in you. _Today has been happy, filled with love and content, but there’ll be no justice if you don’t find this next present_!”

“What the hell does that mean?” Jesse asks. “’Filled with love and content’?”

“One thing you learn about the Trickster,” Chesca tells him, “the joke doesn’t really matter as long as the punchline is always ‘and then we blew it the fuck up’.”

“Yeah, but the last one had to do with Iris fighting them the last time,” Eddie points out. “Which is why they attacked the town hall.”

“Because they took the place hostage,” Barry says. He studies the message, which Chesca has written on the board. “But he’s right, I don’t get this one.”

“We already called the bomb squad,” Chesca tells them. “We’ve got them stationed at anywhere there’d be a bomb big enough to level the city, but they haven’t found anything.”

“Justice,” Eddie mutters. “What is that? Could that be the courthouse, or the DA’s office?”

“There are dozens of courthouses all over the city,” Barry points out. “And the District Attorney’s office isn’t that big.”

“And I’ve testified at the courthouses before, they’re nowhere near big enough to hold a bomb that could blow up Central City.”

“Unless there’s a bomb in each one,” Jesse says suddenly. Everyone stares at him. “A bomb in a big place is was literally the first one. They don’t seem like the type to repeat their tricks.”

“Chess, get me a map of all the courthouses in the city,” Iris orders, and Chesca nods. “On it…Oh, God.”

“They’re all over the city,” Barry realises. She’s highlighted the courthouses in green, and they make a line that snakes across the city in a jagged line. “If all of those bombs go off at once…”

“Yeah, that’ll level the city, alright,” Chesca says. “Iris, this is a picture of the first one, and here are the coordinates.”

“I’ll call the bomb squad again, they need to send some people to these places,” Jesse adds. Barry sits at a terminal and brings up his blog and all of Miss Miracle’s social media accounts, putting out an alert that the Tricksters have struck again and any suspicious items should be reported to the police. Eddie comes to sit next to him as Chesca advises Iris and Jesse talks to the bomb squad.

“Eddie, could you send a text to Iris’ mom?” he asks as he types. “She know what iris is doing, usually, but we like to let her know.”

He directs Eddie to one of the other terminals and he does as he’s told. Then Barry pulls up a map of the courthouses and Iris so he can keep an eye on her. A grin pulls at his lips when he sees the bewildered expression on Eddie’s face. “You’ll get used to it,” he laughs.

“Oh, it’s not that. It’s just that I think I just saw you all break about half a dozen laws.”

“Aren’t you technically still missing?”

“Fair.” He pauses. “So, how was your trip to Opal City?”

He knows what Eddie’s talking about without detecting the implication in his tone. “It was good,” he replies carefully. “But I don’t think I’ll be going back there.”

“Good to know. So who decorated this place? It looks like Santa’s Grotto.”

“Uh, Iris,” he admits. “She always kicked my ass if the place wasn’t decorated properly, so she made us all come in early last week.”

“Iris? The five foot four one with the glasses?”

“And superpowers,” he points out. Plus, Iris does the thing where her eyes get all big behind her glasses. He’s pretty sure she’s not actually doing it on purpose, but it’s really hard to say no to her when she makes that face. “It’s her favourite time of the year.”

“It’s Malina’s, too,” he says quietly. Barry looks at her. “Yeah, she’s really obsessed with it. She always used to make us get stockings and stuff like that, no matter what was going on. There’s nothing like being undercover in Gotham and trying to find pumpkin pie before Christmas.”

Barry considers this as he watches Iris flit around the city. “I keep thinking about what would have happened if things were different. If he never left, or if he came back, or…”

“Yeah, me too. Not about that, but…” Eddie struggles for a second. “My father was not a good guy, Barry. He killed people he shouldn’t have and he made a mockery of our organisation. Doesn’t make me wish things were different, though. But I guess it’s no use living in the past, right?” He looks around. “Although I have to say, your present is really weird.”

“Yeah,” he admits, narrowing his eyes at the screen. “Tricksters and bombs and Miss Miracle dolls…Guys, has Iris actually found any of these bombs?”

“Not yet,” Chesca replies, “but we’re not done.”

“Iris told me why she became a CSI,” Eddie says. “To find out who killed her dad.”

“Yes and no. She always wanted to find justice for people, no matter what. It’s why she always takes on so much work and does all these testimonies as an expert witness in court. Some people can’t find justice all by themselves.” He laughs. “I guess that’s why she wanted to become Miss Miracle so badly.”

Eddie thinks for a moment. “So she’s justice and you’re…truth?”

Barry thinks back to those first days when he was writing about Miss Miracle – though Iris is still a little annoyed by the name ‘Blink’ – about how desperate he was to get the truth about the impossible into the world. For Iris, ironically. “Yeah, I guess. Justice and… _shit_. Guys, there are no bombs in the courthouses.”

“You got that right,” Chesca snaps. “We’ve been all over this damn city, and there aren’t any in there!”

“No, we were looking at it wrong – we skipped a step. Where’s the first place you go to get justice, before you get a lawyer?”

Everyone gets there in the same moment. “The precinct,” Jesse says. “Are you sure?”

“She kidnapped Iris’ mom because she worked the case last year, and mom is the one who arrested her the second time.” Barry presses a button on the terminal. “Iris, we were looking in the wrong place! You have to get to the precinct, the bomb’s in there!”

***

Iris curses as Barry explains it. “They’ve been arrested twice already, it makes sense that they’d target the precinct,” he says. Iris puts a hand to her ear as she floats above the city. “But a bomb in the precinct? That wouldn’t be large enough to level the city.”

“But a bomb in the precinct would most definitely be enough to panic the city.”

“Got it,” she says tersely. She’s been flitting in and out of courthouses, looking in hidden rooms for signs of anything that could look like a bomb, but she hasn’t been able to find any. And now it looks like the Tricksters are targeting the police simply because Iris and Nora had the misfortune to be the ones assigned to talk to her. “Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“Call the Captain and tell her that I’m on my way to talk to her.”

Iris waits for a few minutes before he confirms that the Captain knows she’s coming. She teleports into her office, not even having the time to appreciate her shock at Miss Miracle showing up. “Captain.”

“Miss Miracle. Barry Allen told me you were coming.”

Iris nods. “Captain, I need you to listen carefully. I have reason to believe that Jules Jesse and Elsa Walker have placed a bomb somewhere in this building. I need you to evacuate everyone from the precinct and wait for the bomb squad to declare this building safe again. Can you do that?”

“Alright,” she nods. Iris’ glowing eyes and her standing in shadow prevents the captain from recognising her, but she tries to look her in the eye anyway. “Miss Miracle-”

“Don’t worry, captain. She’s not ruining Christmas.” She nods. “I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”

Captain Singh strides quickly out, and Iris hears her tell everyone to leave. She puts a hand to her ear. “Chesca, could you check the thermal imaging of this place? There must be some sort of heat signature being given off.”

“I’ve got you… _there_ , on what looks like the lower east wing of the precinct.”

“There’s a lower east wing of the precinct?” Barry asks.

“Yeah, it’s where we keep all the microfiche files from all the old cases,” Iris tells them. “I’ve been there once, maybe? On my first day, years ago. Guys, it’ll take my way too long to look for the bomb in all those cabinets!”

“Chesca, can you pinpoint the signature to a specific cabinet?” Eddie asks.

“No, without being there myself, the most I can do is one corner of the room.”

“Iris,” Jesse says calmly. “You’ve mastered the electricity thing, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” she says, distracted. She can see everyone leaving the building, their worried chatter receding as they file into the street. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’ve been reading Colin’s reports on your powers and Aunt Helena’s. Like calls to like, and the same can be said from electricity. If you concentrate, block out the world, and think with your powers, you should be able to feel the bomb.”

“Feel the bomb? Isn’t that a movie?” Chesca ponders.

“That’s ‘Love the Bomb’, and it’s _Dr Strangeglove_ ,” Eddie tells her, and she hears Barry sigh.

“The two of you, I swear…Iris, get down there and we’ll try to talk you through it. The bomb squad will be there in a minute.”

Iris nods and flits down to the room where they store the files, her heart sinking when she sees that there are even more. “You’re saying I should…think with my powers? I don’t know how to do that.”

“Think of it like instinct,” Barry tells her. “Like…Like with your dance teacher used to tell you, you have to feel it instead of think.”

Madam Dupont has a moustache, but she did teach her how to waltz effectively. She closes her eyes, feeling out, and feels a sort of punch somewhere to her left, like a small siren has gone off. When she opens her eyes, she steals towards that side of the room, the feeling growing louder. Very slowly, she opens the cabinets with her mind, being careful not to jolt it into exploding. Once she opens the third one, she sees it, nestled in amongst some files from the seventies. “Guys, I found it.”

“Great,” Iris tells her. “The bomb squad is right outside, should I send them in?”

“Yeah. Tell them to bring an extraction team.”

The leader of the bomb squad comes down, and between the five of them, Iris lifts the bomb carefully out of the room and the make slow progress out of the building, where they load it into a van for secure disposal. As they drive away, Iris finds the captain again. “According to my team and the messages that they’ve been sending, Jesse and Walker should have one more trick up their sleeve,” she tells them. “You should keep on the lookout for anything unusual.”

“Of course,” she says. She hesitates. “Look, Miss Miracle. The Tricksters kidnapped a family member of one of our team earlier this year. I would appreciate it if you would do anything you can to get her back behind bars.”

Iris blinks, touched, before nodding. “Of course, Captain. I’ll do my best.”

Iris flies away then, flitting up to a high building and putting a hand to her ear again. “You guys? Did you get all that?”

“I’m so done with this,” Chesca says. “We’re reviewing the video again, see if we can trace them and figure out where the next one is going to be.”

“Okay. I’m going to stay out here and be ready. Keep me posted.”

The microphone cuts off, and Iris looks over the city. It’s covered in a thin layer of snow and decorated with Christmas lights. She teleports to the roof of Jitters and sits down, her legs dangling as she sits on the edge. She needs to get her breath back after all that flying. Feeling a little restless, she presses a button on her watch, and Gideon’s face pops out of it. “Iris. Nice job on the bombs.”

“Thanks. I can’t believe this is how I’m spending my Christmas.”

“I think we can both agree it’s an improvement on last year.”

Iris laughs shortly. “Right.” This time last year, she had been walking around with a lead lump in her stomach because Barry was moving in with Patty, and she kept feeling like she was being sucked into a black hole, and she just had to _tell him_. She’d gone to talk to her mother to arrange their Christmas visit, but she’d seen immediately what was wrong with her, and said she should be able to live her life. When she told Barry that she was in love with him, she hadn’t been able to take how much she was hurting him. Because she was taking away his best friend, the safety of their friendship, all because she had forgotten to tell him that he was her world.

And then, of course, Calamity had dragged her up and down the city and murdered half a dozen people in front of her for fun. Soon after started the nightmares and Barry being unable to look at her, then she thought he might feel the same way. Until he’d kissed her, been hit with that gun, and then forgotten he told her that she was the first thing he noticed. “Definitely an improvement from last year.” She pauses. “Gideon.”

“Yes?”

“Could you tell me whether I’d like my future?”

He thinks. “I cannot. Your future is mutable, Iris. It is changing at this very minute. Why?”

“I just can’t escape this feeling that not everything is the way it’s supposed to be. Colin made one decision that fucked up my life, and I know how it’s supposed to be, and it’s like I can’t look back.” She sighs. “I’m dating this great guy who wants to take it to the next level, and I keep him away from my life because I don’t know whether I really want him to know me.”

“Iris, I cannot tell you how things are supposed to be. I can only tell you how things are. You must live in the present. The rest will work itself out.”

She just laughs. “I can’t believe I’m talking about my love life with a robot. _Ow_!”

“Sorry,” Gideon says shortly, referring to the electric shock he’s just given her. “But I am artificial intelligence, Iris. Not a robot.”

***

Barry paces around the Cortex, growing more restless as the night wears on. They’ve been waiting for another message for hours, and it’s driving them a little insane. “This video is untraceable,” Chesca declares, throwing her hands up. “Oh, wait, that’s a lie. They’re in Nantucket, and Baltimore, and Gotham, and Keystone and _London_ , apparently.”

“Yeah, Freddie sent us a really unfriendly message about them,” Jesse adds. He tips his head. “Wow, I never thought Freddie would know _those_ curse words.”

“Let’s watch the video again,” Eddie suggests. “Frame by frame?”

“I swear to God, if I hear their voices again, I’ll shoot myself.” Linda, who showed up about an hour ago, has her head on the desk.

“It can’t hurt,” Barry says. “Iris is flying around the city but she can’t find them, and I get the feeling they’re going to want to go for broke with this.”

“Whatever the hell happened to Christmas brownies as a surprised?” Linda groans, but she gets up to watch the video with them. The Tricksters are dancing around the camera, mocking Miss Miracle as they deliver their messages. Eddie frowns, walking right up to the screen. “What is that?”

“What?” Linda asks. Eddie points to Elsa’s eyes. “That’s a reflection of something. Chesca, could you blow it up and image search it?”

“Sure. Um…Anyone heard of McSnurtle the Turtle?”

Barry frowns. “Yeah, Iris had one of those. Still does, actually. Why?”

“McSnurtle the Turtles are made by Queen Textiles,” Jesse reads. “They also make all the toys for the gift giving thing in the plaza. You know, where Santa Claus gives gifts to kids?”

They all stare at him. “That happened today,” Barry says hoarsely. “I walked past it on the way to work – hundreds of those went out to kids!”

“Who wants to bet that Queen Textiles got a visit from the Tricksters this morning?” Chesca says tersely, tapping at the screen. “Queen Textiles made several deliveries to the Santa’s Grotto this week, and-”

Suddenly, Barry’s phone starts to beep. “Guys, we’ve got another one.”

“Why isn’t it being sent to the police?”

“Because this one is just for Miss Miracle,” he says quietly. He crosses to the terminal and connects his phone to it. Jules Jesse is glaring into the screen with a maniacal grin on her face, but he can tell the fire in her eyes is anything but innocent. “ _Jingle Bells, Miss Miracle smells, so good when she’s on fire, I can’t wait to celebrate, her body on a funeral pyre_. You like that, little Miss Miracle? You’ve been doing pretty well today, so let’s end this night with a _bang_ , shall we? _The best Christmases are those where things couldn’t go smoother, but bring me Miss Miracle or Central City won’t have a future_.”

***

Iris is shaking when she hears that message, because there is no mistaking what she wants. “Do you know where she could be?” Iris asks calmly.

“I…” Chesca pauses. “Well, Iris, this is the only message that’s traceable. She’s at the Santa’s Grotto in the plaza. I think she wanted you to find her.”

She swallows, scanning the city. “Okay. I’ll be there in a minute – Barry, call Captain Singh and tell her that the Trickster’s sent me a message and they should standby for further instructions, but don’t engage until I say so.”

“What are you going to do?” Barry asks quietly. Iris takes a deep breath.

“It looks like I’ve got a date with the Tricksters.”

Iris teleports to the plaza with ease, shocking all the late-night shoppers who are gathered around all the Christmas stalls. “Everyone get out of here!” she orders quickly. “Get out of here and get someone safe. _Go_!” She advances on the Grotto, which is in the centre of the plaza, and people start screaming when they see the Tricksters emerge from the centre of the display. “I’m here,” she tells them, her fists clenched. “I’m here, now _what do you want_?”

“You made this way too easy, Miss Miracle,” Elsa says, dancing off the stage. She’s holding some sort of gun as she slinks towards her. “I didn’t know you were this smart.”

“I didn’t know you were stupid enough to invite a superhero to kick your ass.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Jules says. “Not so fast. See, I meant what I said when I told you that Central City wouldn’t have a future. And what represents the future better than the little kids who got their presents from Mr and Mrs Claus?”

Iris’ stomach drops once she realises what the Trickster is planning. “You put bombs in the toys.”

“Mm, yes. And you and I are going to play a game.” The place lights up suddenly, and Iris sees that there are weapons rigged throughout the plaza. “A little catch me if you can, if you will. You’re going to stay here and let us end you. Try to escape, try to take these down, or try to attack us, and there’ll be more than one dead Tiny Tim in this Christmas carol.”

As if to illustrate her point, Elsa fires the harpoon gun at Iris, and blood blooms from her suit. “Ready to play, golden girl?”

***

“Okay,” Chesca says nervously. “I can’t be the only one who heard them decide to play mouse trap with Iris, can I?”

Barry runs both hands through his hair. “We have to do something, they’ll kill her!”

“How are we supposed to find hundreds of kids toys from all over the city?”

Linda looks up. “We don’t need a hundred, we need one.”

“How?”

“Magnets,” Linda says. “Opposite polarities attract, so all we need is to find out the polarity of one so we can attract the others.”

“Well, what are you going to do with them?” Jesse demands.

“We’re sending them into a breach,” Linda says. Eddie and Barry look at each other.

“What?”

“Just go with me. Chesca, where’s the drone you use to throw things at Jesse’s head?”

Chesca gives him a guilty look. “My workshop.”

“Good. I need it. You’re not getting it back. You two,” she says, turning to them. “We need to get one of the toys from a person’s house.”

“How the hell do we do that?” Barry wants to know.

“You are Barry Allen, the guy who got Miss Miracle to tell all her secrets, and _you’re_ a spy. Figure it out!”

With that, Linda and Chesca head downstairs. Eddie makes to leave, but Barry grabs his shoulder. “Eddie, I…I need you to call your dad.”

“You do?”

“Look, I can’t leave Iris alone by herself like that. He’s not a cop, but he’s not useless, so I thought maybe he could go in and help subdue them.”

“Are you sure?”

Barry thinks of the last time Iris was seriously hurt, bleeding into his arms, and nods. “Positive.”

***

Iris has no idea where either of these women got a giant slingshot, but she narrowly avoids being hit with a giant fake snowball and lands roughly on the floor, the wind punched out of her lungs. She hears the Tricksters laughing somewhere far away, and drags herself up. There’s blood seeping through the wound on her shoulder, and she can hear her friends trying to help her, but she’s slowing down, the cold is making her powers weaker, and she’s finding it more and more likely that she doesn’t have a way out of this.

***

 

“This is a terrible idea,” Barry hisses as they knock on the door. “They’re never going to believe us!”

“We don’t have a lot of choice,” Eddie whispers back. In the next second woman opens the door, her expression curious. “Good evening,” Barry says pleasantly. “I’m Dr Barry Allen.”

“And I’m Eddie Thawne. We understand that you were given a toy at Santa’s Grotto today and we’re going around to tell people that they’re defective.”

“Can I see some identification?”

Barry swallows as Eddie pulls out the fake documents they printed out on the way. The woman’s face clears. “Oh, okay. Thanks, you never know what crazy schemes people cook up to get into your house!”

“Yeah,” Eddie laughs, “crazy.”

“We’re going to hell,” Barry says once they get back in the van and start driving. “You realise that, right?”

“Please, this is my job. And how much did you love calling yourself ‘Dr Barry Allen’?”

“Oh, I was on Cloud Nine,” Barry grins. He looks back at the others. “You guys okay back there?”

“Peachy,” Chesca says. “Are you driving to the breach?”

“Remind me what we’re doing again?”

“If we reverse the polarity of this and attach it to the drone, we can attract the others,” Jesse explains, “and send them through a breach.”

Barry nods. “Which one?”

“Earth-22,” Linda replies. “Iris says there’s nothing there.”

They drive for a little longer until they reach where the satellite navigation system warns them there’s a breach in the sky. They leap out and Chesca calls Eddie to her side, pushing it into his hands. “You’ve got the best aim,” she explains. “Just point and fly it up into that big blue swirly thing.”

“’Big blue swirly thing’,” Eddie mutters. “I can’t believe this is my life.”

“Guys, we need to hurry it up,” Jesse tells them. “I think they’ve got Iris on the ropes.”

Barry bites his lip and Eddie takes aim, before flying the drone into the breach. Nothing happens for a second, and then small objects start shooting out of houses and up towards the breach. Barry breathes a sigh of relief and Chesca cheers, high-fiving Linda and Eddie. “How about them magnets, bitch!”

Barry grabs the phone from Jesse. “Iris, we got them – you’re good.”

***

When Elsa is standing over Iris, who’s bleeding from the mouth, she doesn’t understand why Miss Miracle starts grinning. “Hey, Trickster. _Merry Christmas_.”

Quick as a whip, she sweeps her legs out from under her and then kicks her in the stomach, sending her to the ground. Then she flicks her wrist and Jules flies up into the air, before being slammed into a pole and rope is tied around her. Iris walks over to her and grins. “Holiday’s not so happy now, is it?”

Then Iris hears a sharp bang and she turns. Elsa is slumped on the floor again, something sticking out of her chest. Henry emerges from behind a pillar. “Don’t worry,” he says immediately. “It’s just a tranq dart.”

“I didn’t even hear her,” Iris says. “I guess you saved my life.”

“I kind of owed you.”

“Damn. Now I really _can’t_ kick you off the team.”

Henry laughs.

***

“…I can’t believe they based their whole plan on a Dickens book,” Francine says again. “Who does that?”

“The Trickster,” Iris mutters, sipping her wine.

“Are you sure your arm is okay?”

Iris glances at her bandage. “I’m fine. Thanks to Henry.”

Everyone smiles at Henry, who gives a modest laugh. “Well, it’s kind of my job.”

They’re gathered in Francine’s house for dinner after Iris took the Trickster’s back to jail. Barry and Jesse forcibly hauled her to the medbay to get her checked out, but apart from a headache, she’s completely fine. And between the sweet potato pie that Wally brought, her mother’s biscuits, and all the roast ham, incredibly full. Everyone breaks off into their separate conversations and get up to get drinks and dessert, but she notices that Barry is giving her a look that she recognises. They sneak out while everyone is talking.

(“Who the hell do they think they’re fooling?” Wally snorts).

Barry is strangely nervous when he fishes her present from under the tree, though he has no idea why. She eyes the large, flat gift. “What is that?”

“You have to open it, sunshine,” he laughs. Iris scowls at him, which makes him laugh harder, but she does, finally revealing the vinyl case. “ _My Girl_ , by the Temptations.” Iris looks at him. “Wow, I…”

“Already have it?” He nods. “I know. But this is from 1973 and it’s sighed by the Temptations and Smokey Robinson.”

Iris’ eyes widen and he shrugs. “I’ve been looking for it for months, because there were only forty in the world. I found it last year but then someone outbid me, and then I had to drive to Coast City to find this one, so…" He breaks off in a panic as Iris' eyes fill with tears. "Wait. Wait, Iris, don’t cry – I didn’t-”

She laughs through her tears. “No, it’s okay. This really means a lot, Barry. Thank you.”

“Of course,” he says quietly. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Oh, I should give you yours…”

“You didn’t forget? Chesca said you forgot.”

“Like I’d ever forget you, jackass.” She hands him an envelope and admires the record. When Barry sees what’s in them, he almost faints.

“Iris.”

“Mm?”

“These are _Hamilton_ tickets.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

“ _Hamilton_.”

“Yeah, I had to bribe Olivia to help me get them,” she snorts, still looking at the record. “I’m telling you, being a billionaire is _wasted_ on her. And now I have to help her on her next five big missions.”

“Iris, I can’t take these.”

She looks up. “What? Why? Bartholomew Henry Allen, if you’ve decided you’re over that musical, I swear-”

“They’re too much.”

“You got me a rare expensive record, and you’re telling me about too much,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You love that play. Besides, I got you two, you can take whoever you want.”

“I’m taking _you_ ,” he says immediately. “Who else is going to put up with me singing?”

“Not me. But at least you know I probably won’t shoot you.” She smiles down at her record, running her fingers over the plastic. "Thanks for this, Barry, really. You didn't have to drive all the way to Coast City for it. And," she adds, adjusting her glasses, "thanks for being there today. I know you have to drop your life and run across town whenever I ask, and you really don't have to. I appreciate it."

Barry stares at her for a moment. "Iris. I'm your - You've always been allowed..." He sighs, shaking his head. "Iris, there's never going to be a time when you won't have the right to ask whatever you want of me. If you ever need anything, anything at all, all you have to do is let me know, and I will gladly drop my life and run anywhere to help you. I'm always going to be here for you, whatever happens." He tips his head at her. "Come on, sunshine, it's me. You know I'd do anything for you, right?"

She smiles at him. "It's nice to have a reminder."

Barry holds his arms out for a hug, and she goes to him. He wraps his arms around her and he thinks that this is enough, their friendship, and that Missy was just trolling him.

(Barry will look back at this thought and laugh at himself).

“Although," she adds, "that was very  _It's a Wonderful Life_ of you, are you sure you didn't watch it without me?"

Barry laughs into her hair and then just holds her for a moment. They can still hear everyone talking and laughing in the next room, but for some reason he doesn't want to go back in there yet. He thinks back to earlier in the day, when Iris was so worried and he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her, a little like he's doing now, and kiss her on the forehead. Maybe it's the talk they just had, or their closeness, or the fact that it's Christmas, but he feels as if he hasn't said enough. It's like he's casting about for an answer to a question he doesn't fully understand. Then it hits him, when he thinks about how scared she'd been at the office.

 _I would die before I let anything happen to you_.

It's a lot, and it's sudden, but it's true. And he doesn't know what it means for them, exactly, but he knows that protecting Iris has always been second-nature to him, so he's fine with it, with having her safe with his arms wrapped around her. Her head is resting on his chest and his chin rests on her head; he could kiss her on the forehead if he wanted to. Barry thinks about it, because if he turns his head he could give her a small one, just a quick kiss by her temple that doesn't have to mean anything, because a year ago she was telling him she loved him in this very spot. He takes a breath and turns his head to do just that when they hear Chesca scream. They run into the dining room, where she’s shaking. Jesse is glaring at Eddie. “What did you do to her?”

"I just hugged her..." he says. Iris looks at Chesca.

"What happened, Chess?"

“I don’t know, I hugged Eddie and I…vibed something.” She swallows. “I think I vibed your sister. She’s alive.”

***

Breach Day, as they’ve been calling it, finds Barry, Iris, Chesca and Jesse in front of the breach dressed like they’re in a gangster movie from the fifties. Iris is explaining how they’ll let Scott go once they get there, how things will be weird and they shouldn’t get sucked in, but all he can stare at is the Breach Map. After dinner, which was a week ago, Chesca figured out that Malina was on Earth-52. As soon as they get back, that’s where they’re heading next.

“If you need anything,” Iris says. “Call Liv. She’ll help.”

They all link arms, look back at everyone, at Nora and Francine, who are being brave, and Linda and Wally and Henry and Eddie, who promised to protect the city while Iris is gone, and leap through the breach. It’s quicker than Barry expected, and then they’re in an alleyway that looks incredibly familiar. “Light,” Iris says. Scott looks at them. “Thanks for your help. We appreciate it.”

“Glad to be of service.”

“I can’t believe we just let a criminal go free,” Jesse mutters.

“Oh, we didn’t. There’s a tracker in his shoe – as soon as we leave, CCPD gets a new resident.” Iris pauses. “We all know the plan?”

“I go to CCPD to find out about Madam Miracle,” Barry says.

“We’re going to STAR Labs to find Dr Wells,” Chesca says.

“And I’m finding Madam Miracle,” Iris finishes. “We use Gideon,” she gestures to the watch, “to keep in touch. Okay? Remember what I said. These earths are mirror images of ours, so be careful.”

Iris watches them leave, and then flits upwards to survey the city on a roof. She is getting her bearings when she feels someone behind her. “Miss Miracle.”

“Who are you?” The older woman is wearing a green leather jacket and a helmet on top of her silvery-blonde her.

“My name is Madam Miracle,” she smiles. “But you can call me Jay Garrick.”

***

CCPD looks beautiful. That’s Barry’s first thought when he walks into the atrium and spots everything. No one pays him any mind as he looks around, and then he recognises a woman that Olivia was talking about a few weeks ago. “Deadshot?”

She glares at him, flipping her brown hair over her shoulder. “It’s _Lawton_ , Allen. Quit calling me that.”

“Sorry,” he says quickly. She must know him on this earth.

“Whatever. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, or I wouldn’t tell you your wife is looking for you. She’s upstairs somewhere.”

 _Wife_? He’d need to avoid her while he looked for help. He looks up and feels a jolt when he sees Iris striding across the corridor on the top floor. That must be how Lawton knows him – he’s still best friends with Iris on this earth. It’s oddly comforting, and she must know something if she still works here. He races up the stairs and slips into her office behind her as she sorts through her desk. “Iris?”

She looks up at him in surprise, and he takes her in. She looks like _his_ Iris – same hair, eye colour, except her glasses are bigger and she’s wearing pearls.

And there’s a ring on her finger.

Two, actually. A silver wedding band and engagement ring with a huge diamond in it. Her husband must think the world of her. He feels an odd twinge in his stomach and hopes he doesn't have to meet him, this man that Iris loved enough to marry and buys her engagement rings with diamonds the size of grapes. “Barry? What are you doing here? Lawton says you had a witness to interview.”

So he’s still a reporter. “Yeah, I had to…see you,” he says, tearing his eyes away from the ring. “And ask you something.” She tips her head.

“Alright.”

“My…wife is looking for me. I kind of need to avoid her.”

“You…do.”

“Just until I figure out what she wants,” he hedges. He can’t get this earth’s Barry in trouble. “I don’t want her to be mad.”

Iris regards him. “Well, Barry, I don’t know,” she says, shifting her name plate on her desk. “That might be a little hard for me.” His eyes fall on the name, and his entire world stops.

_Dr Iris West-Allen, CSI Director_

Iris is his wife. _Iris is his wife_.

“Iris West…Allen?”

“Yes, Barry,” she says, confused. “That’s what happened after the wedding and your Great-Uncle Rudy drank all that champagne.”

“…right.”

He can’t stop looking at her name. She comes up to him and puts her hands on his shoulders, and his skin heats up. He wants to put his hands on her waist, feels his hands automatically try to pull her closer to him, but he can’t. _She thinks I’m her husband._ “Baby, are you okay? I know you’ve been stressed with the whole metahuman thing…”

She calls him ‘baby’. Fuck if that doesn’t sound amazing. “Um, yeah. Sorry.”

Iris adjusts her glasses in a way that's so like his Iris that he just stares at her. "But you haven't been home since yesterday. A few days, actually, and I need to tell you something important... Barry, where's your ring?"

Barry gulps when he realises that he's supposed to be wearing a wedding ring to match hers. Because they're married. They have matching rings and she calls him 'baby' and they're _married_. 

"I'm sorry, Iris, I must have left it in my desk. I didn't want to lose it."

"Oh." She looks so uncertain that on instinct he reaches out and smoothes some hair away from her face. "Were you undercover again?" she asks.

"...yes."

"Wife of a detective is never boring, huh?" she says, smoothing down his collar.

He's a detective who's married to Iris. There was a wedding with champagne and he buys her pearls. Jesus Christ. "Anyway, I know you don't like talking about married stuff at work, but can you get away before the party tonight?"

"We can talk now," he tells her, not sure why his voice is so soft and tender. _She's not_ your _wife, idiot_. "I can make time for my...wife."

Iris smiles up at him and he smiles dazedly back, but before he can say anything else, she pulls him down and kisses him. It’s like lightning hits every nerve in his body, her mouth moving against his…and then he’s no longer on Earth-2. He is on a bridge, and Iris has told him it’s always been him, and he’s told her she’s his everything, and her hands are tugging at his hair and his hands are on her waist and he is kissing Iris in his memories and in real life. His heartbeat roars in his ears and then she breaks away, but he still has _his_ Iris in his head. Who he kissed and only just remembered. He still feels like lightning is hitting him, over and over.

“Hnnnh,” he says intelligently. Iris appraises him.

“That was a good kiss.”

“Mm-hm,” he says, dazed. “Kiss…Kiss was good.” Then she glares at him.

“But my husband doesn’t kiss me like that, because we’ve been married three years and he knows how to kiss me.” She grabs his chin, and Barry marvels at how all the Iris’ have the same ‘I’m going to kill you, Barry’ look. And that the chin grab affects him on every earth. “So you need to tell me who you are, what you’re doing here, and _why you have my husband’s face_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!


	27. And I Can’t Let You Go Now That I’ve Got It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this contains angst. Married doppelganger angst. Idiots in love angst. Everyone has a doppelganger but me angst. All of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took SO MUCH out of me, but i hope you like it!

“Jay…Garrick?” Iris repeats. “You’re Madam Miracle?”

The older woman laughs, taking her helmet off her hair. Her curly blonde tresses flutter in the breeze, and she really does look like one of those superheroes that she used to read about. “Yes, that’s me.”

“How do you know who I am?” Iris blinks.

“I know all about you, Iris West.”

“You know my name?”

“When you make as much noise as you do in the Mindscape,” Jay says, “someone as old as me hears about you. Now, Iris,” she says, walking towards her, “what are you doing on my earth?”

Iris looks around. Earth-2 is more like her own earth than every other earth she’s ever visited, but also very different. The aesthetic is different, the clothes are different, and even the transport – there are these weird train/car hybrids that zip around on high stilts. “I need your help. _We_ need your help.”

“We?”

“My team and I. There’s a threat there, one that could endanger all of our earths, and we heard you knew how to defeat it, so we came to see you.”

Jay regards her, and Iris feels a sort of pressure in her forehead. “You’re telling the truth,” Jay says quietly. “Good. If I’m going to come out of retirement, I need to be doing it for the right reasons.”

Iris stares at her in disbelief. “You can read my mind?”

“As I said, Iris, I am very old. And also, very powerful. Now,” she puts her hat back on her head and reaches for her hand, “I think we need to get going.”

She doesn’t know why she reaches for the woman’s hand. Maybe it’s the warm hue of her voice, authoritative and yet warm, or the steadiness in her eyes, but she does. “Where are we going?”

“We are going to STAR Labs. And we need to find my best friend’s grandson.”

***

_Iris_ _grabs his shirt lapels and pulls him down to kiss her. It’s like fireworks going off, that kiss, and he slides his hands down to her waist and pulls her into him, because this feels like waking up and coming home and flying, all at once._

Barry blinks, and he’s not looking down at his own Iris, surrounded by Cobalt Blue’s flashing up and down the bridge, but a different one. One with an engagement ring and a name plate that says _Dr Iris West-Allen_ and a quietly furious expression on her face. “In the interests of full disclosure,” she says tightly, “I should tell you that my husband has a gun.”

That did it. “Iris.” She glares at him and he gulps again, because that kiss is still running through his mind, pulling him back to that day and that bridge and the feeling that had been creeping up on him since her confession that Christmas, that Iris has always been his everything and he had only just figured it out. That this was the thing he’d always forgotten when Cobalt Blue hit him with that gun. And most importantly, that Iris knows…and never told him.

“Dr. West…Allen,” he tries, almost choking on the words. “I’m not your husband.”

“That much is obvious.”

“But I am Barry Allen.”

“What in the world is that supposed to mean? Did you hurt my husband?”

He looks at her, her big brown eyes that are so like his Iris’ that he cannot stand to see them so filled with worry, and makes a decision. “You trust your Barry, don’t you?”

She narrows her eyes. “Yes…”

“Well, I have an Iris, and I would never, _ever_ do anything to hurt her. And I won’t do anything to hurt you.”

“What do you mean ‘you have an Iris’?” she wants to know.

Barry takes a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of the Theory of Parallel Earths?”

“By Professor Martina Stein?” She shrugs. “Of course. There exists a multitude of parallel earths vibrating at a variety of different frequencies, separated by some sort of inter-dimensional corridor, offering several alternatives to our earth and oh my _God_ , you’re my husband’s doppelganger!” Iris lets go of his chin but then grabs his shoulders, studying his face. “Jesus, you look exactly like him! Well, your hair is different, actually…Do you have an appendix scar like he does? And are you afraid of horses and allergic to strawberries?”

“Uh, yeah,” he answers, smiling at Iris’ sudden exuberance. “Yeah, I’m…all of those things.”

Barry’s especially gratified that she isn’t threatening to have her husband shoot him, at least.

“How did you get here?” she asks. “And what are you doing here?”

Barry’s mind goes completely blank for about three seconds. The plan had been to ask around and find out which detective had been working with Madam Miracle, but now he’s here in front of a completely different Iris, who just kissed him and called him ‘baby’ because she is _married to his doppelganger_. “It’s a long story,” he admits. “We came through a breach – one of the corridor thingies you mentioned. We’re looking for information on Madam Miracle.”

Something shifts in Iris’ eyes then. “You are?”

“Yes. On our earth, we have a villain called Killer Frost, and we heard that Madam Miracle once defeated her.”

Iris frowns. “How did you hear that?”

“Well, a villain from this earth came through one of the breaches – Dr Light-”

“ _Dr Light_?” Iris demands. “Seriously? My Bar’s been looking for him for weeks, you’re saying he was on another earth this whole time?”

_My Bar_. Jesus. “Uh, yeah. Him and a few other ones, from all different earths, and he told us someone here at CCPD might be able to help.”

Iris’ brow furrows and Barry knows that she’s thinking, because Iris makes that exact expression when she thinks. “Okay, Barry Allen from another earth,” she says, throwing her shoulders back. “I think we’re going to need some help with this.”

“Help from who?” he asks.

“Just some friends of mine,” she smiles cheerfully. She claps her hands together. “I can’t believe you came from another earth! I’m am definitely rubbing this in my husband’s face when I find him, he’s never believed me about this.” She crosses to her desk and picks up a heavy, old-fashioned phone and turns the dial. “Hi, Dr. West-Allen for Dr. Wells? Okay, well, tell her I’m on my way and it’s an emergency.” Then she laughs. “Believe me, Helena will want to know about this…”

As she carries on with her conversation, Barry looks around. Earth-2 Iris looks identical to his Iris, so even though the look of this place is different, there’s a lot of similarities. Her shelves are labelled in the same way, she still has all these books by scientists all over the place, and even her desk is the same organised mess that she has at home. He’s tempted to look to see whether the pictures of them and their friends will be there, before stopping himself because of course they won’t be Iris and her best friend Barry. They’ll be Iris and her _husband_ Barry.

“Okay, we’re good to go,” Iris says, putting the phone down. She gathers up her coat and bag. “Dr. Wells will help us with – oh, hang on, that’s me.”

Iris answers the cell phone that has started insistently playing Beyoncé – Barry smiles at that, because at least this is still the same – and leans against her desk, absent-mindedly twisting her rings around her finger. Barry stares at it again. Seriously, that thing is _huge_. Between the paper, conferences and talks on metahumans, and being paid commission for articles outside of his job, he’s doing pretty well, but his doppelganger must be rolling in it. _Or_ , a voice in his head says, _he’s just really, really in love with his wife_.

“Hello?” Iris answers, oblivious to Barry’s thinking. Then she freezes. “ _Jay_? What’s going on? Did the Society call a meeting or – you met my _what_? Well, that’s…something. No, I haven’t talked to him. He’s always busy these days, Jay,” she says, somewhat tiredly. “But yes, I will call him. Okay. Bye.

“Sorry,” she says to Barry. “Okay, so we need to get to STAR Labs because I think we’ve found your friends, but there is the minor issue of you looking exactly like my husband. I think I bought him that suit, actually. So, we’re going to leave, but we’re at work, so you’re going to have to play along. Okay?”

It takes Barry a moment to realise that she means play along with being married to her. “Just until we get there,” she continues. “But don’t worry, it won’t be anything too hard.” She reaches a hand out to him and he takes it, making her smile warmly and pulling an answering smile out of him. They stride back out onto the walkway of CCPD, nodding and smiling at everyone as they greet the pair of them. Iris keeps her hand firmly in his, like she does this everyday…but of course, she does. And it’s completely normal for everyone around them to be seeing them like this.

“Captain Singh?” he splutters, when he sees someone being led out of the elevator. His mother’s boss is dressed like she’s in an avant-garde play from the twenties, and she rolls her eyes at him. Iris looks up at him

“Oh, you have The Captain on your earth?” she asks.

“Well, yeah, but she’s a _captain_. A police captain.”

Iris laughs. “Wow, that’s different. Well, you caught this Captain yesterday. Robbery, I think.”

“Yo, Captain!” Deadshot – no, _Lawton_ , Barry remembers – greets the criminal as she’s being led away. “Good to see a familiar face. How ya doin’?”

“I ain’t do nothin’, so I ain’t sayin’ _nothin_ ’,” she tells them, and Lawton grins at her.

“Okay, sweets. Hey, Iris! Beanpole,” she says to him. “Oh, are you guys getting ready for your mom’s shindig tonight?”

“Actually, I’m taking Bar home,” Iris tells her, looping her arm around his. “He’s feeling kind of under the weather.”

Barry obediently lets out a small cough and ‘his’ partner peers at him. “You must be feeling like shit, Allen. Even when you got shot you were itching to come back to work. Remember? You almost opened up your stiches.”

“And I almost killed him,” Iris laughs, as if him getting shot is just that normal between them. Maybe it is. She rubs his collar affectionately. “But not even Detective Allen can be invincible all the time.” She reaches up and presses a kiss to his cheek, and his brain practically short-circuits.

“You know, you’re right,” Lawton says. “You look flushed and your eyes are weird. Go home with your better half, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay. Sorry I called you Deadshot earlier,” he adds, and she blinks at him.

“Yeah…take him home and don’t bring him back until he sounds like Allen. Hey, see if you can make it tonight, you know your mom’s parties are always fun. And Iris, you have to tell me what you’re doing with your skin – you look all glowy.”

“Will do,” she says quickly, and tugs Barry after her into the elevator. She presses the button to make it go down and then slips her hand from his. Barry kind of misses the warmth.

“Okay, first thing – you actually like calling her Deadshot. I love my Barry, but he is the biggest troll on the planet and he’s not going to change about that. Second, you catch a _lot_ of criminals. But if you don’t know what to say, I’ll help.”

Barry nods and she steps hesitatingly closer to him, pushes her glasses up her nose. This must be weird for her as well, he thinks, that she’s faced with someone with whom she’s intimately familiar on the surface, but has none of her husband’s history with her. “I’m sorry if that was too much,” she says quietly. “We’re just…like that, with each other. It would have been weird otherwise.”

“It’s okay, I get it,” he says quickly, laughing softly. “It just…takes some getting used to.”

“And I’m sorry if what I said about the kiss sounded bad. Barry is _really_ handsy, which is why I never usually kiss him at work and how I could tell it wasn’t you. But like I said, it was a good kiss, I’m sure the Iris you know enjoys them. How long have you been together?”

Barry swallows, because that might be the most loaded question he’s never been asked. And he doesn’t know what she thinks of the kiss, because it’s been several months since that day and she’s never brought it up. Maybe it was that bad. “We’re not together.”

“You’re not?”

“Well, we are, kind of. We’re best friends, and my Iris – not that she’s _my_ Iris, she’s not, I mean, we’re not – We’re not together.”

Iris gives him a knowing look. “Well, if that’s not Barry Allen and Iris West, I don’t know what is.” The elevator doors open and they step out into the street. Iris pulls her phone out again. “I just need to call _my_ Barry and make sure he doesn’t turn up at the precinct, and then we can get going…Hi, Barry, it’s me. Listen, don’t go to work when you’re finished today, come straight to STAR Labs. It’s an emergency. Hurry, okay? I love you.” She puts her phone away and reaches for his arm again. “Ready?”

***

Barry has never been gladder to hear Jesse and Chesca arguing than when he’s deposited in Dr. Wells’ office about an hour later. Iris – the _other_ Iris – took him to STAR Labs, which is bigger and brighter and more art deco than it is on their earth, with dozens of people milling around working on various projects. She left him in this office while she went to get Dr. Wells, and he’s surprised to discover that she has enough authority to keep everyone out of the office. It’s bigger than the one at home, and more personal, but Barry can’t take any more in because that’s when he hears Chesca and Jesse bickering in one of the side rooms.

“…not my fault we can’t find your doppelganger!” Jesse hisses. “And that is the last thing we should be worrying about at a time like this!”

“They all looked at me like I’m an alien!” Chesca snapped back. “ _And_ they took away all our gear!”

“Hey, guys!” Barry yells, and they turn to look at him. “Someone want to explain what’s going on?”

“Barry, what are you doing here?” Jesse asks, coming out of the room. “I thought you were at the precinct, what happened?”

“I…got some help. I’ll explain in a minute, how did you two get here?”

Chesca huffs. “Well, the minute we walked in people started asking Jesse how his conference was, and then asked me whether I’m coming back to work.”

“Apparently, we all have histories here,” Jesse says. “Then guess who we met?”

“Hattie Hewitt,” Chesca says.

“Evil Firestorm?”

“Right. Except she was totally a big help, because when I let slip about the other earth situation she told us to come here and wait for Dr. Wells.”

“What about you?” Jesse asks. “How’d you end up here?”

“Did you walk into your doppelganger’s life, too?” Chesca asks, and Barry thinks of Iris’ hand in his and that kiss and ‘baby’.

“Yeah. You could say that. I…”

Then all three of them stop when a furious voice snaps down the corridor, accompanied by a pleading one. “Detective – Detective Allen, you need to wait-”

“The only thing I need to do,” the voice snaps back, “is _find out where my wife is_. Now, are you going to get out of my way, or do I have to knock you down?”

“He sounds pleasant,” Jesse says, and that’s when Barry realises that it’s _him_. In the next second, Detective Allen barrels into the room, his expression one of equal parts worry and anger. He’s also wearing a suit like the one he’s wearing, but without the blazer, so Barry can see his gun holster and badge. “Dr. Chambers? I thought you were at a conference. And who’s this?” Then he sees Barry and the anger almost dissipates, to be replaced by shock.

“Why do you look like me?” Then he frowns. “Did you people hurt my wife?”

Jesse and Chesca, meanwhile, are looking between the two Barrys. “Talk about trippy,” Chesca breathes. The Other Barry does look _exactly_ like him, right down to the moles on his face and the way he looks when he’s mad.

“Your wife is fine,” Barry says carefully. “She’s getting Dr. Wells, and she promised she’d explain everything to you once you got here.”

The Other Barry huffs, glaring at them all. “I need to find out what the hell is going on here! I’m on duty and I head back to the precinct, and when I get there I get my wife’s message that I should come _here_ and _not_ go to the precinct, because it’s an emergency. But I’m already there so I talk to my partner…who tells me that I already left with my wife. Since I did no such thing, you can understand why I’m a little panicked. She must have left with you,” he finishes, pointing at Barry. “Who are you, and why are you pretending to be me?”

Barry is trying very hard to forget the fact that his doppelganger has a gun. “First of all, your wife knows I’m not her husband. I’m you,” he explains carefully, “from another…earth. I’m your doppelganger”

“Another – like that space programme about Commander Carl? Are you serious?” Then his face clears in the same way that Iris’ had at the precinct. “You want to talk to Madam Miracle. Don’t you?”

Barry frowns. “How do you know about that?”

“I’ll ask the questions around here.”

“I have one,” Chesca interjects. “Barry – um, _our_ Barry…How did Barry’s wife know it wasn’t you?”

“Uh,” Barry says carefully, “she could tell.”

“How?”

“Well, when we were…uh, k-kissing-”

“WHAT?” Other Barry demands, rounding on him. He takes a step towards him. “ _You kissed my wife_?!”

“Barry!” Jesse admonishes. “We said we wouldn’t get sucked in when we got here!”

“Dude, not cool,” Chesca adds.

“Hey!” Barry says indignantly. “I didn’t kiss her – _she_ kissed _me_ , because she thought I was you! I don’t just go around kissing people’s wives whenever I feel like it!”

Even if the kiss was amazing and he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. The Other Barry looks decidedly less friendly than he did a few seconds ago, and he swallows. “But like I said,” he continues, “she could tell.”

“If I could ask,” Jesse says, “who, exactly, _is_ your wife? And Barry, how and why were you talking to her?”

“…the place looks exactly like the STAR Labs we have at home,” Iris herself says from somewhere in the corridor. When she appears, an awed smile on her face, the Other Barry sighs in relief.

“That’s my wife,” he tells them, walking up to her. “Iris, sweetheart, where have you been? I was worried.”

“Oh, crap,” Chesca breathes, while Barry tries to find a black hole to crawl into.

“I guess now we know why Barry was so eager to kiss her,” Jesse mutters.

“Um,” Iris squeaks, blinking, “I think you might have me confused with someone else.”

Other Barry frowns at her. “What are you talking about? Are you okay?” He goes to touch her forehead, but an insistent beeping starts from his watch, and everyone starts.

“What the _hell_?” Other Barry demands. “What’s going on?”

“What is that?” Chesca wants to know, and Iris blinks, still eyeing the Other Barry.

“I don’t know, but it’s been happening to me since I got here.”

“It’s a metahuman alert app,” Other Barry says, frowning. “Iris, you’re the one who designed them. You and Dr. Wells and – and Ronnie…” He rounds on the others again. “Did you hit her over the head with something? Why is she acting like she doesn’t know me?”

“Because that’s not your wife,” Jesse explains, “it’s her doppelganger.”

“You think I’m your wife?” Iris squeaks again, her voice going even higher. She looks at Barry, who is still trying to pretend this is some weird dream, and then back at his doppelganger. “We’re married?”

Other Barry, meanwhile, looks to be at the end of his tether, his eyes tight with worry as he puts both hands to his head. “My wife – you look…I – Okay, one of you better tell me where my wife is this instant, or I don’t care whether you’re from every earth there ever was, I’m putting you all in jail.”

“Barry,” someone calls, and it isn’t a voice that any of them recognise. A tall woman with silvery blonde hair, a green leather jacket and a helmet, strides in and comes to a stop in front of him. “Please don’t put any of these people in jail.”

“Jay, what are you doing here? And you – you’re dressed like-”

“Yes, I am dressed like,” she says carefully. Other Barry looks like he’s doesn’t know where he is, but she puts a hand on his shoulder. “Iris is fine, Barry. I talked to her about an hour ago.”

He lets out a breath through his nose. “I don’t understand, are you coming out of retirement, or-”

“Retirement?” Chesca asks. “You guys are saying a whole lot of words we don’t understand.”

“Yeah, who are you?” Jesse adds. It’s Iris who answers.

“You guys,” she says carefully. “This is Jay Garrick. Or as the people on this earth used to call her, Madam Miracle.”

“Dude!” Chesca exclaims. “We found her! Do you know Detective Allen?”

“Yes,” Other Barry answers. “She used to work with my grandmother, Dawnette.”

“Dawnette, like my grandmother?” Barry asks, and Jay nods.

“Yes, Dawnette and I were very close before she…passed,” she finishes quietly, and the Other Barry looks down as the floor. “After that, I retired. But now that all of you have requested my help, I think it’s time I put on the helmet again. And – good, there’s more help now.”

Right at that minute, the Other Iris walks in chattering excitedly with this earth’s Dr. Wells, who isn’t in a wheelchair. Jesse and Chesca make identical choked noises when they see her, but the Other Barry makes a beeline for his wife, pulling her into a hug. “Iris, God, _you scared me_.”

She wraps her arms around him. “I know, I’m sorry.”

He puts her down and cradles her face. “Where were you? Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”

“I tried, Barry” she points out. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

Other Barry’s face falls and he drops his hands. “I’m sorry, Iris, I was-”

“Busy,” she finishes. “Yes. I know.”

While those two are talking in the corner, Dr. Wells regards the rest of the group. “Well, I need to call Martina,” Dr. Wells says warmly. “She doesn’t know how right she was about parallel earths. Goodness, you look exactly like my nephew,” she adds to Jesse, peering at him. “That would explain the commotion outside this morning. And you are Francesca Ramon, yes?”

“Hi, Dr. Wells,” she breathes. “It’s nice to meet you – again. Well, this you.”

“The same to you. Mr. Allen,” she says to Barry, shaking his hand. “Iris tells me that you’re a reporter rather than a detective?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” he says, grateful that this is a question that doesn’t make him want to disappear. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too. And Iris-” she cuts herself off when that beeping starts again. She smiles. “Ah. Quite a big difference from the Iris we know and love.”

“Yeah,” she admits. “I’m a metahuman, where I’m from.” She flicks her wrist and a couple of tables rise off the ground. “ _Miss_ Miracle.”

Barry is listening to this as Iris explains who they are and what they’re doing there, but he’s also looking at Other Barry. Because the way he panicked about his wife, and then pulled her to him when she found him, reminds him of himself. In fact, he remembers when Calamity was terrorising the city, and he thought he was losing his mind because nobody could find Iris. Then when she finally turned up (although now he knows it was because Calamity was dragging her up and down the city and murdering people in front of her), he reacted in much the same way Other Barry did.

_“You-,” he breathes into her hair, “_ you scared me _.”_

_“I’m sorry,” she says into his chest, her voice muffled, “I know, I’m sorry.”_

As he watches, Other Barry takes Iris’ hands and kisses them, and he feels like he’s intruded on something. He swallows, turning back to the discussion. “…through the breaches,” Iris finishes. Dr. Wells nods.

“Well, I think we have some explaining of our own to do,” she says firmly. “I have one of my employees coming in here to get our coffee orders. We’re going to need it.”

“I think I need a shot, actually,” Chesca mutters, and Iris nods.

“Now would be a good time for that 500-proof alcohol that we keep around STAR Labs.”

“You know, Professor Stein used to make that for me,” Jay says. Behind her, his doppelganger and his wife make to join the group. “Always a lot of fun.”

“Okay…” a voice calls cheerfully. “I’m heading out to Jitterbugs, so give me your coffee orders!”

Unfortunately, this is the moment when Barry realises that the voice is that of Colin Snow’s, or his doppelganger’s. The part of him that was essentially blackmailed into almost getting his best friend killed reacts first and, apparently, the same can be said for everyone else. Barry takes a step towards him, fists clenched, Iris’s eyes start to glow and objects in the room start to shake, and Chesca points at him. “Killer Frost!”

“Killer Frost?” Colin squawks, panicked. He looks around the room. “ _Where_?”

He immediately runs to hide behind Detective Allen, who lets out an exasperated breath and closes his eyes. His wife giggles and Dr. Wells presses her lips together. “I think we still have some explaining to do.”

***

“…okay, so one more time,” Other Iris says, sipping her coffee (and that’s another difference that Barry notices: Other Iris drinks decaf. His Iris calls decaf the devil’s nectar). “I think Colin needs it explained again.”

Iris herself looks at Colin’s doppelganger, who had to use his inhaler when someone mentioned Killer Frost, and is still sitting extremely close to Detective Allen for protection. Chesca and Jesse are next to her, as is Barry, but he keeps looking at the floor. Meanwhile, Dr. Wells and Jay are standing with their Earth-2 companions.

“About a year and a half ago,” she explains, “I was struck by lightning and I went into a coma for nine months. When I came out of it, I had these powers.”

“Like Jay,” Other Barry says. She blinks, because he looks so much like her Barry that it’s still freaking her out.

“Right. Like Jay. I do her job on my earth, but someone on our team, who was supposed to be our friend, stole powers from someone who’s like me and escaped to another earth.”

“But the problem,” Jesse continues, “is that he had powers like Killer Frost first, so we want to know how to defeat one part of him at a time.”

“We know how to defeat the part of him that stole Iris’ powers,” Barry says. “But we came here, through the breach, to find you guys.”

“To find Jay,” Other Barry points out. “We did have a Killer Frost on our earth, years ago, but it wasn’t Dr. Snow.”

Iris is sure that her entire team has sceptical looks on their faces, because the Other Iris laughs. “Come on, Colin? He’s…well, look at him.”

“Colin, I-” Iris can barely say his name without choking on it, and he’s looking at her so innocently. “This might be hard to hear, but could it be your father? Because on one of the other earths I visited, the original Green Arrow died on the island and her mom became the Green Arrow in her place.”

“Wait, Liv died?” Chesca asks. “Was it Earth-22?”

“No, that was the black exploding blobs.” But Colin is shaking his head.

“I don’t think so, erm…Iris. My dad is an ophthalmologist.”

Iris blinks. “An eye doctor?”

He grins proudly. “An _pediatric_ eye doctor. He’s great with kids.”

“Besides, the Killer Frost we had here wasn’t Colin,” Jay interjects. She puts her helmet on the side. “He had a partner, they called her Deathstorm.”

“Ronnie,” Chesca says, and Colin squawks again. “My Ronnie?”

“I think we’ve established that things aren’t quite the same thing on other earths, Col,” Other Iris says fondly. Iris swallows, trying not to say out loud that she couldn’t agree more. Her doppelganger is sitting next to her husband, and even though they’re barely touching, it’s obvious that they’re a couple. Other Iris will sigh and lean into her husband, or they’ll share a secret smile, or Other Barry will absently play with her hair. Jay, Dr. Wells and Colin don’t seem bothered by it at all, so it must be completely normal for them. Unlike Iris herself, who’s finding it hard to look at them for too long without feeling an ache in her chest, or her own Barry, who won’t stop staring at the ground. She’ll deal with that later.

“They were a team,” Jay continues. “Killer Frost was a man named Louis Lincoln, and Deathstorm was named Jactina Rusch. They’re in prison right now, but they’ve been inactive for decades.”

“Which is why we need you – to find out how you kept them in there.”

“Well, we-”

But then Other Barry has to excuse himself to leave, taking a call in the corridor. Her doppelganger looks a little disappointed – actually, if she knows her own face as well as she thinks she does, her doppelganger is _really_ disappointed and is trying to hide it – but gestures for them to continue. “That always happens. Jay, you told me it took you a while for you guys to figure it out?”

“Yes, because we made the mistake of thinking that Killer Frost would be weakened by heat,” she explains. “It follows – he shoots out ice blasts. We thought that putting him in a warmer environment would be bad for him.”

“Actually,” both Iris’ say at the same time, and then they look at each other.

“I repeat,” Chesca mutters, “ _trippy_.”

“You go, it’s your earth,” Iris laughs.

“Thank you…um, Iris. It doesn’t necessary follow that taking away cold would be her weakness, since cold is just the absence of warmth. Like, a refrigerator works by having a refrigerant in liquid form absorb all the heat inside of it, which cools down the air.”

“Exactly what I was going to say.”

“And pretty much what we found out,” Jay continues. “There is a reason that Killer Frost ran around with Deathstorm.”

“You mean they didn’t just enjoy running around as a fire and ice-themed Bonnie and Clyde?” Chesca mutters.

“Well, that might have been part of it. But he used her as a kind of battery, because he needed to use that heat to transmute it into cold energy.”

Iris thinks. It certainly would make sense, and it explained why Colin’s powers started becoming stronger when Ronnie reappeared. Right near the end, they had always been attached at the hip. She knows from Jax and Stein that all the two of them need is each other and the stabilising matrix, but the knowledge that Colin is vulnerable in _two_ areas is more than gratifying. When she looks at everyone else, she can tell they’re thinking the same thing.

“So without Ronnie, our Killer Frost wouldn’t have his powers?” Jesse asks, but Jay shakes her head.

“Not necessarily. There are infinite sources of heat – don’t forget there was more than one Firestorm, and there’s always power generators. But without a permanent, stable on, he’ll likely be agitated and alarmed because all of those sources will eventually run out.”

“Great, so he’ll be even more psychotic than usual,” Chesca says. “That’s exactly what we wanted.” Barry turns to Jay.

“You said he was locked up, how are you keeping him there? Do you have a metahuman wing in your prison as well?”

“We do, actually,” Colin tells them, and Iris has to remind herself once more that this is not the man who ruined her life. “My wife, Iris and Dr. Wells helped design them.”

“Really?” Iris asks, turning to the older woman. “On our earth Chesca and my friend Linda worked with the police to design those.”

“Linda worked with you guys?” Other Iris looks particularly excited by this. “Wow, she’s going to get such a kick out of that.”

Dr. Wells, meanwhile, speaks up for the first time. “Well, given my…involvement in the current influx of metahumans in Central City, I thought it best to do my part to help contain the problem.”

Jay’s jaw is clenched, and with Other Iris and Colin not looking particularly forthcoming, Iris can guess that there is some bad blood there. But this Dr. Wells did not have the reasoning of making it malfunction on purpose to create Miss Miracle and fulfil Colin’s plan. “It was an accident,” Iris tries, “wasn’t it?”

“Of course it was,” Dr. Wells replies immediately, a slight frown on her face. “Why wouldn’t it have been?”

“On our earth, it was definitely not an accident,” Barry says stonily. Iris notices that he’s glaring at Colin as he says this, who looks visibly nervous. “Hey, Allen,” Jesse says. “Wrong Snow. Turn off the death glare.”

“Sorry.”

“Despite my best efforts, it seems that the Particle Accelerator was not stable enough to turn on without the damage it caused,” she continues. “All of that dark matter was released in the air, and it created more metahumans than any of us have ever seen. My husband and I…we tried to do our best to identify them, work to capture them. We work with the police, Detective Allen especially, to work out their weaknesses and the best way to subdue them.”

“Barry’s the head of the Metahuman Task Force,” Other Iris explains. Iris isn’t imagining the note of pride in her doppelganger’s voice, though it is mixed with something else. What’s bothering her? “Him and Floriana, actually. And we designed the metahuman alert apps so that people would be able to warn the police that they were in danger, and they’d be able to help.”

Iris looks around and realises that each of the Earth-2 people are wearing them, little black bands with amber writing that look suspiciously like watches. “B-But you know not all metahumans are bad, right?” she asks, thinking of Benedict Sans Souci and Chesca, and hell, her own damn self. But the Other Iris blinks.

“Of course we do – people like Jay. But these ones don’t have a permanent hero like you, because she’s retired.”

“Besides, Iris, I don’t know if you know this,” Chesca adds, “but a lot of the metahumans on our earth are kind of terrified of you.”

“What? No, they’re not.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Jesse shrugs, “but it’s true. When you caught the Mist again a couple of months ago, she was telling me that a lot of them were lying low in case you found them again. If it weren’t for you, there’d be a lot more running around our earth.”

Iris considers this. She hadn’t thought of herself like that before – she just thought she was doing her job. She adjusts her glasses. “Well, like you said, things are a little different where we’re from. I’d appreciate it if you could give me any information on-”

Before she has a chance to complete her sentence, however, the Other Barry walks back in with a harried expression on his face. “Bar?” his wife asks. “What happened?”

“Captain Cold and Heatwave attacked again,” he says tersely. He checks himself for his badge and gun.

“Are they there right now?”

“No, they left hours ago, but they left a couple of people tied up and they’re currently on the run with stolen goods.” He shakes his head. “I have to get back to the precinct, sweetheart, I’m sorry-”

Iris ignores the little flip that her stomach did when her doppelganger’s husband said that. “Captain Cold and Heatwave? You have them on this earth?”

“Well, it’s nice to know that Lena Snart and Michaela Rory still have jobs on this earth,” Barry says. Other Iris looks at them like they’ve lost their minds.

“Are you…talking about the mayor?”

“No, we’re talking about Captain Cold.” Iris frowns. “She’s the mayor on this earth?”

“Yeah, we went to high school together,” Other Barry says. “She made a speech at our wedding…and who else was that?”

“Mick Rory,” Jesse repeats. “Blonde hair, brown eyes, carries a flamethrower around?”

Other Barry and Iris share a look (she really needs them to stop looking so married in front of her), before she says, “Michaela Rory was killed about four years ago.”

“How?”

“Bobby Santini.”

“The crime family?” Barry repeats. “You have that here too?”

“Well, not anymore. The case involving them went federal, and eventually it got to be so bad that it…died out,” Other Barry finishes. Iris narrows her eyes at him. There’s something about the Santinis that is making their doppelgangers all weird and secretive. “Anyway, the point is that they attacked, and I need to get down there to interview witnesses. I think we have another CSI on duty-”

“Wait!” Iris interrupts. “I – why don’t you take me?”

Other Barry blinks. “You?”

“Well, I am a CSI on my earth,” she points out. “Plus, I’ve faced with these people before. I’d be happy to let Jay do it herself, I don’t want to step on her toes, but-”

“I’m old enough to know when I’m out of my league, Iris,” Jay interrupts. “If you want to lend us whatever help you can, I’m not going to say no.”

“Iris,” Jesse interjects. “Could we talk in private for a second?”

She blinks. “Uh, sure. Could you guys excuse us for a minute?”

The doppelgangers and Jay all move off into one corner, with hers in particular drawing Jay into a conversation. She looks at Jesse, who looks kind of irritated. “What’s up?”

“What are you doing?”

“Um…I’m helping them?”

Jesse sighs. “Iris, we came here on a mission – we can’t just go around helping every detective who needs it! We’ll never leave!”

“I kind of don’t want to leave,” Chesca says idly, looking around. “This place is _dope_. Besides, I want to find my doppelganger.”

“See? We’re already losing focus. I say we get our information on Killer Frost, give them an idea on how to get rid of…who was it again?”

“Captain Cold and Heatwave,” Iris says in a bored voice.

“Whatever, and then go. Don’t forget, the longer we stay here, the longer the real Killer Frost has Barry’s sister on another earth and my aunt is locked up by Waller.”

“Yeah, but we can’t just leave them!” Iris says. She looks back at Detective Allen, who is pacing back and forth on the phone with a stressed look on his face. “It’s not like it’ll be hard, I’ve faced them before.”

“And the file says the first time they escaped, the second time they almost killed you, the third time Chesca gave them your name _and_ they escaped, and the fourth time they escaped and just never came back.”

“Oh, sure,” Chesca scoffs. “It sounds bad when you put it like _that_.”

“Jesse, do you really expect us to come here, ask these people for their help, and then leave them with a couple of supervillains that like to kill people after they take their stuff?” Barry says. “Iris isn’t going to do that.”

“Damn right, I’m not,” she agrees. “Look, we have a lot to do anyway, we may as well help them along the way. We need to get help from Jay, _and_ we need to find out how to keep him locked up. I could kill him, yeah, but how are we going to get your aunt out if he’s not alive?”

“Girl’s got a point,” Chesca says.

“We help them, they help us, and then we go to Earth-52. How hard could it be?”

Jesse bites his lip. “I know you’re worried about Dr. Wells,” she says gently. “But Chesca vibed them right before we left, and both she and Malina were doing fine. Okay?”

Everyone nods and they turn back to the others, who are regarding them with open curiosity. “If you take me to the crime scene and explain to me what happened, I could tell you about where they are with their weapons. Every time I faced them on our earth, their weapons were at a different grade.”

“And I’m sure I could use some of your tech here to track them if I had something from the scene,” Chesca adds helpfully.

“Did they rob a bank?” Barry adds, going into journalist mode. “The first few times they went after weapons, but they were also big into gold store robberies, bank heists, and jewellery. The last time they attacked, her mom wanted them to hit a party the mayor was having to steal everyone’s stuff.”

“Your mom’s party,” Other Iris says suddenly. She looks at her husband. “Bar, she’s having that fundraiser there tonight, remember? The Mayor’s going to be there, and Eddie, and all those donors from the hospital.”

“You’re right,” he realises. “Do you think they’ll strike there next? Because we could cancel it, or put a watch on them.”

“It’s just as likely that they won’t,” Chesca points out. “When they hit that gold store and kidnapped my sister, they tried to leave the city right away.”

Iris thinks for a moment. Really, if Captain Cold and Heatwave on this earth are even half as wily as her own, then there’s really no predicting what they could do next. They could leave the city after their latest hit…or they could try for what might be an easy target for them. “We’re splitting up,” Iris decides. “Chesca, you and Jesse stay here and see if you can trace large heat or cold signatures in case they strike while we’re on the move. Bar – Detective Allen,” she corrects herself, “you can take me to the crime scene and I can see if I can find any clues there. Iris, you go to the party and keep an eye out for them.”

“There’s a problem,” her doppelganger says. “I don’t know what they look like, and that party starts in about an hour and a half. Can’t I take one of you? Like Jesse – our Dr. Chambers is out of town.”

“I need him to help me,” Chesca says apologetically. “I can do all that by myself, and I need someone to help me if I start vibing uncontrollably.”

“You could take me,” Barry suggests quietly, and everyone swivels around to look at him. “I’ve met them both before, so I know what their weapons would look like. Besides, I studied their files just as much as anyone else has. If they don’t turn up, that’s one thing, but if they do, I can call Iris and the rest of the police.”

“I could do a general patrol,” Jay adds. “You can call me, too.”

“Right. Then we’re all covered and we have someone who know something on both sides.”

“There’s just one problem with that,” Jesse points out. “ _You all look like each other_. What if someone sees you?”

“We’ll all be in different places.” Other Barry is the one who answers. He looks at her. “I can take you to the crime scene this minute, swee – erm, Iris. Lawton can meet me there and then we can do the interviews and figure out what’s going on. After that, I can take you on a patrol in case your friends find them on their way out of the city. That way, no one will suspect anything.”

Iris considers this. She’s trying very hard not to think about the fact that she’s essentially organised a bizarre double date for herself and Barry with their doppelganger’s, who themselves are probably still trying to come to grips with all of this themselves. Actually, her own doppelganger looks incredibly excited about the whole thing. But she’s faced down aliens and crazy metahumans and two abnormally large sea animals. Besides, this is Barry’s sister and Dr. Wells. She can do this. “I’m game if everyone else is,” Chesca says.

“I think it’ll be fun!” Other Iris says, clapping her hands together. She looks at Colin. “We haven’t done anything like this since we built those drones. Remember, with the water jets?”

“You guys get to do that?” Chesca demands. “How come we don’t do that?”

Barry laughs. “Chesca, you literally did that last week.”

“Yeah, and then Dr. Asshole took them away from me.”

“Guys, focus!” Iris interjects. “We don’t have a lot of time. Barry, why don’t you go with Detective Allen’s…Iris, and I’ll go with him. I’m never not nervous when Captain Cold and Heatwave are running around.”

“That reminds me,” Dr. Wells says, “Barry, do you have any idea who they are?”

“None, unfortunately,” he replies. “All I know is that they’re two women of medium height, though Heatwave is slightly shorter than Captain Cold.”

“Yeah, that’s not a lot,” Iris admits. “So I guess we should get going?”

“I’ve got some comms,” Chesca says, gesturing to their bags. “I don’t know how well they’ll work, though.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s like my powers – I can’t vibe properly here yet because I’m not used to the frequency, but these are set at a specific one.”

“I can help with that,” Colin says, and Chesca flinches. He swallows. “I’m not…like him. But Dr. Wells will be here.”

“I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I’m sure you’re cool.”

“I wouldn’t quite go that far, but…” Other Iris walks towards her and grabs her hand. “I better tell you how to handle all this. Bar, help the other Barry.”

Barry doesn’t look too pleased to follow Detective Allen off into a corner, but Iris doesn’t have a lot of time to think about that because her doppelganger is dragging her off to one of the side rooms and sitting her down on a medical bed. Then she starts getting things out of her purse. “I can’t believe we were right about Parallel Earths!” she says excitedly, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I’m just sad Martina is out of town with her husband, she would have loved – _loved_ – to be here.”

“Yeah, it’s exciting,” she admits. “Listen, Mrs…Dr…Iris, I’m sorry to be doing this, this must be a huge inconvenience for you guys.”

“Not at all, Iris!” she says looking at her. “It’s not your fault all this is happening. After all, you are trying to protect your earth. We both work for the police – I know what it’s like to sacrifice to help people.”

Iris notices that she’s glancing at her husband as she says this who’s showing Barry how to do something with his hands. “Anyway,” she continues, “you need my help. Now, you do look like me, and your clothes are fine, but we need to change some things. First of all, these glasses are too small.”

The world goes blurry for a moment, before Other Iris puts different glasses on her. “Are they okay? Can you see?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, that makes this easier. Clothes are okay…Oh!” She hands her something. “Here’s my badge. You probably won’t be asked for it, but we carry them-”

“In case of an emergency,” they say together. “Guess both of our bosses have the same rules.”

“I guess they do!” her doppelganger smiles. “One more thing…Rings.”

“Huh?”

“I’m the CSI Director, so I don’t have to be in the field all the time,” she explains. “But sometimes there’s stuff that only I can deal with. Since, as my husband so delights in reminding me, I have a tendency to forget things, we had replicas made of my wedding and engagement rings for when I went out like this.”

“…oh,” Iris says. She swallows. “O-Okay. Sure.”

Other Iris takes her hand and slips two rings on her finger, and her eyes widen at the size of the engagement ring. “This is…really beautiful.”

“Barry’s very proud of it,” her doppelganger admits absent-mindedly. “Am I forgetting something? Oh, don’t worry, Barry will explain everything. Just follow his lead.”

“Right.” She’s wearing her doppelganger’s rings and she’s about to step into her life. Every time she thinks she’s going to have to pretend to be Barry’s wife, her palms start sweating.

“Iris?” her doppelganger asks. “Are you alright? Do you want me to get your friends?”

“No, I’m okay. This is just a lot; I’m trying to get everything straight.”

She bites her lip. “Your Barry is really nice.”

“He’s the best. But I think this is freaking him out a little. Did anything happen when he found you?”

“Nothing that isn’t completely normal on your earth, I’m sure,” she shrugs.

“What?”

“Well, he came in, and we started talking, and-”

“Iris!” Chesca calls. “Can we talk for a sec?”

She turns back to her doppelganger. “I’m sorry, I have to go…”

“Not at all.” She hugs her, and Iris feels a sudden rush of affection for this woman. She had no idea about any of this until a few hours ago, and here she is bending over backwards to help them. “Good luck! Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of Barry.”

She walks over to Dr. Wells and starts talking to her, while Chesca pulls her to the side. “Hey. What’s up?”

“You remember right before we came here, and I kept trying to vibe Earth-52?”

The earth where Malina and those missing people are being held. Iris grins. “You mean the totally transparent excuse to keep touching Eddie?”

“Shut up!” she says, blushing. “Well, I found her. But since then those vibes…they keep coming back.”

“Really? What are they?”

“It’s just Malina, so far. She’s in a room, like one of the labs, with chemicals all around. But this time it was different. Colin came in and said some stuff. He’s planning something, but he’s worried someone will ruin it.”

Iris frowns. “Do you think he knows we’re coming?”

Chesca shrugs helplessly. “I have no idea, but he wasn’t talking about us. There’s another hero on the earth where he is, some sort of red blur.”

“Colin is afraid of a red blur?”

“He has a name, actually. The Flash.”

Iris blinks. “’The Flash’?” Are you for real? He sounds like the number one offender for public indecency.”

“Well, that’s who he’s talking about. He doesn’t want the Flash to find him, because he’ll stop him. I have no idea what he’s doing to Malina, though.”

Iris sighs, looking around. “Well, we have enough to worry about right now. Let’s figure all this stuff out, and then we can tell the rest of the team about…The Flash? Seriously, this earth-hopping thing is no joke.”

“Tell me about it – my tech doesn’t work here!”

Other Barry has left to go talk to his wife, so Iris takes the opportunity to reassure Barry. “Barry? You okay?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, it’s just a lot to…process.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” she admits. “I’ve been to all the different earths before, so I guess I’m kind of used to it. Are you clear on everything?”

Barry nods. “Yeah, he was really helpful. And I’m just going to a party, really. You?”

“Well, I’m basically doing my job. It doesn’t really get much harder than…What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Barry blinks. “Uh, you – your glasses are different.”

“Oh. Yeah, the Other Iris gave them to me. Are you sure you’re okay? Your eyes look weird.”

“I’m sure. Good luck, okay?”

He has to go then, walking off with the Other Iris, and Iris frowns. Barry might not be as used to this as he’s letting on, but there’s not much they can do about that now – they’re on a clock. She walks over to Other Barry, who’s talking to Jay. “My wife has the car,” he explains, “so Jay is taking us to the crime scene.”

“Do you have your comms?” Iris asks.

“Yes,” she nods. “Once you’re done, if we still have time, I can take you to where we keep Killer Frost.” She holds out her hands, and Other Barry grins. “I haven’t done this for a while.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Iris and Jay say together, and then grin.

***

Iris has to drive, because Barry has no idea where they’re going. Even though he’s already dressed for a party – Chesca and Iris found out from Dr. Light how they all dress – Other Iris has to go home and get ready. “I promise I won’t take long,” she’d promised. “I know you guys are in a rush, I just need to take care of some things. I think our groceries were delivered and I have to get them from our neighbour.”

Their house, he’s surprised to find, is actually the house he and Iris grew up in, and he pauses when they stop outside of it. “You live here?”

“We bought it last year,” she explains, fishing for her keys. “Finally. Why?”

He follows her inside. “No reason. It’s…really nice.”

It’s his house, but it isn’t. There’s a loveseat, which most definitely isn’t in his house, and lots of pictures. His heart does a weird flippy thing when Iris starts taking groceries into the kitchen and he realises what they are. This version of him and Iris must be crazy about each other, because their pictures are everywhere. Here’s Iris in a wedding dress, with Barry’s arms around her, here’s one with them cutting the cake, and one with them exchanging rings. It’s like he’s watching Colin show him those videos all over again, telling him what his life would have been like if he hadn’t messed with it.

There’s more, too – Barry recognises himself as officer of the year, which he has apparently won three times, Iris surrounded by the people from STAR Labs, Barry with the rest of the officers at a baseball game against the Star City Police Department…

“Barry?” Other Iris comes back in. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just weird.” Then he straightens. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry-”

“Forget about it,” she smiles. “I’d be curious, too. Recognise everyone?”

“Not everyone. Who’s this with Deadshot and us?”

“That is Hunter Bertinelli, her husband. We never thought they’d actually get married.” She laughs suddenly. “Barry told him if he ever hurt her, he’d shoot him. Which he doesn’t need to do, Floriana is perfectly capable of doing that herself, but still.”

Barry laughs. His doppelganger seemed to understand that being kissed by his wife was at least an honest mistake, though he was very curt with him. He supposes that’s just how Other Barry is. Apart from with his wife, apparently. “You said you’ve been married for three years?”

“Yeah, three years last August. I wasn’t kidding when I said your Great-Uncle Rudy drank all that champagne, either.”

Barry laughs. “Really? He’s been that way since we were kids.”

“I didn’t know that – I didn’t meet Barry until I was an adult.”

He frowns. “Then how do you know about my appendix scars? I got them when I was a teenager.”

Other Iris presses her lips together. “We’re, um – we’re married, Barry. Do you…want me to explain what tends to happen when two people are married?”

Barry blushes so furiously he’s sure he can heat the room with his face. “Oh, right.” Of course, she knows that he has those scars – one by his left hipbone, one underneath his navel, and one three inches below that – because they’re married. They do…stuff together. Strangely enough, however, the thought of doing those things with his Iris doesn’t make him quite as uncomfortable as it did when he was younger. Other Iris seems to want to save him from the embarrassment.

 “Could you come help me with something? I have to put some stuff away and I can’t reach the higher shelves.”

“Now that sounds like my Iris,” he grins.

“God, are you a jackass about that on your earth too?”

“Hey, you’re both short,” he says, following her into the kitchen. “That’s not my fault.”

“Ugh,” she mutters. “I hope Barry is being nice to your Iris.”

Barry suddenly remembers what she’d said about her husband – ‘Barry is _really_ handsy’. The thought of his Iris around a handsy version of himself – so handsy that his own wife has a policy of not kissing him at work because he gets carried away – who’s obviously in love with her doppelganger makes him understand why _his_ doppelganger was so mad about him kissing his wife. “Barry?”

“Sorry.”

He helps her with a large bag of rice, and then she talks to him from the pantry as he looks around. Barry feels strange being here, because the truth is, he can see himself living here. They have his favourite foods and the shelves organised the way Iris likes them in her apartment, and a noticeboard on their fridge with messages and notes like – _Barry, dentist, 10am on the 3 rd_, and _Iris – return call to Professor Stein; Iris – Brianna Wayne and Hallie Jordan want to do lunch; sweetheart, are you reading these?_ and _Great-Uncle Rudy is coming next week – FIND THE UGLY PUNCHBOWL!!!_

Then one picture jumps out at him, and he has to take a minute to recognise it. It’s of his doppelganger, the Other Iris, and his mother’s doppelganger, who looks the same but with a different hairstyle. Everyone’s smiling. But then he sees the young woman in the middle, dressed in a baseball outfit with everyone’s arms around her, and his heart jolts, because that’s his sister. It hits him right then, how this is the life he was supposed to have, because he gets them all on his earth – his mother, his sister, the job as a detective, and Iris. He touches the picture, his hands shaking.

“…okay, that’s done,” Iris says, shutting the pantry door. “Mama Ida never believes that we have perfectly good grits in Central, and…Barry, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Yeah,” he says quickly, dropping his hand. “Sorry. I just didn’t recognise this one.”

Iris comes up behind him. “Oh. Yeah, we drove up to see her a couple of weeks ago in one of her baseball games. I swear, I never remember how much the two of you bicker until I get you into Big Belly Burger and make you order food. I feel for Nora, I tell you.” She turns to him. “You didn’t recognise it – it she not in law school over there?”

“Not exactly.” He rubs his face. “She’s – sort of – missing. What we’re doing will go a long way to getting her back.”

Iris puts a hand over her mouth. “Barry – God, I am so sorry. I don’t know what my Barry would do if – I couldn’t even _imagine_ …”

“It’s okay.”

“We’ll find her,” she says firmly. “I promise, we’ll do whatever we can.”

“I was wrong,” he smiles. “ _Now_ you sound like my Iris.”

“Well, she loves you,” she says simply. “She’d promise you the world and find a way to get it for you. Now, I have to get ready; I’ll be back soon.”

She goes upstairs and Barry stares after her. A lot of people have said that over the years – his roommate at college who figured it out way before he did when Iris came to visit, girlfriends who were weirdly jealous of her; even his mother, now that he thinks about it, has hinted at it over the years. Before last Christmas, he would have dismissed it as the special bond they share as best friends, but nothing has been that simple since then. A part of him thinks that Iris’ doppelganger is right, but then he remembers her not telling him about the kiss. And another part thinks maybe she just meant she could see how much they cared about each other.

When he saw her at STAR Labs, it was all he could think about. Because it keeps hitting him, every inch of that memory, so vivid he wonders how he ever forgot it. He remembers Iris’ absolute confusion when he started speaking, the bridge shaking underneath them, and then the feeling of her mouth on his. He also remembers that, not three hours later, that memory had been erased and he’d been furious with her because she’d lied to him about being Miss Miracle. He felt _something_ was missing in the weeks afterward, but she had told him it was nothing important.

Which tells him everything he needs to know, doesn’t it?

Because there’s no Patty, and she’s with Julio. Chesca accidentally mentioned that he wanted to get serious with her, which he hadn’t ever considered because he had never really thought about it, but now makes him feel like he’s hurtling towards a black hole. But of course, Iris will get over him – she practically gave him her heart that Christmas, and he couldn’t take it. And she’s Iris – she could have anyone in the world, and they’d be lucky to have her. He can’t expect her to pine for him for the rest of her life. A year ago, he was fine with that. But now he’s wondering whether he’s just been lying to himself this whole time.

“I’m ready!” Iris declares, coming down the stairs. “Is it bad that I’m glad you’re here? I thought Barry would have to work – again – and I wouldn’t get to wear this.”

Barry looks up and his throat goes dry. Other Iris is standing in front of him in a black sequined outfit, with a feathered coat and her hair in soft waves, as well as switching out her pearl earrings for diamond ones. He briefly wonders whether his Iris would look beautiful in something like this, but then stops himself, because of course she would. Iris looks beautiful in anything, he’s recently begun to notice. He walked into her apartment the other day and she was wearing sweats and a Keystone City Patriots sweatshirt, her hair tied up in a scarf, and she even looked beautiful then.

Other Iris, however, is fixing her metahuman alert app watch and the comms in her ear. “We’re going to walk,” she explains. “Your mom always reserves a table for us, but it’ll be best to get there on time. That way we can look for Captain Cold and Heatwave.” She looks up at him. “Ready?”

***

Jay drops them off in an alleyway before disappearing, promising that she’ll be available in case they need backup. “I am still retired,” she tells them, “so I can’t just show up whenever I want.”

“Wait,” Barry says. “Iris needs her gear.”

“Ah.” She disappears, and then reappears with a bag. Iris grins.

“Okay, _this_ I recognise. Thanks, Jay.”

“No problem, Miss Miracle.”

When she leaves, Iris notices that Other Barry is looking at her. “What?” she says self-consciously. He shakes his head.

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t realise you weren’t my wife until Jay just called you that. It’s hard to believe my Iris is a metahuman on another earth,” he laughs. “I mean, she forgets her glasses everywhere.”

“We both do that, believe me,” she tells him. “Becoming a metahuman doesn’t fix that. I actually think I’ve gotten _more_ forgetful, and I have a photographic memory now.”

“You know, so does she. Are you ready? If anything confuses you, you can ask me, but you said you’re a CSI on your earth, so you should be fine.”

“I think so,” she says as they walk towards the warehouse. “I’m pretty much just doing my job. Your earth is just a little different.”

“Allen!” someone calls when they walk inside. The place is crawling with cops, and the woman who’s greeting them is familiar to Iris – only she isn’t wearing an eyepatch. “Deadshot?”

She frowns at Barry. “Are you making her call me that?”

“I don’t make Iris do anything. But I call you that all the time, maybe she’s picking it up.”

“Sorry,” Iris says quickly. “I’m a little tired.”

“That’s okay, sweets. I know looking after this one must be exhausting. Are you at least feeling better, beanpole?”

Barry shrugs. “Duty calls.”

“My God, you never change.” She leads them to the crime scene. “Did you hear what happened?”

“Explain it to me again,” he says curtly, glancing at Iris, and his partner nods.

“This is a place that makes small power packs,” she tells them. “We got a call saying that a man was found tied to his desk. When we got here, all the locks had been melted through and all the security cameras had been iced over.”

“Was the civilian hurt?” Barry asks. “Was he in distress, or could he explain what happened to him?”

“He said that two women in masks – one in a large parka and glasses – burst in here and demanded to know where they kept the portable power packs, and stole one specific model in particular.”

“Do you know what it was?” Iris asks. When Snart kidnapped Chesca to make a new gun, there was a very specific power generator that she placed in it. “I can find out for you,” Lawton tells her. “Just give me a minute, Dr. W.”

Iris blinks until she remembers that her doppelganger is the one with the PhD on this earth, not Barry. “Great. Thanks, Floriana.”

She nods and walks away, and the Other Barry turns to her. “Anything jump out at you, sweetheart?”

“Uh, it – I remember when they attacked the first few times, their guns were all at different power levels. Depending on what…Floriana tells us, I can tell you how much danger we’re all in. But I need to study these,” she continues, pointing to where someone had marked out the ice and scorch marks, “because they could help too.”

“Okay,” he nods curtly. “I’ll go find out what else there is that could help.”

He walks off to go talk to his partner, and Iris watches him go. _Sweetheart_. Jesus. Shaking her head, she gets out Other Iris’ camera and gear and gets to work. She discovers, upon studying the scorch marks on the entrances and the ice blasts, that the Captain Cold and Heatwave of this earth, whoever they are, certainly don’t waste any time. Not only is some of the ice still cold, but she has to put warnings up by all the melted metal because it’s still hot. She moves away from everyone, lifting prints from the safe, and presses her comms. “Chess?”

“Yo, Bambi eyes. What’s up?”

“Remember when Snart and Rory attacked at that bridge and almost killed Patty?”

“Kind of wishing they’d won?”

“What – Francesca Ramon.”

“Sorry. What is it?”

“They were using guns that were at absolute cold and absolute heat, right?”

“Yeah,” Chesca replies. “And you were sitting in the middle of them to cancel each other out.”

“Well, I think that’s what we’re dealing with right now. I need to find out how powerful they are, but could you make sure my suit is ready?”

“I’ll get Dr. C on it right now.”

“How are things going on over there?”

“Awesome! Iris, seriously, we have to come here on vacation or something. They have the best tech, and these metahuman alert thingies are basically an app version of what Barry and I did with his website, but based on frequency.”

“Speaking of, how are your glasses working? Is the other Dr. Wells helping you with that?”

“She’s trying,” her friend admits. “It’s hard figuring it out, because when I go back home I’ll just have to turn them back to Earth-Prime’s frequency. What are you up to?”

“I am…hanging out with Detective Allen.” She looks over at her doppelganger’s husband, who’s grilling one of the security guards. “He’s – well, he’s something.”

“Yeah,” Chesca says slowly. “He’s a pretty intense guy. How are you doing with that? You never told me how your dinner with Julio went.”

“That’s because he cancelled it,” she says, remembering. She hadn’t even felt all that bad about it when it happened. “Whatever, I can’t even think about that right now. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Sure thing, Bambi Eyes.”

She hangs up the phone just as Detective Allen himself walks back over to her. “Any luck?”

“Well, this isn’t going to be easy,” she tells him. “Their weapons are more advanced than they were the first time they appeared on my earth. Luckily I’ve faced them before, but I do need Floriana to tell me about the power packs they’re using. What did you find out?”

Other Barry sighs. “Well, they were wearing masks, so he’s not really clear on what they looked like either. But they were definitely looking to making some improvements – apparently, their boss is some sort of genius with them.”

“Boss? They never had anyone leading them on my earth.”

“Well, that’s what they said.”

Iris takes off her glasses and starts patting herself down for the cloth to clean them. “Where have they attacked before?”

“Lots of places, all in the last month or so. There was the Royal Bank and Plaza Bank, and the gold reserve,” he tells her. Without missing a beat, he pulls a pocketsquare out of his pocket and takes the glasses from her, cleaning them even as he keeps speaking. “It’s the same thing – ice over or melt things, and then steal whatever they can. I’d think they’d have enough by now.” He finishes cleaning them and puts the glasses back on her face. She clears her throat, trying not to look so flustered.

“Well it – they, that is, were always, you know, greedy. Supervillains, you know?”

“Kind of makes me miss mob hitmen,” he says, smiling fondly at her. Before she can try to figure out what that means, Deadshot – no, Floriana – walks back up to them. “I got the name of the power packs they stole. Pretty experimental, according to the guy who works here.”

Iris takes the specifications from her just as her phone starts buzzing. “It’s Hunter,” Floriana sighs. “He wants to know whether I can make it tonight. Sometimes I really, really hate this job.”

“Your husband is just lucky you dance better than you shoot,” Barry grins at her. His partner rolls her eyes.

“You’re one to talk, beanpole. Don’t think your sister never told me about the dance lessons you took before you married Dr. W over here.”

“This is why I never introduce her to people, she’s such a blabbermouth.”

“Whatever. We’re almost done here, am I going to see you two at this thing or what?”

Iris looks at Other Barry. “Sure,” she says. “You’ll see us. Um, you say this power pack is experimental?”

“Yes.”

“I feel like I’ve seen it before. It’s similar to one of the ones that Dr. Wells used as a backup generator in a small simulation of the Particle Accelerator. It must be at least a thousand joules, hell, kilojoules and…what?”

Floriana just laughs. “I forget how much of a dork you are sometimes, sweets.”

“Hey, don’t call her that,” Other Barry frowns. “She’s my dork.”

“She is,” his partner agrees, not noticing that Iris is blushing, “and she is way too good for you.”

“Whatever. I’ll see you at the party.”

Floriana punches him playfully and then walks off, and Barry turns back to her. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, but…You know I’m not your wife, right, detective? You’re remembering that?”

Other Barry stares at her for about a second, and then his face clears. “Oh. Wow, I’m s-sorry, that was just so easy – Deadshot and me and you, not you, my Iris, have always been like that. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“No, you didn’t,” she promises, going back to the specs. “It’s okay, it takes a while getting used to, and…shit.”

“What? What is it, Iris?”

“This power pack is capable of expelling over a thousand gigajoules of power if they ever get them up to full power.”

“What does that mean?” he asks slowly.

“That we are in a lot of trouble,” she says grimly. “And we need to get Jay back here, _now_.”

***

The first thing that Barry realises when he walks into Jitterbugs is that he would have had a hell of a lot more fun paying for school if he worked at a place like this. He and Other Iris are let through straight away. “Perks of having your mom own the place,” she explains at his incredulous look. The inside is decorated in green and gold, with servers walking around with plates and food of drink, careful not to knock into the people dressed in their best. A swing band is playing raucously on the stage, and he can see people on the upper levels clapping along with the music.

“You said this was a fundraiser?” he asks, and Iris nods.

“Yeah, for the pediatric ward of the children’s hospital,” she explains. “Your mom holds one every year for one cause or another, but this year my dad roped her into listening to the board at the hospital so they could hold one.”

He stares down at her. “Your…dad?”

“Yeah. He’s the chief of surgery, so he only really deals with the pediatric ward when he needs to, but they figured out that he’s in-laws with the great Nora Allen, so…”

Iris looks around the room for someone while Barry takes this in. It’s one thing for Iris to find out there’s another metahuman with her powers on this earth, and that she’s married to her best friend’s doppelganger (and he really does need to work out how she feels about that), but it’s quite another to find out that her father, who she spent so long fighting for, is alive. “Are they coming?”

Iris snorts. “Mom, maybe, but not dad. You have no idea how hard it is to get him away from that hospital – it usually takes me, my mom, Cecile, and a small act of God. So,” she turns back to him, “are you good with this? If anything looks weird, we can call my Barry or your Iris, or Jay, or STAR Labs.”

“That’s right,” Barry nods. Iris had called them while they were en route to let them know that they’d left the precinct, so it was safe to go to the party. “I don’t know them by sight, but we got a message to the bouncer to make sure he’s checking for weapons, not to mention a woman in a large parka, so we should be covered.”

“A large parka?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I really need to come visit your earth. Wait, is that Linda?”

“Linda, I know,” he says confidently. “Is she still with Wally on this earth?”

“Yes,” she says in relief. “At least some things are the same.”

“And she works for Wayne Industries?”

“…except that. No, she’s a reporter. She works with Missy Bridge.”

“Yeah, it was fun while it lasted.”

Iris leads them over to Linda and Wally, who are sitting by the bar. They both grin when they see them. “Hey, you two,” Wally says. “Good to see you guys out and about.”

“Are you kidding?” Linda demands. “Forget about them, what about us?”

“Work treating you terribly?” Barry asks, smiling. She snorts.

“Oh, I wish. Do you have any idea how good it feels to talk to adults? And not have to see applesauce everywhere? And _drink_?”

Iris laughs. “Where are they?”

“With my mother. She still thinks they’re cute.”

“And how long have you lasted without asking to talk to them?”

“We’ve made it a good half an hour since the last time,” Wally says proudly. When Iris notices Barry’s confused look, she says, “The twins have been driving them a little crazy.”

“It’s because they started walking,” Linda continues. “Irey went first, and then Jai followed straight afterwards. I think they did it on purpose.” Wally laughs.

“Lin, they’re babies, they don’t do anything on purpose.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Barry, I’m sorry Irey threw up on your blazer last week-”

“That’s okay,” he says quickly, sharing a look with Iris. “Like Wally said, they’re babies, she can’t help it.”

“If it helps,” Wally continues, “it means she likes you.”

“Don’t lie to him, that little girl throws up on everyone. Including the woman she was named after.”

“I hated that shirt anyway,” Iris says smoothly. “Anyway, we should leave you to get dinner. Enjoy the show!”

Iris leads them over to a table by the front with ‘reserved’ on it, and then settles in the large purple sofa. “Twins?” Barry asks. Iris laughs.

“Yeah, that was pretty much Linda’s reaction when she found out too. Do Wally and Linda not have them on your earth?”

“No. Not yet, anyway.” Iris has mentioned to Barry that Wally wants her advice when it comes to ring shopping. “But Wally’s busy being a resident, so I don’t think they’re quite there yet.”

“Really? Because Wally’s an attending trauma surgeon here.”

Barry pauses. “How old are all of you?”

“Wally’s thirty-one, Linda and Barry are twenty-nine, I’m twenty-eight.”

“You’re all older than we are,” he realises. “It must be the temporal warping.”

“Temporal warping?”

“One hour on Earth-Prime is two hours on Earth-2,” he says. “That must screw up everyone’s ages.”

“Huh. But you know, for us, _you’re_ Earth-2, right?”

Barry grins, and she puts a hand on her chin, thinking. “But still, that much disruption to a timeline would require someone going fast enough to break the space-time continuum.”

“You think there’s someone running at superspeed fast enough to change time?”

“You’re right, best friend of Miss Miracle. I don’t see how that could happen at all.”

Right then, Barry feels a hand on his shoulder. “Thank God,” someone says, “you didn’t pick work tonight. Some of the donors don’t believe I actually have a son.”

“Mom!” he says in surprise once he recognises her. She’s in a cream dress with her red curls piled on top of her head. She pulls him into a hug, and then Iris. “You both look great!”

“So do you!” he says. “I can’t believe you did all of this.”

“I don’t see why not,” she laughs. “I do them every year, honey.”

“Right, sorry.”

“He’s just stressed, Nora,” she tells him. “Work, you know.”

“When isn’t it? Now, Eddie is probably around here somewhere, but they want him to be the next State’s Attorney, so it’ll take a small miracle to get to talk to him tonight.”

“Well, it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it,” she points out. “With all the work he put in to cleaning up the city. We know that better than anyone.”

“True,” Nora agrees. “Can I get you guys anything? They’re sending around this wonderful champagne that Olivia Queen donated.”

“None for me,” Iris says. “Not feeling it tonight.”

“Maybe later, mom,” he agrees.

“Alright. I’d better get ready, they’re calling me.”

She kisses them both on the cheek and walks up to the stage. “Calling her?”

“She’s singing tonight,” Iris explains, sitting back in the plush sofa. “Doesn’t happen all the time, so people tend to pay attention. She’s half the reason the donors are here at all.”

Barry watches as his mother walks onstage and starts doing a sound check. Then he glances at Iris, who’s eating some mini mac and cheese casseroles that someone has dropped off at their private booth. “You know, you can get that champagne if you want,” he tells her. “It’s bad enough you’re not here with your actual husband; you should enjoy yourself.”

“No, that’s okay,” she says. “I, um, want to keep my head clear, you know? I’m supposed to be helping you, after all.”

Barry nods just as the lights dim and someone introduces Nora. Everything goes dead silent, someone plays a trill on the piano, and then he can only watch and listen in awe as his mother starts singing _My Funny Valentine_. He’s been glancing at the door this entire time, in case Cold or Heatwave turn up, but now he can’t help but look around at his doppelganger’s life. Wally and Linda smile at him from the upper levels, he can see Eddie surrounded by people, Lawton just showed up with her husband and have waved at them from across the room. He’s respected at work, he has his sister, and he’s married to Iris without any of the ridiculous baggage that makes it impossible for them to be anything more than friends on their earth. And he feels an ache in his chest for something he never knew he was missing.

Unfortunately for Barry, there was never any point to watching the door. Because Captain Cold and Heatwave had been preparing to hit the fundraiser for weeks, and so head been scouting Nora Allen’s club that whole time. Barry and Iris’ doppelganger watch along with the rest of the cloud, and Barry is watching the door when the lights go up. Standing in the middle of the room are two women who Barry thought were waitresses, but they’re both carrying guns and they must have changed in the bathrooms. The band stop playing immediately, and one of them tips her head to the side. “Don’t stop on our account, dollface,” she drawls.

The other, who must be Captain Cold, judging by the parka, grins. “That’s our song.”

***

“So what you’re saying,” Other Barry says as they drive around the city, “is that they could strike anywhere, at any moment, and release enough energy to turn someone into and icicle _or_ a flame-grilled shish-kebab?”

“I like that analogy,” Chesca says over the intercom.

“Yes,” Iris admits. “But we’re handling it.”

“How?” Jay asks. Iris adjusts the earpiece. It’s Dr. Wells who answers, and Iris gets a sudden flashback to all the times she helped her during the first year as Miss Miracle.”

“Well, Chesca and Jesse reprogrammed the STAR Labs satellite to search for extreme cold or heat signatures. “It’s quite ingenious, really. The minute they fire those guns, we should be able to find them.”

“I’m working on programming a map into your suit, Iris,” Jesse adds. “As soon as we know coordinates, you should be able to get there quickly.”

“But what if we can’t get there before they hurt someone?” Other Barry asks.

“That’s why there are two of us, Barry,” Jay tells him firmly. “Don’t forget that I’ve been doing this for years.”

“And if he attacks Nora’s shindig,” Chesca adds, “one of you needs to get Barry and the other Iris out of there. Detective Allen will probably be needed on the scene, and we can’t have you all running around confusing shit.”

“Yes, that certainly would be problematic,” Dr. Wells laughs.

“Alright, keep us posted,” Iris says, and they all turn their intercoms off. She lies back in her seat, but senses Other Barry watching her. “Detective?”

“Sorry. It just feels weird looking at you in that suit. How does it work?”

“I get that. Really, the suit is mostly because I need a material that will cling to my skin if I teleport. Plus it’s durable and has all manner of tracking and safety precautions in it.”

“And the mask?”

“They have my glasses in them.”

“Iris would love that,” he says, smiling. “I’m sorry about the yelling, by the way.”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

“When I turned up at STAR Labs. I get the feeling I wasn’t exactly the most welcoming doppelganger.” He shifts in his chair as they drive. “A few years ago, Iris and I were working on a case about the mob – it’s how we fell in love, actually – and we ended up having to have protection because of it. We’re safe now, but then today, when she called and said it was an emergency, and then I couldn’t find her…” He shrugs. “I worry. I’m not always the nicest person when that happens.”

“Oh.” She shrugs; she’s been known to do a little more than shout at people when the people she loves are in danger. “That’s okay. And your wife is awesome, she’s being a really big help.”

He smiles ruefully. “She’s probably enjoying herself. I’m glad she got to go to that party, even if I didn’t.”

Iris pauses. “You both seem really happy.”

He gives her a sidelong glance. “Really?”

“Do you not believe that?”

“You may not be my wife, but you’re her doppelganger. I’m a detective, and I can read your facial expressions.”

“I did think something was bothering her,” she admits. Barry clenches his jaw, and Iris curses herself, because if there’s one thing she has a weakness for, it’s a Barry Allen that’s in pain.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Can’t you read my mind?”

“I’m not trained enough to read anyone from your earth yet – it’s the wrong frequency.”

He sighs. “We got married three years ago. I asked her after five dates – yeah, I know, it was soon, but I was so sure I was never going to love anyone else. And I’m still not. I thought we were happy and that we were making it work, but she’s been…looking at me differently lately, and I don’t know why.”

Other Barry runs a hand through his hair. “And it’s not like I’m…I’m impatient, and I’m blunt, and I yell at people. And I work a lot, so I keep letting her down, which she says is fine, and that just makes it worse. She’s being kind of distant, which makes me work more because I’m afraid of – of messing it up, which of course makes her more distant, and it just keeps going around like that. But then a few weeks ago she said she wanted to talk, and now I’m avoiding her. Which isn’t helping.”

“I don’t want to keep screwing up with her. I love her and – God, she’s my world, you know? But like I said, she’s been looking at me differently, and now she says she wants to talk, and I keep…” He swallows. “I keep thinking, with how quickly we got married, and how much I work, and everything, she might not want…want to-”

“Barry.” Iris has heard enough, and even though she’s surprised that her doppelgangers are having this problem, when they seem to be completely besotted with each other, she doesn’t for a second believe that Barry should be this worried. “I know what it looks like to be an Iris West in love with a Barry Allen,” she tells him firmly. “I can’t read her mind, but I know that much. Believe me, that woman is not going anywhere.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Maybe. Anyway, you don’t – you don’t want to be hearing this. Do we have anything else on where Cold and Heatwave might be?”

“No, no one has-”

“SHIT SHIT SHIT-”

“Chesca!” Iris says, her hand jumping to her comms. “What is it? What happened?”

“Barry says they’re at Jitterbugs, and they want everyone’s stuff. Wait, _wait_ , Barry – oh God, they’re attacking people-”

“Iris,” Dr. Wells says tersely. “I am routing an image to your suit – will you be able to view it?”

“I will,” she replies, and she looks at Barry. “Your Metahuman Task Force – how big is it?”

“Five officers and me.”

“Call them for backup, and then follow my lead. Meet me outside of the entrance. Madam Miracle?”

“I’m right here.”

“Go in and get the others out, and then follow my lead.”

The image arrives, superimposed on the lenses of her suit along with the coordinates, and then she’s in the Jitterbugs entrance. She can see them both, walking around the place and threatening people with their guns. At the far end of the room, Barry is covering her doppelganger with his body. Suddenly, they aim for a couple by the piano, and Iris teleports them out of the way.

“Hey, ladies!” she calls. Everyone turns to look at her, shock echoing around the room. “Wanna play with me?”

“Madam Miracle?” Captain Cold says, grinning. Iris peers at her – the woman looks _extremely_ familiar, though she can’t place her. Iris raises an eyebrow, just as Jay herself appears across from her.

“Guess again,” she says, folding her arms. Heatwave looks around, gun raises.

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a party, Cold.” She fires the gun at the ceiling and everyone starts screaming. “Who wants to play first?”

“Everyone out!” Iris orders, and they all start running. “Get them out,” she tells Jay, gesturing to Barry and her doppelganger, and then launches herself at Cold and Heatwave. In the next second, they’re outside, the other two looking at her in confusion. “What the-”

“I’m not from around here, sweetheart,” she tells them, and they bristle at her.

“I don’t care where you’re from,” Cold snaps, “you just lost me a hell of a big payday.”

“I’ll tell you where you can send your tears.”

“Oh, let me burn the bitch,” Heatwave growls, and Cold nods.

“Take your time, Jax. It’s more fun that way.”

Iris stares. “Jax Jefferson?”

“How do you know my name?”

But she doesn’t give Iris a chance to answer, instead launching a fireball at her. Iris teleports out of the way just in time, before avoiding a blast of ice from Cold’s gun. “Iris?” Chesca asks. “You know what to do?”

“I have to make them cross streams, absolute cold cancels out absolute zero.” She had done the same on the bridge, before the plane had crashed into it. “But I need Jay – there’s too much space here, and I need her to distract one enough so they’re directly across from each other.”

“She’s on her way, but-”

“CCPD, freeze!” someone yells, and Iris finishes teleporting to see that Other Barry’s backup has arrived. Barry himself is at the front, but several of them have guns pointed at them. Iris keeps shifting out of the way of their blasts, but then Cold turns on the police.

“No!” Iris yells. “You’re too close!”

But Iris has to dodge another one of Heatwave’s blasts, one that sends her directly into a pillar. When she looks up, Cold is pointing her gun at Other Barry, who has his back to them as he tries to get everyone out of the way. “BARRY!”

Before she even knows what she’s doing, she’s teleported in front of him, and then her skin chills as the ice blast covers her entire body. Every nerve in her body screams in pain, and she topples over. He stares at her in shock. “I-Iris?”

“Incoming!”

Jay has arrived, and uses her helmet to deflect on of Heatwave’s fireballs back at her, before standing next to Barry and Iris, who is shivering uncontrollably. “Get them back to the precinct,” she orders Barry, and bends down next to Iris.

“Iris, can you hear me?” _Can you hear me?_

_Y-Yeah…_

Meanwhile, Cold and Heatwave are beating a hasty retreat, heading to a van parked on the side of the street. “Till next time, miracle workers!”

“We have to get her back to STAR Labs,” Jay tells Iris, lifting her body in her arms. She grabs Barry’s arm and takes them back to the lab. Chesca screams as soon as she sees Iris’ form, shivering and blue with the cold. “What happened?”

“Cold,” Jay says. “She was going to kill Barry, and-”

“What’s the matter with her?” he asks, wringing his hands. “Is she alright?” He makes to walk towards her as they lift her onto a bed, but Jesse steps in front of him.

“I think you’ve done enough, Detective,” he grinds out.

“Jesse, come on,” Iris mumbles through the pain. “It wasn’t his fault…”

“If hadn’t been standing there being useless-”

“ _Jesse_ ,” Chesca snaps. “It was a mistake, okay? Besides, Iris has healing powers, and Detective Allen doesn’t. If that blast had hit him instead, it would have killed him instantly, and then we would have had to explain to Dr. West that we killed her husband.”

“Jesse, I need your help,” Dr. Wells says. “We need to warm her up, but we can’t do it too quickly or she’ll go into shock. I have something to put her to sleep…”

Jesse walks off to deal with that, while Barry turns to Jay. “Where’s Iris? And the other Barry?”

“I took them home,” she says apologetically. “I know I should have brought him here, but he looks so much like you, it was instinct. Iris wasn’t feeling well, though, she wanted to stay home.”

“At least she’s safe, I – Detective Allen,” he says into his phone. His face falls. “Captain Nimbus, of course, I…”

Eventually, Iris warms up and is well enough to look at everyone. Chesca and Jesse are beside her when she wakes. “Where is everyone?”

“Jay’s outside with Dr. Wells and Colin,” Chesca explains. “The other Iris and Barry are at their house, and the other Barry went back to the precinct.”

“We have to find a way to catch them,” she says, stepping down from the bed.

“Iris, this is exactly what I was talking about,” Jesse interjects. “We’ve only been here a few hours, and you almost got yourself killed trying to help a stranger.”

“He’s not a stranger, he’s Barry,” she points out.

“He’s not _Barry_ -”

“ _He is Barry_!” she shoots back. “Alright, _he is to me_! There’s no universe where I’m going to leave him to be killed by a sociopath with a gun, do you understand? I did that already. Now do you have a plan, or are you going to stand there snapping at me all day?”

“I do,” Chesca says. “Well, we do. Dr. Wells and Colin came up with these shields that can withstand their guns, and then we thought you and Jay could use the police to help you corner them and make them cross streams.”

Iris nods. “Do you have a specific plan for that?”

“Right outside. You will need to change, though – other Iris has some spare clothes here, and Cold ruined this one with her gun.”

“And did we hear you correctly?” Jesse asks. “Is Heatwave Jax Jefferson on this earth?”

“Yeah,” Iris remembers. “And Cold looked really familiar too, but I couldn’t place her. Anyway, give me the plan, and I’ll go to the precinct with it.”

They walk out into the Cortex, where Jay and Dr. Wells are talking. “Iris, I want to make sure you’re clear on this,” Jay says. “Because after this, they’ll all know about you.”

“I’m clear. Are you good with coming out of retirement?”

She looks at Dr. Wells. “We’re all doing our part to make the city safer. I figure it’s the least I can do.”

“Spoken like a true miracle worker,” Chesca grins.

***

“…no, it’s fine. Yeah. I love you too.”

Barry watches anxiously as Other Iris hangs up the phone with her husband. “Is-”

“Iris is fine, Barry,” she assures him. “My knowledge is that she’s been through this before?”

“Yeah,” he admits, sitting on their couch. “A few times.”

“Well, she’s doing okay. I think they all want to head back to the precinct to try to capture them again.” She rubs her eyes. “I’m sorry, I kind of have a headache. I’ll be back in a second.”

“Of course.”

She leaves and Barry loosens his tie. Barry had barely looked Iris in the eye before Jay took them back here, and he’s been wearing a hole in his doppelganger’s carpet worrying about her. That’s when his comms beep, letting him know he’s needed. “Hello?”

“Hey, Barry, you okay?” Chesca asks. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Good. Listen, Jay’s about to bring you back to STAR Labs, alright? We need you on the comms.”

“Why?”

“Well, we finally got my glasses to work here, and we thought we could use them to vibe their location. But if I’m in the field with Jay and Iris, I can’t direct her. She always seems much calmer with you there, anyway.”

He nods. “Okay, I’ll do my best.”

“Hang tight. Jay has to talk to the precinct, but she’ll be there in a sec.”

She hands up, and Barry looks around for Other Iris to tell her he has to leave. “Iris?” he calls, walking up the stairs. “Are you – oh, shit.”

He scared her so bad that she threw what she was holding in the air, and he catches it before he hits the ground. It’s a mug with writing on it. “ _World’s Best Dad_ ,” he reads. He smiles. “Early Father’s Day gift?”

“No,” she says quietly. “It’s…It’s for Barry.”

It takes him a minute to realise what she means. “Oh. _Oh_. You’re having a baby?”

She smiles. “Yeah, we are.”

“That’s – congratulations!” he beams. “Does he know?”

“Not yet,” she sighs. “I’ve been putting off telling him.”

“Why? I’m sure he’ll be excited.”

“See, that’s the thing. I’m not so sure he will be.”

“Why?” he frowns. “Why wouldn’t he be excited?”

She smiles ruefully. “He asked. me to marry him after four dates, did you know that? He will – if you ask him, he’ll tell you it was five, because that man…” She laughs, shaking her head. “It was a pretty emotional time for us, and I kind of thought he was asking in the heat of the moment, which is why I almost didn’t say yes.”

“Because you didn’t want to marry him?”

“Because I did want to marry him,” she corrects him. “More than anything I’d ever wanted in my whole life. And I was fine with it, but lately I keep wondering whether he thinks he made the wrong decision.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Every time I want to talk to him, he avoids me,” she explains, her voice low. “He’s always working and – look, I knew this about him when I married him, and he always apologises, but I keep thinking he’s going to figure out he keeps doing it subconsciously because he’s…bored with me. That maybe he should – I don’t know, be with a detective.” She lets out a short laugh. “Maybe he should have moved to Coast City and married Patty Spivot or something.”

“There’s no earth, universe, or galaxy where we marry Patty Spivot,” he says firmly. “Unless we’d like to get kidnapped and then shot at.”

She stares at him. “Maybe I shouldn’t visit your earth.”

“Look, Iris, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. If I were him, I would be ecstatic.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You would be?”

He blinks, realising what he just implied. “I was – I just meant, because you guys look like you-”

“Barry?” someone calls from downstairs. Jay.

“Did I know she was coming?” Iris asks.

“No, that’s what I was coming to tell you. I need to get back and help, but I don’t want to leave you alone like this.

“I’m fine, Barry,” she assures him. “I’m just going to take a nap. I’ll call my mom if I need anything.”

“Okay.”

He makes to go downstairs, but she calls him back. “Barry?”

“Yes?”

“Your Iris is really lucky to have you.”

***

Iris makes it to the precinct while Captain Nimbus is holding a meeting there. After Chesca explained the plan to her and Jay several times, Jay went to get Barry from his doppelganger’s house. Everyone is gathered around the middle, and then Other Barry spots her in the atrium. He breaks away from the group to meet her there, his brow furrowed. “Iris? What are you doing here?”

“I came to help,” she replies. He frowns at her.

“Are you feeling better? Jay said you didn’t feel too good.”

She shrugs. “Nothing a little rest couldn’t fix. What’s going on?”

“Nimbus wants everyone joining the task force,” he explains. He still looks worried, but then he did see Iris frozen to the point where she couldn’t move. Even if she only _looked_ like his wife, that would still freak a person out. “Everyone at STAR Labs told me the plan, so now we’re just waiting for Jay to turn up. Are you here to-”

“I need to explain the weapons they’re going to use – they’re picking them up on their way to the scene.”

Other Barry leads her in just as Nimbus explains that Barry will be leading the mission. “Allen?” she says, and he nods.

“The problem is that Captain Cold and Heatwave are not metahumans, but only a metahuman can withstand their guns,” he tells them. “We were working with STAR Labs to track their guns, and we realised that the only way we could defeat them was with Madam Miracle.”

“Is she the metahuman that turned up and fought them?” someone asks, and Other Barry shakes his head.

“No, she isn’t. That is another metahuman who helps her – Miss Miracle.”

“How are we supposed to trust her?”

“She saved Barry’s life,” Lawton interjects. She shrugs. “I couldn’t see her face, but Cold would have killed him if she weren’t there.”

“And Madam Miracle can vouch for her. Captain Nimbus has already explained that we’re working with STAR Labs to track them and capture them, but Iris will explain why.”

He gives her an encouraging smile and she steps forward. “The problem with the guns, we’re finding,” she says, “is that the power packs they stole make them way too dangerous to face normal humans without backup. So we’ve designed these shields to withstand that.”

“When we go to their hideout,” Nimbus tells everyone, “will we have these? You want us to ambush them?”

“No,” Barry says. “That would be way too dangerous. Madam Miracle and Miss Miracle will lure them out and subdue them, and Lawton and I will take care of them when their weapons are gone. Everyone else will be there in a line to make sure there’s no way they can escape, but ensure that they’re protected.”

“Your family sure do know a lot of metahumans, Allen,” someone laughs. “First your grandmother, and now you.”

“I guess I’m lucky that way,” he smiles. “So Iris and everyone else at STAR Labs are tracking their location right now, so we need to get there, grab the shields, and move out. Everyone okay with that?”

They nod and start talking in smaller groups. Nimbus gives orders to people, and they suit up in their guns and gear. Other Barry looks back at her as he tries to put his holster on. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Iris smiles. If he spent even a few weeks with her, what she went through today would barely be a blip on the radar. “I’m fine, Barry. You worry too much.”

“Sorry,” he smiles sheepishly. He does his holster wrong and then takes it off to do it again. “You really think this will work?”

“Well, absolute cold cancels absolute heat. Everyone down at STAR Labs will be tracking them, and you’ll have Chesca backing up you and Lawton. Then as soon as you guys see them, enter Miss Miracle and Madam Miracle to make them cross-streams.”

Other Barry’s done his holster wrong again, and he rolls his eyes and starts again. “I’m just hoping that no one gets hurt out there.”

“I’m sure the superheroes will have your backs.”

“Hopefully.” He stares at his holster. “How have I done this wrong _twice_?”

Iris laughs, shaking her head. “Barry. C’mere, let me do it. Arms up for me?” He obediently lifts his arms while she fixes the holster for him. She avoids the look he’s giving her – she supposes he can’t help it, looking at her with such content, since she does look so much like his wife. All around them, people are starting to leave in squad cars. He puts his arms down when she’s done. “You know, I might do some delegating after this is over.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean I like the Metahuman Task Force, but it can’t just be me and Lawton all the time. I think I could train some of the newer cops.” He laughs, straightening his shirt. “I might actually get to go home to my wife.”

She gives him a small smile. “That’d be nice.”

Other Barry takes a breath. “Look, Iris, I know that I’ve been really busy with everything, and I haven’t been the best husband lately.” He takes her hands, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles. “But I promise when this is all over and all these people go back to their…earth, we can go home and talk. About whatever you want. Okay?”

It takes her at least three seconds to work out what’s going on. _He thinks I’m his wife_. “Barry, I-”

“Guys, I’m sorry,” Lawton interrupts them and points to the door, where everyone is filing out. “Allen, we gotta go.”

“Right,” he sighs. He looks back at her with the most anxious expression on his face, and she knows it’s because of what he told her earlier. But it isn’t fair, because she’s not his, and the way he’s looking at her is making her chest ache. His hands come up to cup her face, his palms warm on her cheeks.

“You know I love you,” he says quietly, his eyes searching her face. “Right?”

Iris takes a breath to reply, to say _something_ , but then he kisses her very softly, his fingers brushing her cheeks. There is nothing particularly amazing about this kiss – he probably kisses his wife like this every day before he goes off to catch a criminal or whatever. But the way he was looking at her and holding her and talking to her, God, she has wanted Barry to look at her like this her whole life. And there’s just never going to be anyone who does that for her.

Other Barry lets go of her face and her eyes flutter open to find him watching her. “Yeah,” she says helplessly, smiling. “I l-love you too.”

He smiles at her like he’s never going to want to see anything else, before his eyes snap away from her. “Ready, Lawton?”

“Ready, ready.”

Other Barry lets go of her hands and leaves, while Lawton squeezes her shoulders as she hurries after him. “Bye, sweets.”

“Yeah, see you,” she says quietly. She takes her glasses off and rubs her eyes, willing her heart to stop racing, and then her comms beeps. “Hello?”

“Iris?” Chesca asks. “You still at the precinct?”

“Yeah. Everyone just left – they’re on their way to you.”

“Great. Come back here, get into your suit, and let’s get this show on the road.”

Dr. Wells traces Cold and Heatwave to a hideout on the outskirts of town in an abandoned factory, so Other Barry has told everyone to surround the area. “The minute they lose the guns,” her Barry says in her ear, “they can move in and take them out.”

“Yeah,” Iris says quietly.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Fine, just…I’m fine.”

“Everyone else?”

“Fine,” Jay, Other Barry, Chesca and Lawton reply. The advance slowly, Iris and Jay in the front, Chesca, Other Barry and Lawton in the back.

“You know what’s happening,” Barry informs them. “Miss Miracle and Madam Miracle will lure them out, get them to cross streams, and then Lawton and Barry will subdue them. Chess, you go in there and depower their guns before they can cause anymore danger.”

“I found this a lot easier when I was sitting in the chair at comms,” Chesca tells them, while Barry relays all of this to Lawton. She doesn’t have a connection to them, after all.

“I do miss it,” Jay says, and Iris grins at her.

“There’s nothing like it, is there?”

“ _You didn’t knock_.” The voice echoes through the cavernous hall, and Barry and Lawton cock their guns immediately.

“Get back,” Iris says to them. “We’ll signal when we need you.”

They scurry off just as Captain Cold and Heatwave step out of the shadows. “I never thought you were one to be rude, Madam Miracle,” Cold continues. “The young upstart, maybe, but not you.”

“Enough, Cold,” Jay says. “I’ve always wanted to teach you kids some respect.”

“Is that a threat, old lady?” Heatwave wants to know.

“It’s a promise, darling.” Jay looks at Iris. _Get them to the ends of the hall, and then we do it._

_Flame or frost?_

_You pick._

Iris has to remind herself to fight smarter, not harder or faster. They are much, much more advanced than they were on her earth, but she and Jay managed to get them across the room. She locks eyes with the woman across the room, and they nod and head straight to the middle of the room. Taking the bait, Cold and Heatwave fire their guns at them, and Iris collapses in agony as the flame hits her. She can feel Jay’s pain as the cold hits her, and she almost passes out. “Now, Iris!” Barry shouts.

“W-What…”

“Iris, _get up_.”

Right before the pain takes her, she remembers to move, and there’s a bang that shakes the foundations as the guns cancel each other out. The flames turn red, then white, until both guns explode out of their hands. “Barry, now!” Jay yells, and Barry and Lawton leap out, shooting both the women with tranquiliser darts. Chesca runs out behind them, heading straight for the guns, and Jay helps Iris off the floor. “It was great having someone take the other side for me this time,” she grins.

“We’ll have to do it again some time.”

“Captain Cold, Heatwave, you’re under arrest,” Barry says. He takes off their masks. “Now, why don’t we see who you are?”

But then there’s some sort of blast, and Iris and Jay are propelled across the room. “I don’t think so.” The voice is so familiar that Chesca gets chills, and when the figure steps out from behind a pillar, she sees why. “I don’t like it when people hurt the people who work for me.”

And Chesca’s doppelganger strolls up to her. “Good evening, Francesca.”

She gasps. “Doppel…”

“… _ganger_.”

“Am I losing it?” Lawton wants to know. “There are two of them, right?”

“ _I knew it_!” Chesca exclaims. “I knew there was another me here!”

“Oh, I knew all about you even before you came to this earth. I see you’ve met our sister.”

She whirls around, and Danita is the one in Barry’s handcuffs. “My sister is _Captain Cold_?”

“Yes. You see, on your earth, you had to build the gun to save your sister. Here, I built it to give to her.”

“I’d hate to be your sister,” Danita adds.

“See,” Chesca’s doppelganger continues, “we are all… _connected_ , Francesca.”

“The name is Vibe.”

“Reverb.”

“Okay, I’ve heard worse. But I’ve also heard better.”

She shrugs. Her glasses are more advanced, and she’s head to toe in black leather with gauntlets. “Listen to this,” she muses. “What if Miss Miracle wasn’t running the show anymore?”

“What do you mean?” she demands.

“Dearest Vibe,” she laughs. She points to where Iris is still lying on the floor “You use your powers for these… _cheap_ parlour tricks, or for helping lesser powers, when you could be so much greater. I could teach you.”

“T-Teach me?”

“You could rule your earth. What do you say?”

Chesca swallows, acutely aware of how delicate this is. “I say…anyone with that much gel in their hair couldn’t teach me a damn thing.”

Reverb, for her part, simply shrugs. “Oh, well, I tried.” She lifts her hands, and Chesca can feel the vibrations. “Sorry about this, officers-”

Then she’s shaking and writhing as an electric shock passes through her, and when she falls, Iris is standing behind her. She wipes her brow. “Gosh. She talks a lot, huh?”

***

“…and just use these materials,” Jay finishes.

“Thanks, Jay,” Jesse says. “And I’ve given Detective Allen a list of metahumans we faced and how to defeat them.”

“The should be useful if you’re coming out of retirement,” Iris adds, and Other Barry grins.

“Please do. I need someone to help me explain to Lawton about doppelgangers are.”

With everyone locked up and Iris having information on how to get to Killer Frost, they’re going back to their earth. Barry is talking to Colin, while Dr. Wells and Chesca are talking about the breach.

“I’m sorry my Colin was so…Well, Killer Frost,” he says. Barry laughs.

“Believe me, Colin, you don’t have to apologise. Our doppelganger’s pretty much do what they want. I think I learned that much on this trip.” Colin notices his eyes steal to Other Barry, who is hugging Iris goodbye. He clears his throat.

“You know,” he says, “Iris and Barry used to hate each other.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I thought that might make you feel better.”

“You thought it would make me feel better to know our doppelganger’s hated each other?”

“Yes,” he says simply. “Because now they’re married.”

Other Barry, meanwhile, is staring sceptically at Iris. “I have been looking for Light for weeks. And you’re saying he’s been on another earth this entire time?”

“At least you know where he is now,” she points out. “Thank Iris for all her help. And I think you’ll both be fine, for what it’s worth.”

“You too,” he says. “Iris?”

“Yes?”

“He loves you too. I don’t know how, or whether he even knows it, but he does. I can recognise my own face.” Before they can say anything else, Chesca calls for them to go. He hugs her quickly, and then watches as they all get back into that breach contraption and go back to their earth. He sighs and rubs his face, leaning, exhausted, against a table. And then he hears some tell-tale heels on the floor, right before he hears his wife's voice.

“BARTHOLOMEW HENRY ALLEN.”

Jay, Dr. Wells and Colin all disappear pretty quickly when a small figure walks in, brown eyes alight with anger. “Uh,” he says intelligently. “Hi, Iris.”

“No,” she says firmly. “Do not ‘Hi, Iris’ me. Have you lost your mind? You were almost killed by a two crazy people with fire and ice guns, and you _don’t call me_?”

She pulls him into a hug, and he smells her familiar coconut oil scent warming his nose. “Sorry,” he says quietly. “We had to send the others back, and then I was coming home. I’m fine, though. And I’m ready to talk, if you want.”

She blinks. “I – alright.”

“I…” he shrugs as they both sit down. “You don’t have to feel bad about anything. We got married really quickly, and I didn’t really leave you a lot of choice, so if you want to go, that…” he swallows, painfully, unable to finish, and Iris frowns.

“Barry, what are you talking about? Where am I going?”

“I thought you wanted to talk.”

“I do. But I’m lost. Who’s going?”

“You don’t mean…” He’s kind of afraid to look at her, so he folds his arms and looks at the floor. “You mean you’re not…leaving me?”

Her breath comes out in one go, and she cradles his face in her hands. “ _Barry_ , no! Of course not. I would never... _no,_ Barry, I'm not leaving you.”

“Then I’m confused, what did you want to tell me?”

She swallows, rubbing her forehead. “Well, I’ve been feeling really weird lately, and kind of tired, and I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, and…” she sits, taking his hands. “I’m pregnant, Barry.”

He stares at her, all the wind knocked out of him. “You’re,“ he breathes out. A ghost of a smile appears on his face. “Preg – with my-”

“No, Barry, my other husband. Of course your baby, you doofus.”

Barry’s face breaks into a grin, but then just as quickly, it drops. “And did you not want to - keep it, or-”

“No, I did. But…”

“But what?” he asks softly. When she bites her lip, he tilts her chin upwards. “What is it, Iris?”

“Well, you’re always so busy, and you keep blowing me off when I want to talk, and my mind went to some really awful places…”

“Where?”

She adjusts her glasses. “Just, you haven’t been home a lot. I thought you might maybe be...I don't know, drifting, or something. And I know it was your doppelganger, but you walked in today without your ring, and-”

“Iris,” he interrupts, knowing where she’s going. He grabs her around the waist and looks her dead in the eye. “Never, do you hear me? _Never_.”

Iris nods and he pulls her onto his lap. “Your job scares me,” she says quietly. “I know it’s just par for the course, but I can’t help it. And I don't want to do this by myself because you're always busy, or because you're...gone.”

“Iris, there is nothing on earth that could ever keep me from you," he promises. He shrugs. "And I can quit my job.”

“You love your job.”

“I love you more,” he says firmly.

“Barry,” she laughs. “Hey, for better or worse, right? And we've survived worse. Besides, you can’t quit. I want these kids to go to college.”

“K-Kids?” he splutters. “With an ‘s’?”

“Well, um,” she says. She tucks some hair behind her ear.  “My HCG levels were really high, like, _really_ high,and I’m always exhausted. And Dad’s a twin, and Wally’s a twin, so it, kind of, might be…twins? It’s probably twins, we have to – Oh!”

Barry has pulled her into a kiss, stopping her words completely. “I love you,” he says simply against her mouth. “I don’t think you’ll ever know how much.”

“I think I know,” she grins. "But you can keep telling me anyway."

“When?”

“Erm…you remember when Stanton wanted you to lock up the precinct because of his daughter’s dance recital, and we were the only ones there…on my desk…”

“ _Oh_.” he grins. “Cool.”

“Not cool, Barry!” she laughs. "We have a policy!"

“I beg to differ, we have a prize to prove it. _Two_ prizes. Besides, that was some of my best work.”

“Whatever. Now your best work is getting me home and giving me gourmet chicken soup.”

He frowns. “You hate chicken soup.”

“I do, it’s disgusting. But your kids," she says, gesturing to her stomach, "love it.”

He makes a face at her as they walk towards the exit. “Why are they my kids when they do something bad?”

“Because when I can't drink wine and I'm always tired and have to drink the devil's nectar, they are your kids."

“Okay. Hey, we should get you vitamins, the neo-natal ones-”

“I’ve been taking vitamins, Barry,” she laughs. “I was worried, not stupid.”

“And we should get Aria to get you fish, it’ll be good for the babies-”

“We are not calling Aqualady from Atlantis to get me tuna, that is not why she joined the Justice Society." She pauses and loops her arms around his neck, kissing him on the forehead. "But you are doing brilliantly so far, Dad.”

Barry grins down at her. “Hey, you think the other us will be okay?”

Iris scoffs. “Barry, they’ll be having babies in no time. Just watch.”

***

Barry sits alone in his room, exhausted. After coming back, Jesse sent everyone home, and he’s just explained to his mom, Henry and Eddie everything that happened. Including the revelation that Colin feared someone called The Flash on Earth-52. Whatever that meant. He’s just about to go to bed, wanting to calm his mind from everything until tomorrow when Iris shows up, her expression cautious as she stands by the window. “Bad time?”

“No, it’s cool,” he says. “Everyone’s in the kitchen.”

She sits in his chair, and Barry wants to ask her a million questions. _What did our kiss mean to you? Are you jealous of your doppelganger_?

_Do you still love me_?

“I just wanted to check that everything was cool with us,” she says slowly. “Just, because that kind of thing can be weird.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Weird.”

“But it doesn’t mean anything,” she continues. She laughs. “I mean, there’s an earth where I’m normal and don’t know you at all, one where we all live in Gotham, and one where we’re all villains who work for LutherCorp. We’re called the Crime Syndicate.”

“Oh,” he laughs, trying not to be crushed. “Yeah, that puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Right, and-”

She breaks off when there’s a crash and a scream from downstairs. Iris shares a panicked look with Barry, before taking them both downstairs. Eddie is on the floor, bleeding, and Nora is gasping and shaking. “Mom, what is it? What happened?”

“Colin,” she chokes out. “He took Henry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm evil.  
> Names: Jason Rusch and Louise Lincoln were Firestorm and Killer Frost before Ronnie Raymond and Caitlin Snow were.


	28. Killer Frost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Miracle meets Team Flash, and Miss Miracle battles Killer Frost.  
> *This chapter takes place during the episode 2x18: Versus Zoom*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my favourite, favourite, FAVOURITE ending EVER.  
> GET READY, Y'ALL. EVEN I CRIED AT THIS.

Iris blinks at Nora. “C-Colin. He was here?”

Barry goes to her immediately, putting his arms around her, and Iris crosses to Eddie. She shakes her head. “I don’t know how he did it. One minute we were all standing here, and Henry and Eddie were about to leave, and then Colin just bursts through out of this…blue light…”

“A breach,” Iris says tersely. “He can open them whenever he wants.”

Nora is shaking so badly that Barry has to sit her down, and Iris flits quickly to the kitchen to get some bandages for Eddie, who’s bleeding from the arm. “I’m calling Chesca and Jesse.”

She and Barry share a look. They literally got back from Earth-2 about an hour ago, after deciding that they’d have to wait until the next day to sort through their information and prepare to go to Earth-52. “Did he say anything?” she asks, pressing on Eddie’s wound. He doesn’t say anything, his eyes closed, and she realises he’s too shaken to speak. “Wait, don’t worry,” she tells him. She kneels in front of him and closes her eyes, resting her hands on either side of Eddie’s head. After a second, she is seeing the events through his eyes.

“… _likes to go fishing, Dad_ , _” Eddie laughs. Henry shakes his head._

_“I’m telling you, go up to Ascension Mountains in the right weather-”_

_“No,” Nora and Eddie say together. He sighs._

_“You’re missing out on some good trout.”_

_Before anyone can dispute this, Eddie shivers. “You okay, son?” Henry asks._

_“I’m fine, I just felt really cold for a second.”_

_“Oh, goody,” a voice says. “I thought I was losing my touch.”_

_Neither Nora, Eddie or Henry had seen Killer Frost in person. Nora knows Colin, the sweet, sad man that she thought was a doctor, but she does not recognise what she sees before her – the midnight blue jacket, the starkly white hair, the ice crystals that float around his body. But that isn’t anything compared to his eyes, a chilling blue with black at the centre, so black that Eddie is surprised it isn’t swallowing all the light._

_“C-Colin,” Nora breathes. He tips his head, and a blast of ice shoots through the room._

_“No, Nora. Killer Frost. And I see you’ve finally made up with your husband. I always wondered whether you would.”_

_Colin makes to grab her, but Henry steps in front of her, shielding her body with his. Before anyone can say anything, Colin has hip by the collar. “I was going to take Nora, but you’ll do just as well,” he snarls. “Maybe then she’ll learn to listen when I tell her things.”_

Iris stumbles back from Eddie, landing on her hands. The memory had been so vivid she could almost feel the ice biting relentlessly at her skin, and she wonders how she didn’t feel his presence if he had been there for so long. “Iris?” Barry asks.

“He said something,” she gets out. She relays the scene to Barry, who pales.

“I know who he was talking about.”

“Was it Iris?” Nora asks. “Do you think he knows she’s going between the earths?”

“No,” he says grimly. “I think he’s talking about Malina.”

“What?” Eddie demands. “How? What could he want from her?”

“Think about it,” Barry says. “We know he has her in some sort of lab, and he’s had her for two years in there. He’s scared of The Flash, whoever he is, which means he’s doing something bad, which means Malina wouldn’t want to do it. And using the people you love against you is Colin’s M.O. – it’s how he got to me.”

“Well, we’re not waiting,” Iris says firmly, standing. Electricity is threatening to burst out of her hands like throwing stars; she can feel it jumping from nerve to nerve, igniting her hand in a not unpleasant flame. “I’m getting Jesse and Chesca back here so we can get a plan together.”

Her friends, however, are not as convinced.

“As your doctor,” Jesse says firmly, “your friend and, quite frankly, someone with common sense, there’s no way I’m letting you go through a breach to the furthest earth we’ve identified after we got back from Earth-2 four hours ago.”

Iris frowns but Chesca, who is sitting next to Eddie, speaks up. “He’s right, Iris. Look, I know you can literally pull a miracle out of your ass, but we’re all exhausted. I checked your vitals and you need rest – don’t forget Captain Cold almost killed you.”

“But…” Eddie swallows. “M-My dad…”

Barry’s voice is soft. “We have time. Colin never liked to get rid of leverage easily. I don’t like it either, but they have a point. I’d rather we go in strong and a little late instead of rushing in unprepared.”

Iris rubs her eyes, hating to admit that they’re right. Her body has protested everything she’s done since she stepped out of the breach, and she’s having far too much trouble keeping her eyes open. “Okay. For our health, when do you want us to leave?”

“I want everyone rested for at least nine hours,” Jesse says. “So tomorrow night at seven.”

“Alright,” Iris nods. “But we have to go about this different. First off, I’m taking Gideon.”

Chesca frowns. “Why? We didn’t need him before.”

“We could scout Earth-2 before,” she points out. “He might be able to help, especially because we won’t know what we’ll find there. And we need to find the Flash and lie low; I don’t want Colin figuring out we’re there before we have a plan.”

“We have the specs that Jay gave us,” Jesse adds, putting away the bandages and antiseptic he used to help Eddie. “I’ll make sure Linda is here tomorrow so we can go through them with her, and Waller can start work on them before we get back.”

There’s a beat of silence. Jesse sounds optimistic, while none of them have really had the time to consider how hard it’s going to be to capture him. Iris rolls her shoulders. “Then we better get moving.”

She catches Barry on the way out, who looks suitably freaked. She’d come here with the intention of reassuring Barry that seeing their doppelgangers in love and married and living a perfect life did not have to mean anything for them, since Barry had worn this permanently freaked out expression since the minute she saw him in STAR Labs. While she hadn’t seen versions of the doppelgangers who were like Detective Allen and Dr. West-Allen while practicing travelling between earths, she had seen a variety of versions of them. They were together as friends, usually, always together, or on their way to being together, but never like this. And there was something, when she’d been talking to Dr. West-Allen in the medical room, that…well, couldn’t read their minds. The frequency of their brainwaves meant it just sounded like different kinds of gibberish.

But when she’d been in that room? She heard _three_ different kinds of gibberish. And two of them were coming from her doppelganger’s stomach. Which is the icing on the cake, isn’t it? Because of course her doppelganger is having twins. And there’s no way she’s telling Barry that, unless she wants a Barry-shaped hole in Nora’s front door.

“I’m sorry,” she says immediately. “I didn’t hear him – God, I didn’t even _feel_ him, I-”

“It’s not your fault, Iris,” he interrupts. “You think you’re the only one who was duped by that guy?”

“I hate him,” she says quietly, surprising herself. She’s a little relieved to find Barry let out a short laugh.

“Yeah, me too. Get some sleep, sunshine. We have work to do tomorrow.”

Her mother, of course, is understandably shaken when Iris tells her all of this the next morning, scarfing down eggs and toast and juice. “Are you sure you can do this?” she asks, biting her lip. “There’s no one else you can call?”

She shrugs, a sad smile on her face. “I’m the one people call, Mom. That’s the deal.”

Her mother looks around, lost, and Iris swallows. She often thinks about this, about what it’s like to have to watch your only child fight things that people often can only dream about, while being helpless to do anything about it yourself. She crosses to the other side of the room and catches her in a hug. “Remember when I was eight, and I got lost in the crowd at the mall at Christmas?”

“Of course I do, your father almost burned that place down looking for you.”

“And remember how I found you myself without the mall police helping me?” She takes a deep breath. “That’s all this is – I’m lost for a little bit, but I’ll always come back. And I promise it won’t be demanding a new telescope.”

“You can ask me for the Hubble telescope,” her mother laughs, squeezing her tightly. “Just make sure you come back.”

“I will. I love you, mom.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Linda and Eddie are there while Linda is getting the breach ready. Unlike the Earth-2 corridor, which was in an old basement that they discovered while Iris had been blinded by Doctor Light, the Earth-52, this breach is in their original basement. The Speed Cannon chugs steadily around it, and everyone checks their supplies and gear before they leave. Chesca breaks away from her conversation with Eddie when Iris beckons her over. “How’s he doing?”

Chesca glances back at him as he looks through some papers. “Well, his sister and now his dad are being held by a homicidal maniac,” she replies. “So he’s been better. But I told him that we’d get her back.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, um.” She glances at him again, and a slight blush colours her cheeks. “He told me to be careful.”

Despite everything, Iris smiles. “Of course he did. Did you hug him?”

“N-No, of course not, why would I hug him?”

Her smile turns into a smirk. “Because, as you said, his family is being held by a homicidal maniac. I think that warrants a hug. Eddie?” she calls, ignoring Chesca’s look. “Chesca forgot to tell you something.”

She slinks away before her friend can glare at her, over to Linda, who is tightening something with her wrench.  “Hey. We good to go?”

“Yes and no,” she admits. He shakes her head, standing up. “I don’t know Iris, this breach…I don’t know if it’s because if Earth-52 or what, but this is the most unstable one.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means there are only certain times you can enter and leave it.” She rubs her forehead. “You know the gloves and the glasses that Reverb chick had?”

She nods. In return for telling him where Doctor Light had been hiding and tell him about the tracking device, Detective Allen had let them have Reverb’s things. “Yeah, I know you haven’t had much time to play with them.”

“Au contraire. A lot can happen when you have a good latte. It’s not much, but Chesca will be able to figure out when it’s stable to pass through them. Don’t pass through when they’re not stable.”

“What happens if we do?”

Linda makes a face and Iris nods. “Noted. Hey, Lin?”

“Yup?”

“I just wanted to…thank you for everything. I know when you met your boyfriend’s cousin this probably wasn’t what you were expecting.”

“You getting sappy on me now, Bambi Eyes?” she laughs. She pulls her into a hug. “Well, I can honestly say that my life wouldn’t be half as interesting without you, Miss Miracle.”

Iris grins at her, and then Eddie calls the rest of the group to the terminals. Barry is standing next to him. “So it won’t just be Malina and Henry coming through the breach,” Barry explains. “It will also be all the family members of the people that Colin had kidnapped to keep his metahumans compliant.”

“I have a list,” Eddie explains. “And I’ll be contacting Waller to tell him that we have them once you guys bring them all back.”

It warms her, Eddie’s steadfast faith in them, but, “Does he know that you’re here with us yet?”

“No,” he admits. “We were going to tell him afterwards, when we had them back, but I think it’s best we tell him so these people can get the help they need.”

“But what happens once he finds out?” Jesse asks. Eddie shrugs.

“I’m not sure. Technically I’m disobeying orders from my boss, since by not being where I explicitly said I would be I’m endangering the organisation.”

Everyone looks at each other. “But you’re not going to get in trouble, are you?” Barry frowns. “I mean, this is pretty much the threshold of helping people.”

Eddie gives him a sad smile. “I don’t know about that, Barry. You of all people know how we deal with problems.” He takes a deep breath and steels himself. “But you guys are jumping through earths and fighting crazy metahumans to help, so this is the least I can do.”

“Besides,” Jesse deadpans, “Iris has mind-control powers. I’m sure we can set Waller straight.”

Iris grins at him. “I’ve always liked you, Chambers.”

“Okay, everyone, breach is ready,” Linda declares. Out of the corner of her eye, Iris sees Chesca hug Eddie again and tell him something. Barry taps her shoulder. “How’s your mom?”

“Panicked,” she admits. “She’s going to hang out with your mom, I think. They’re gardening.”

“Well, at least they’ll be together,” he replies. He frowns slightly at her.

“What?” she asks, self-conscious. Is he looking at her mouth? “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What? Oh – nothing,” he says quickly. “Why are you wearing your suit again?”

“I don’t know what we’re going to find,” she explains. She must have imagined it. “What’s on the other side of this breach. I need to get us to a safe place as soon as possible. Plus, I need to meet The Flash and ask for his help. Can’t go around just telling people who I am, can I?”

“Flash,” he repeats. “Wonder what his powers are.”

“Hopefully nothing to do with a trenchcoat.” She nods at Chesca as she comes to stand in front of the breach. “You were right,” her friend says quietly. “He needed a hug.”

They link hands, experts now since coming back from Earth-2, say goodbye to Linda and Eddie, and leap through the breach. It is much easier than this time, though Iris feels that the journey is longer, possibly because this is the furthest she’s ever travelled, and before they know it, they’ve landed on concrete ground. They’re in a cavernous room, one that looks strikingly familiar. Too familiar, a lot like…

“Are we still in STAR Labs?” Barry asks. They separate, looking around, and Iris realises it looks like where she practices her powers.

“You don’t think we opened a breach that just took us downstairs, do you?” Jesse asks. “Because that would make getting you guys coffee a lot easier.”

“As much as I appreciate you trying to make a joke,” Chesca says, looking around, “we’re definitely someplace different. My glasses don’t work and look – all the equipment’s missing.”

Iris walks around, trying to get her bearings. “Well, the plan is still the same. We just need to-”

She doesn’t finish her sentence, though, because an alarm starts pealing so loudly that it rattles her bones. “That’s our alarm!” Chesca says.

“I already hate this place,” Jesse complains, his hands over his ears. Then, before they can do anything else, there’s a gust of wind and a figure appears in the darkness by the doors.

“Who are you?”

The man is tall, his voice distorted, and Iris can’t read his mind. She steps closer and he steps back, hands in the ready position. “Did Zoom send you?” he continues, and his voice takes on a hard edge. She raises her hand and turns on her voice distorter, switching on the golden glow of her eyes.

“I…don’t know who that is,” she explains carefully. She feels rather than hears the others get behind her, Barry and Jesse with their weapons, Chesca with her glasses. “But I’m not from this earth.”

“I could tell that much. What do you want?”

“Your help.”

“My help?” he repeats. He tips his head, folding his arms. “Why?”

Iris takes a deep breath. This has to be the Flash – she can see the barest hint of red in his suit. That means he’s like her, that he’s a hero, and that means he’ll want to protect his identity. So he’ll know revealing it will mean that the situation is dire. She steps out of the shadows, turning off her eyes. “My name is Miss Miracle, and-”

“IRIS?!”

She blinks, turning. “Barry? You okay?”

But he’s frowning at her. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No,” he didn’t. The Flash steps forward, removing his mask. “I did.”

“ _BARRY_?!” She actually takes a step backwards and looks between the two of them – her Barry in his leather jacket with the large gun thrown over his back, and the Flash. Both of them are staring at each other. “You’re a metahuman?”

“Holy parallel universe,” Chesca breathes. “You can’t make this shit up.”

“Of course I’m a metahuman!” he exclaims. He runs a hand through his hair. “You – that suit, why are you wearing it?”

“Why am I even surprised?” Jesse asks of no one in particular.

“Because _I’m_ a metahuman,” she says. “I need it.”

“You’re not a metahuman,” he says, somewhat desperately. “You – you’re Iris, you’re a reporter and you like brownies, and – why are you wearing those?”

The Flash makes to touch her glasses and she slaps his hand away. “Okay, first rule: do not touch my glasses. And you’re right, I do like brownies. But I’m not a reporter, I’m a CSI.”

“ _I’m_ a CSI.”

“You?” Iris stares at him. “You hate blood. And you think Bill Nye is one of the Chuckle brothers.”

“I do not,” he replies, offended. “The Chuckle brothers are British. And you’re a reporter!”

“I already told you, I’m not.”

“I’m a reporter,” Barry supplies. His doppelganger, who looks a lot more like him than Detective Allen does, gulps.

“Oh, crap.”

“I think I saw a movie like this once,” Chesca says to everyone.

“Yo, Allen!” someone calls. Iris sees a Latino man with curly brown hair sauntering down the steps. “What’s taking you so – holy parallel universe.”

“Hey!” Chesca says. “I said that!”

“What did you do?” the man says, hitting his Barry in the shoulder. “We weren’t supposed to open any more breaches! And we don’t even know how!”

“I didn’t!”

“Yeah, right. That’s why Iris is standing there decked out like the Woman in the Yellow Suit-”

“Hey!” Chesca says again. “That suit is gold, not yellow. Specifically, satin sheen gold. The gold found on a little ship called the Starship Enterprise worn by a little man called-”

“Captain Kirk,” they finish together. He stares at her and then hits Barry again.

“Cisco, quit it!”

“Cisco?” Jesse repeats. “Who the hell is Cisco?”

“ _What did you do_? Who’s the chick with the references?”

“The name is Ramon, Yellow Suit boy.”

Both of them freeze and turn to all of them. “Ramon?” E52 Barry splutters. He looks between them. “Like, Francisco Ramon?”

“Fran _cesca_ Ramon,” she replies, and Cisco goes pale.

“No, nope, uh-uh,” he shakes his head, taking a step back. “I saw a movie like this once-”

“He did it again!” Chesca says. “Iris, make it stop!”

“I don’t know-”

“Barry if you’re going to rush off in the middle of a conversation…” Iris swallows when she hears her own voice, and then sees two women make their way down the stairs, “could you at least tell us whether you need any help?”

This version of her is followed by a tall, dark-haired woman in a lab coat. When E52’s Iris fall on her, she stops, her face jolting in shock. “Oh, Barry,” she breathes out, “what did you do?”

“Does everyone blame me for things on this earth?” Barry wonders out loud, and E52 Iris looks between the two Barrys as well. “Because that’s usually you, Iris.”

“Are you guys from Earth-2?” E52 Iris asks.

“No, we’re from Earth-Prime,” Jesse replies, and Cisco glares at him.

“This is Earth-Prime. And can we all go back to the fact that these people are from an earth where my doppelganger is a _girl_?”

E52 Iris looks at Chesca. “You’re Francisco Ramon on your earth?”

“ _My name is Francesca_ – Iris, make them stop!”

She throws her hands up in the air. “How am I supposed to do that, Chess?”

“Use your mind control powers!”

The entire group of E52 people take a step back, with the Barry in particular extending an instinctive, protective hand towards his Iris. “Ahem,” the woman in the lab coat says quietly, “did you say ‘mind control’?”

Iris hesitates. “No. Well, yeah, kind of, it’s a work in progress-”

Cisco peers at her. “And do the glasses-”

Iris holds her hand up, palm out, and Cisco’s hand stops in mid-air. “AH!” he squeaks. “ _Nuh-uh_ , my hand can’t move, she’s not letting my hand move!”

“Harry’s going to kill you, Barry,” the woman says.

“I didn’t even do anything!”

“ _Make her let go of my hand_!”

“Wait,” her doppelganger interrupts. Unlike Dr. West-Allen, E52 Iris looks to be closer to her age with similar taste in clothes. “So… _I’m_ the metahuman on your earth?”

“Of course you are!” Barry tells her. He points at his own doppelganger; specifically, the gold lightning bolt on the circular emblem on the red suit. “ _This_ is weird, why am I _wearing_ that?”

“It is not weird, I’m The Flash,” he scowls back. “This is my suit –  _you’re_ the one who’s weird.”

“And what’s up with that, by the way?” Chesca wants to know. “No offence, dude, but ‘The Flash’ sounds like you walk around in a trench coat avoiding the cops.”

Jesse sniggers. “Hey!” E52 Barry says indignantly. “I like that name! And it’s better than ‘Miss Miracle’.”

“What’s wrong with Miss Miracle?” Iris wants to know, folding her arms, and the woman in the lab coat laughs.

“Wow, you really are Iris’ doppelganger.”

“It’s alright,” E52 Barry says. He shrugs. “Little cutesy.”

“Certainly an improvement on ‘Blink’, I have to say,” Jesse adds.

“Blink?” Cisco laughs. “Who came up with that? That’s almost as bad as ‘The Streak’.”

“The _Streak_ ,” Chesca splutters. “My God, you’re all terrible.”

“Hey!” Barry and E52 Iris say. “I’d like to see you guys come up with a memorable name on the fly,” Barry mutters. “Is it National Shit on Journalists Day or something?”

“Yeah. I didn’t hear you complaining when I was writing all those nice things about you.”

“I beg to differ,” E52 Barry says, “I recall hating that name from the beginning.”

“I did sound a little like a cartoon character, Barry,” Iris points out. The woman in the lab coat clears her throat.

“I’d just like to get a few things straight. This is Iris – Miss Miracle,” she says, pointing to Iris. “Barry – you’re a journalist on your earth?”

“That’s me.”

“And… _Chesca_ Ramon? What do you do?”

“I make the toys, baby.” At this, Cisco glares at Barry.

“Send them back.”

She turns to Jesse. “And you are…”

“I would think I’m _your_ doppelganger,” he answers. “We’re both doctors.”

“You’re Dr. Snow?”

Everyone immediately hides behind Iris and she blinks. “I – um. Please don’t take this the wrong way, Dr. Snow. Are you Killer Frost?”

The woman visibly pales and Cisco lets out a squeak. “You have Killer Frost on your earth?”

“No, he’s on your earth,” Iris tells them. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Okay,” E52 Barry says. “I think we all need to have a conversation. Caitlin, could you call Harry?”

“He’s on his way already,” she says, still shaken. “The alarms are all set to our phones.”

“Where was he?”

“Looking for Jesse.”

“Ah,” Jesse says. “I’m that person’s doppelganger.”

“You’re Jesse Wells?” E52 Barry says. He frowns.

“No, I’m Jesse Chambers. Helena Wells’ nephew.”

“ _Helena_ Wells?” Cisco repeats. “Oh, yeah. This’ll be good.”

***

When they had been on Earth-2, Barry was shaken by the fact that his doppelganger was married to Iris and she was having his kids. But this is something else entirely. _He_ is the metahuman. He has a suit and a team and powers. And Chesca is a guy on this earth?

The group stand in the Cortex – which is an exact replica of their own – surveying each other as they wait for their reinforcements arrive. While he is staring at his doppelganger, however, his doppelganger is staring at Iris, who is staring right back at him. _Her_ doppelganger is staring at him.

“Would anyone like a coffee?” Caitlin tries.

“Americano with an extra shot,” both Irises say together, and then they share a quick look.

“Trippy,” Chesca and Cisco say at once, and then glare at each other.

“You’re a _metahuman_ ,” E52 Iris says for a third time. “Like, for real?”

“Yeah…”

“You run around saving people with your speed?”

“My what?” Iris asks. “What speed? I don’t have speed.”

“But you’re the metahuman on your earth,” Cisco frowns. “What are your powers? You know, apart from the whole…” he waves his hands around.

“Oh. Well, erm… I can read minds.”

“No way,” E52 Barry gasps. “Seriously? Can you show us?”

“Well, you guys are the wrong frequency,” she admits. “But Chesca is wondering why Cisco used such a weak polymer for your suit, Barry is wondering why this Iris’ face is naked, and Jesse thinks that your hair is dumb.”

“My polymer is not _weak_.”

“Sure looks weak from here, Red Vines,” Chesca shoots back, and he brandishes one of them at her.

“Someone who likes Twizzler’s _cannot_ be my doppelganger.”

“That’s true,” Jesse confirms, ignoring them both. “But it’s nothing personal. I think our Barry’s hair is dumb too.”

“Love you too, Chambers,” Barry replies, rolling his eyes. But E52 is grinning down at her.

“What else?”

Iris looks around and spots an empty can of coke. She curls her fingers inward and it floats over to her, making everyone gasp. When she makes a fist, the can crushes itself. “That’s so cool,” he breathes.

“What about you? Iris said you’re fast, how fast?”

“Uh…” he disappears and reappears within seconds, holding a fresh bag of brownies.

“ _Yes_!” Iris exclaims. “Wow, you’re _fast_!”

“Yeah, I can run up buildings,” Barry grins.

“ _Dude_! I can fly!”

“No shit?”

Iris rises a few feet off the ground, and E52 Barry and Cisco whoop. “You should meet Supergirl,” he says, and E52 Iris frowns.

“The alien from that Earth you went to?”

“Yeah, she can fly too-”

“You guys have a Supergirl?” Iris interrupts, landing back on the floor. “We had a Superboy, but he was on Earth-3. Kaden Danvers?”

“Kara Danvers,” he corrects. He grins down at her. “She would love you! Especially since you can fly. I wonder who’s faster?”

“I don’t know, I’m pretty fast once I get going…”

Barry watches as the two of them start babbling about each of their powers, an unfamiliar feeling churning in his gut, and he folds his arms. When he looks at E52 Iris, he can see that she’s wearing the same expression on her face.

“Is there anything else?”

“I don’t think so…” Iris frowns, and Chesca clears her throat.

“You kind of haven’t shown everyone the most important one, Bambi Eyes.”

“Oh!” Iris disappears and then reappears behind Cisco, who yelps.

“Tele-teleportation?” he says, staring at her. “This is nuts!”

“And the lightning,” Iris finishes. “I can throw lightning. That’s all, I think.”

“ _Me too_!”

“Okay,” Jesse interjects. “Before the two of you evaporate on the strength of how _awesome_ you both are, we need to talk about why we’re here.”

“Yeah, and why we’re opposites on your earth,” Caitlin adds.

“Opposites apart from Mr and Mrs Meant To Be,” Cisco mutters, though no one hears him.

“I was reading about this, actually,” Chesca admits. “Iris, remember when Professor Stein wrote out all that stuff about the Theory of Parallel Earths?”

“You have Martin Stein on your earth?” E52 Iris asks.

“Martina Stein,” everyone replies. “Great broad,” Chesca says. “Real classy. I don’t remember exactly which page it was…Iris, could you?”

“What’s the chapter number?”

“Thirteen, I think.”

Iris thinks for a moment and Caitlin frowns. “What is she doing?”

“Photographic memory,” Barry explains, a little proudly. “We never have to read anything anymore – Iris just reads it once and then remembers it.”

“And yet, she can never remember what day it is,” Jesse says.

“Or her glasses,” Chesca adds.

“Or to take her mask off.”

“Or-”

“You guys,” Iris interrupts, eyes still closed. “Not in public.”

“Iris, you have a photographic memory and you forget _everything_ ,” Jesse says, and E52 Iris perks up.

“Is this like how Barry is the fastest man alive and yet is late to work all the time?”

“ _Yes_ ,” everyone says, and E52 Barry looks at Iris.

“Guess we have that in common too.”

“Guess so,” she smiles. “Okay, I think I’ve got it… _While the Parallel Earth Theory, based on the evidence we have gathered from Alana Rothstein and Edie Slick, indicates that the doppelgangers one may encounter are exact mirror images of ourselves, it is entirely possible that the farther one gets, the more that slight changes may become apparent_.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think she meant that the farther you get from your Earth-Prime,” Jesse says, “the more different things may be.”

“She has a point, we’ve never come this far before,” Iris tells them.

“What’s the farthest you’ve been?” Caitlin asks. Iris scratches her head.

“Well, there was Earth-24, we were all still ourselves then.”

“Was that the earth with the exploding black blobs?” Chesca asks.

“No, that was Earth-22.”

“The earth where we all spoke in rhyme?” Barry tries.

“Earth-17. I think this is the earth where we all in black and white like in a gangster movie.” She turns to E52 Barry. “What about you?”

“We got up to Earth-26,” he answers. “Well, I did. We were shooting for Earth-27, but then-”

“King Shark,” Team Flash say together. Iris’ eyes widen.

“Me too!”

“Serious?”

“Well, Queen Shark, but…”

“Of course.”

“Maybe it’s like a true mirror image,” E52 Iris explains. “Eventually you get to your Earth-27, and everyone flips. Cisco becomes Chesca, Jesse is a guy, and all of our lives are swapped.”

“And there’s a Killer Frost on your earth,” Caitlin says quietly, and Iris adjusts her glasses.

“Right, and that’s what we’re here to talk to you guys about,” she says. She looks around. “I guess I should start at the beginning – about a year and a half ago, I was struck by lightning and went into-”

“A coma for nine months,” Cisco finishes. “And then you woke up with powers and worked under an evil mastermind who was masquerading as your friend for a year while they tried to ruin your life in subtle ways. Yeah, we actually know that part.”

“Do you know the part where said mastermind was actually the work of someone else taking over their identity?”

Cisco points a Red Vine at her. “DNA body-swap?”

She shakes her head. “Transferrable mind control.”

“Mazel tov.”

Chesca grins at him and Iris clears her throat. “It’s complicated, but Killer Frost took over Dr. Wells’ consciousness and used her mind control powers to bring about an outcome that would turn me into Miss Miracle so he could steal my powers for himself.”

“Good to know all the villains come in the same flavour on our mirror earth,” Caitlin mutters. E52 Iris looks at them.

“Could she – _he_ – do that? I mean, from what I know about Killer Frost, the powers weren’t really the same as yours.”

“We didn’t think he could do it either,” Chesca shrugs. “But he did. Iris defeated him, but-”

“Well, I didn’t, really,” Iris interrupts, and Barry recognises the tone in her voice. Even with everything that’s happened, she still feels guilty about not catching Colin. He notices, again, that his doppelganger is looking at Iris again, but this time it’s with something like understanding.

“That wasn’t your fault, Iris,” Barry says softly. She shrugs, adjusting her glasses.

“Wasn’t _not_ my fault, either. Anyway, he got away, but while we were fighting, it opened up this singularity, which opened up all these breaches-”

“To other earths,” E52 Barry says. “And you didn’t encounter Zoom? Like, _at all_?”

“Barry, Zoom’s a speedster,” Caitlin points out. “Even if he knew about Miss Miracle, he wouldn’t want her powers.”

“Besides, if there was a Killer Frost running around on their side of things,” Cisco points out, “Zoom would have avoided that like the plague. Remember, Queen Elsa is the reason we got out of there in the first place.”

Chesca sniggers and Jesse glares at her. “What? That was funny. Also – what is a Zoom?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“But in opening the breaches,” Iris continues, “it let through all these metahumans and people from different earths. We had to identify which ones they came from, stabilise the breaches, and then send them back.”

“You did all of that?” E52 says. “How?”

“Captain Boomerang’s boomerang, some very cool tech, and yours truly,” Chesca says.

“Yours truly?” Cisco repeats.

“Vibe, nice to meet you.”

“Hm. We’ll see.”

“And finally we figured that Colin – Killer Frost – is somewhere on your earth,” Barry tells them. “And when he was pretending to be Calamity-”

“Calamity?”

“Dr. Wells,” Chesca explains. “Well, Dr. Wells being controlled by Killer Frost.”

“Oh!” Cisco says. “Flash – Reverse-Flash. Miss Miracle – Calamity. I like it.”

“Right. When he was pretending to be Calamity, he had her kidnap all these people and bring them to your earth to hide them.”

“Like Zoom did with Jesse,” E52 Iris says, and Jesse himself squeaks. Iris just rolls her eyes.

“Relax, Dr. Asshole. You’re safe.”

“Do you know how to defeat Killer Frost?”

“It’s-”

“Allen,” a raspy voice growls. “ _What did you do_?”

When Barry turns, he sees that there’s a man dressed all in black carrying a gun similar to the one he has over his shoulder. He’s also wearing the most irritable expression he’s ever seen, and it’s directed at his doppelganger. Who, to his credit, looks completely used to it. “I didn’t do anything, Harry.”

“Who’s Harry?” Barry mutters to E52 Iris.

“Dr. Wells from Earth-2. Although I guess for you guys that would be Earth…51?”

“Oh, I’m sure your unique mixture of idiocy and impulsiveness have something to do with whatever the hell is going on here,” he rasps, taking the gun off, and Chesca scoffs.

“He’s a bundle of joy.”

“He sounds professional,” Jesse counters. “I like him.”

“Figures.”

Harry, for his part, ignores them both, and shoots Iris a glare. “Then how else would you explain why West is wearing some sort of knock-off of your suit and looks almost completely lost-”

“Hey!” Chesca snaps, and Iris’ eyes start to glow. Cisco yelps again.

“Yo! Harry, dude, apologise.”

“But-”

“Hey, I do not care about your talk-in-a-whisper, push-everyone-away, act-like-a-bag-of-dicks routine, alright! This Iris has mind control, telepathy, and she can move things with her mind. I am not getting squished because of your ass. Apologise.”

“Fine,” he growls. “I’m sorry. Is Zoom threatening all of you as well?”

“Okay, what the hell is a Zoom?” Barry asks the room, and they all share looks.

“I’ll…explain later,” his doppelganger says. He turns back to Harry. “They say they need our help, Harry. The Killer Frost from their earth escaped and kidnapped a load of people, and he’s hiding them on this earth.”

Harry just blinks. “And you believe them?”

Barry’s doppelganger stares at him and then, for whatever reason, looks at Iris. “I – of course I believe them.”

“Really? After the first Harrison Wells? After Jay?”

Barry stares at them. “Are you talking about Jay Garrick? Is she here too?”

“He,” Caitlin corrects. She wraps her arms around herself. “He…wasn’t who he said he was. I think maybe you should watch out for your Jay.”

“Our Jay’s dead,” Iris tells them. “She died in the sixties. And the Jay on Earth-2 was a hero before she retired.”

“That means nothing to me,” Harry says dismissively. “The last time we trusted someone because they looked harmless, you got your back broken, our West was almost killed, and we left Earth-2 at the mercy of a sociopathic killer.”

E52 Barry looks down at his toes in the same way Iris does when she feels guilty, and then sighs.  Iris clears her throat. “Harry’s right. I wouldn’t trust us either, especially not with the year we’ve had. What can we do to make you trust us?”

“Lie-detector tests,” Caitlin suggested. “And, Iris – Miss Miracle – I want to test your powers. I need to know what we’re letting into our lives.” She looks down at her hands. “Last time I failed at that, and we all almost died.”

“Of course, Dr. Snow,” Iris tells her kindly. “Whatever you need. As long as that’s alright with everyone else?”

Everyone nods. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can find Colin,” Barry says. “And believe me, you do not want this guy running around your earth.”

“Iris,” E52 Barry says. “We – you’re a metahuman, so-”

“You want to put me in the Pipeline and ask me questions,” she finishes.

“Did you read my mind?”

“No. That’s just how we roll in the Miracle Workers. But I’m cool with it.”

“Okay,” Chesca says, rolling her shoulders back. “Bring it on, Team Flash.”

***

They make their Iris talk to him.

Harry cuffs him and does the lie detector test, which he passes, but he leaves the cuffs on him while he goes off to tinker with his gun. He’s fairly certain he did it on purpose. Caitlin has to analyse Iris in a different room and then put her in the Pipeline so E52 Barry can talk to her. Right now, Cisco and Caitlin are talking to Chesca about her powers. It’s so weird, to see them working so closely together, when Chesca and Colin are no longer a team. She is being cheerful and helpful (Barry thinks she’s ignoring the fact that her doppelganger likes Red Vines), but when they break away to write things down she seems to close in on herself. But, seeing as Harry has handcuffed him to the desk, he can’t do anything.

“I got you the last batch of curly fries,” someone says quietly, and he turns to see that Iris – E52 Iris – has arrived with his food. Or, rather, The Flash got the food and gave it to her. She sets it down in front of him and then frowns at his hand still cuffed to the desk. “Harry.”

“He seems like a really pleasant guy,” Barry laughs. Iris sighs and sits down.

“Yeah, his daughter is missing. I mean, he’s already pretty prickly as it is, but that doesn’t help.”

“Can’t say I blame the guy.”

Barry eats a couple of the fries, and when he looks up she’s staring at him. “I – sorry,” she says quickly, putting her head in her hands. “You just…you look just like him. You move a little different and you stand a little different, but you look like my Barry. And you’re the first doppelganger that I’ve met that I actually know really well.”

“It doesn’t get any less weird, believe me,” he laughs. He swallows. “I’m sorry about – when Iris said I thought your face was naked…I mean, my Iris has had glasses since the first day I met her. Seriously, looking at you without them right now makes me want to give you your spares.”

She laughs, peering at him, and he frowns. “What?”

“Um. Your hair.”

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

“It’s supposed to be styled on the other side of your head.”

“Maybe for the Flash,” he shrugs. “Not for me.”

She stares at him again, and it’s like she’s staring right _through_ him. “I’m supposed to be asking you questions about your life,” she says quietly. “To make sure you’re telling the truth. But I don’t want to because I feel like I know already, but I also feel like maybe you’ll give me the wrong answer and that’s scary.”

“I’m not scary, Iris.”

“You might be, once you’ve got a load of my kickass journalistic instincts,” she says with mock-seriousness. “They tend to make people a little defensive.”

“You forget, I’m a pretty kickass journalist myself,” he points out. “Do your worst, West.”

“Alright. This Colin-”

“Killer Frost.”

“I thought that was his name.”

“It is. I actually prefer to call him something else, but I don’t want to get my mouth washed out with soap. ‘Killer Frost’ is a nice compromise.”

She pauses. “You really hate him, don’t you?”

“You can tell?”

“Your face, it…I’ve only seen Barry that mad maybe half a dozen times in my life.”

He chews on his fries. “Colin told me that if I didn’t do what he asked, he’d kill everyone I loved, and he made sure I knew how easy it was to do it. He was Chesca’s best friend, and he was using her the whole time. When he was controlling Calamity, he had her terrorise Iris so badly that she still has nightmares about it. She thinks that I don’t know, that she’s gotten better at hiding it, but I do. I always know. So, yes, I don’t hate a lot of people, I don’t think I’ve ever truly hated anyone, but I do hate him.”

Barry had been quiet, contemplative, but the expression on her face is like he had shouted it. “We’ll help you,” she promises, almost exactly like Dr. West-Allen. “We’ll get him.” She pauses, looks down briefly. “And – and I know too. So I guess that’s a thing we have in common.”

He gives her a half smile. “I guess it is.”

“And these people that he kidnapped,” E52 Iris carries on, “who are they?”

“Right. Well, last Christmas, Calamity kidnapped all these people and either killed them and left them all over the city, or turned them into metahumans to make Iris stronger.”

“Like Zoom,” Iris says. She waves a hand. “Um, sorry. Keep going.”

“To keep those metahumans from running away, he kidnapped people close to them,” he explains. “And those people are on this earth. We have a list, if you…”

“No, that’s okay. I can tell you’re not lying. And it does seem like you to go across earths to save people.”

“I’m not all that heroic,” he laughs quietly. “He kidnapped my sister. And my…my dad.”

Iris stares at him, her mouth falling open in shock. “Your what?”

“My sister. Do I not…have her on this earth?”

“No, you’re an only child. I think – Barry said Nora wanted another kid, but then…”

He tips his head. “Then what?”

“She’s dead, Barry.”

Barry feels like the wind’s been knocked out of him. “N-No, she’s not. How could…oh.”

“Our lives are flipped,” she realises. “I have a brother, and you have a sister. My Barry has powers, and your Iris has powers. And his dad went to prison for his mom’s murder…”

“And Iris’ mom when to prison for her dad’s murder.” Barry slumps back in his chair. He thought he understood before, but now it’s truly hitting him. On this earth, he went to go live with Iris instead of the other way around. He became the CSI, searching for the impossible. And Iris looked after him and protected him, instead of him doing that for her.

Barry swallows. He went into the coma, and the Iris on this earth was as lost as he had been without her, for nine months. He went to the psychiatrists, he was bullied, he was made fun of. And what else?

_I remember when we met and you said that you liked my glasses. And – and I was in love with you right from that moment, even though I couldn’t tell you what love was, and I probably couldn’t even spell the word._

Is that reversed here as well?

E52 Iris, meanwhile, is rubbing her eyes. “Wow, okay. I mean, my brother is fine – he’s out of town on some engineering lecture, so if we’re all really mirror images of each other, your sister should be okay.”

“Right,” he says. “Look, Iris, we don’t really have a lot of time, and Killer Frost already knows about you, so-”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, Barry. If there’s one thing Team Flash beats everyone on? It’s speed.”

***

Iris opens her eyes when E52 Barry shows up in the Pipeline with her dinner order. “I got you double orders of everything,” he explains, handing it to her. “I figured, if you’re a metahuman like me, you might…need it.”

“Thanks, all the breach stuff burns about a million calories,” she says gratefully. She starts eating after he’s closed the glass, and when she looks up he’s staring at her. A blush colours his cheeks.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s just weird, seeing you like this.”

“You think this is weird? Barry spends all day writing about crime and helping me. He’d complain that the suit would mess up his hair. He does like red, though.”

“And Iris did always look nice in that colour,” he admits. “Thanks for doing all those tests, by the way. Caitlin was trying to be thorough.”

“Barry, I have been poked and prodded more times in the past year than I have for the twenty-five years that came before it. Believe me, Caitlin was a peach. And I know you said you’d been…betrayed before, so I understand the need.”

“I guess that’s another thing we have in common,” he says quietly. “Do you – did anyone die when you closed the singularity?”

“Yeah,” she replies. “Ronnie was my friend – well, she wasn’t, she was Deathstorm, but it still hurt. And a lot of people died.”

“Ronnie was evil?”

“Killer Frost needs his Deathstorm,” she smiles ruefully. She picks at her food. Those two feature pretty frequently in her nightmares, now that she knows Calamity isn’t evil and she’s gotten closure with Patty, though they still make appearances. “But she’s dead, so we’re hoping he’s a little weaker.” She swallows. “But a lot of people died. Others, that I couldn’t save. So, I have to do this, at least.”

“I get that. And you’re only in here until we get your lab results – after that, we can help you.”

“I’m sorry for putting you out, you guys must be busy looking for this…Zoom guy.”

He laughs. “You could say that. I am the fastest man alive, but I only have my powers. The Reverse-Flash was using a super-battery, and Zoom is using a drug to make him faster. I need to be able to get fast enough to beat him, and we’ve been trying for months. I got info from…a friend on how to build a tachyon device, and now I’m a lot faster. Now all we have to do is open a breach and I can go after him.”

“I can help with that!” Iris says excitedly. He raises his eyebrows.

“You know how to open breaches?”

“Well, no. But Chesca and I know how to stabilise them, and we know more about breaches than any other person on our earth, I’m sure we could figure it out.”

“Well, that sounds good,” he laughs.

“And I could help you with…Zoom? Zoom. If you wanted.”

“I wouldn’t want to put you in his way, Iris,” he says immediately. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I’ve seen my fair share of dangerous.”

“Zoom broke my back and paraded my body around the city for everyone to see,” he says flatly. “He kills people on a whim. I…I don’t think he’s even human.”

“Barry, Calamity murdered people in front of me. For fun. To teach me a lesson. I was so terrified, I could barely leave my apartment for weeks.” She sighs. “If I can help, I’m going to help you.” He smiles.

“Then I guess we’re allies, Miss Miracle.”

“Looking forward to it, Flash.”

Caitlin calls them out then, and they make their way back up to the Cortex. Chesca and Cisco seem to have gotten over their rivalry and are talking about their glasses, while Caitlin is at the computer with E52 Iris, Jesse and Barry. “You guys have to come see this,” Caitlin says. She looks at her. “Iris, your brain scans…I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Everyone says that,” Chesca says. “She’s such a show-off.”

“What did you find, Snow?” Harry tells them, appearing from nowhere, making Iris jump.

“Can we get him a bell?”

“If you can get close enough, be my guest,” Cisco mutters. Caitlin puts the scans up on the screens.

“According to this, Iris uses two hundred times more brain power than we do per second. The neurons in her brain more closely resemble tachyon particles than anything else. And…there’s something else.”

“Is this the part where you’re also an evil speedster that’s pissed off at Barry?”

“Cisco, of course not,” E52 Iris says. He holds his hands up.

“I’m just saying, there’s precedent.”

“No,” Caitlin says. “There’s something Speedforce-adjacent in her system.”

“What’s the Speedforce, and why do I get the feeling Luke and Obi-Wan don’t discuss it on the Millennium Falcon?” Chesca wants to know.

“The Speedforce,” E52 Barry explains, “is where I get my powers from. It’s nothing to be worried about – all it means is that you’re a speedster.”

“Oh!” Iris snaps her fingers. “Like the Mindscape!”

“What’s that?”

“It gives me my powers. And it’s connected to Gideon.”

“You have a Gideon?” Cisco asks.

“Good evening!”

Gideon bursts out of Iris’ watch, making everyone jump. He starts a scan on Cisco, who then hides behind Caitlin.

“Francisco Ramon,” he says cheerfully, ignoring all the shocked looks in the room. “Twenty-five, structural engineer, activated metahuman gene.”

“Gideon!” Iris admonishes, lifting her wrist. “What did we talk about?”

“I was trying to help, Iris.”

“They don’t even know you yet.”

“My apologies.” Gideon clears his throat and enlarges his head, much to the confusion of everyone else. “Greetings, Team Flash. I am Gideon, an artificial user interface.”

“I can’t be the only one seeing her talk to her watch, can I?” Cisco mutters. Caitlin, who is gripping his arm, swallows.

“I think we should be more worried about the fact that her watch is talking to us.”

“I am not a watch,” Gideon says, somewhat grumpily. “I am-”

“An artificial user interface,” Cisco interrupts. “You’re last season, dude.”

“Yeah, we had a Gideon,” E52 Barry tells them, and Chesca frowns.

“’Had’? What happened to him?”

“Singularity. And she was a girl.”

“Why was…never mind.”

Gideon, meanwhile, is scanning everyone cheerfully. “Can I be of any assistance?”

“Not right now, Gideon,” Iris tells him. “But thanks. I’ll call you when I need you.”

“Certainly, Iris.”

He disappears as quickly as he came and Iris clears her throat, adjusting her glasses. “He can be a little enthusiastic sometimes.”

“Did you make him?” E52 Barry asks her, and she makes her face.

“Um, s-sort of? I will, in the future. Probably.”

“Don’t ask,” everyone else says. He shrugs.

“Okay. Well, it looks like everyone passed their lie detector tests, and we know exactly what Ir…Miss Miracle can do. How can we help you guys?”

“Slow your roll, speedy,” Cisco says. “We answered all the boring questions – I want to know specifics.”

“Yes, I’d like to know some things as well,” Caitlin says. “It seems like Iris and Barry have flipped lives – everything that happened to him here, happened to her there.”

“Which isn’t weird,” E52 Iris says, earning her a grin from Iris, “or anything.”

“But is everything _exactly_ the same?”

“Well, let’s think,” E52 Iris says. “Do you guys have the Weather Wizard?”

“Weather Warden,” Chesca says. “Chloe Marden. Ay, she was a headache.”

“The Mist? Multiplex?”

“Oh, I remember them,” Jesse says. “They looked like fun.”

“They weren’t,” Barry and Iris say together.

“Okay, how about the Green Arrow?” Cisco asks, snapping his fingers. “Bet you don’t have him over there.”

“Are you kidding?” Iris scoffs. “Olivia Queen?”

“Olivia?” E52 Barry repeats. “Yeah…Oliver won’t like that.”

“Please let me be there when you tell him,” Cisco begs. “I’d love to see that.”

“Yeah, well, Liv is crazy. She shoots me for fun – my back still hurts when it-”

“Rains,” E52 Barry finishes, grinning. “Yeah, me too. Okay, well you had your Calamity attacking you at Christmas, _and_ you had them escaping at the end of the year and opening up the singularity. So what, does that mean it’s the same time as you guys?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” Barry looks around. “What month is it here?”

“It’s April,” Caitlin answers, and Chesca blinks.

“It is? Wow, it’s like a few days before the New Year where we’re from.”

Caitlin frowns. “Why is there so much disturbance?”

“Temporal warping,” Iris explains. “An hour on our earth is two on Earth-2, and so on.”

“Wait,” Barry says. “A few days ago, when we were on Earth-2, Dr. – uh, Mrs. – Iris from Earth-2,” he decides, “she said that a disruption to the timeline that big would have to have someone running so fast that they broke the space-time continuum.”

“Which is impossible,” Iris agrees. Then Cisco, Caitlin, Harry and E52 Iris all turn to look at E52 Barry, who’s scratching the back of his head. Iris’ eyes widen and she takes a step towards him.

“You. Are. _Kidding_. You can time-travel?”

He gives her a shy smile. “Kinda.”

“You’re amazing,” she replies, awed. Barry swallows. “Can you show me?”

“ _No_!” Harry says. E52 Iris laughs.

“Yeah, it might not be the best idea right about now.”

“Aw!” Chesca complains. “I wanted to time-travel.”

“We’ll have time for all of that later,” Jesse says. “We need to find out how to locate Killer Frost, and we need to do that while making sure he doesn’t find us first.”

“We have ideas for that,” Iris continues. “We found out that Killer Frost needs Deathstorm, and without that source of heat he needs something else to help him change heat into cold.”

“So we’re looking for somewhere big that he can keep people,” Barry continues. He hesitates. “And maybe some sort of scientific lab?”

“A lab?” Caitlin repeats. “You think he’s doing experiments on people?”

It’s Chesca who answers, stepping away from the computer. “When I vibed Barry’s sister, we saw that Killer Frost had her in a room with all these beakers and chemicals. Plus, there are about half a dozen people there.”

“And, Barry, he’s scared of you,” Iris adds to E52 Barry. He stares at her.

“Scared of…me?”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Jesse says. “Given that you and Iris look about as dangerous as boiled spinach-”

“JAR!” everyone yells at him, and Cisco laughs.

“Hey, we have one of those for Harry. We use it to get takeout every week.”

Harry grumbles. “To continue what Jesse said with less ‘insufferable jackass’,” Iris continues, “we think that he’s planning something, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

“In any case I’ve called backup,” Harry says. “You children are going to get yourselves murdered running around like this.”

And he stalks off without a word. Cisco waves a hand. “Ignore him, he’s like that all the time. So, what do you need from us?”

There’s a beeping noise, and Caitlin goes off to the terminal to deal with it. “Well, Killer Frost has been holding people on this earth for almost two years,” Barry continues. “So we’ll need to look around pretty hard.”

“I can take you to the paper,” E52 Iris suggests. “I wasn’t working there before, but I’m sure we can look for anything that doesn’t add up.”

Barry blinks at her. “You’ll take me to the paper?”

“She’s the ace reporter on this earth, Allen,” Cisco tells him. E52 Barry laughs.

“And I can take you to work,” he tells Iris, who turns to him. “There could be something that helps there, too. We can’t all go at once, though.”

“Believe me, we have experience with that.” Iris shoots a smile at Barry, who smiles back. Cisco clears his throat.

“Anyway, now that we’ve gotten acquainted, I want to check out why Twizzlers thinks my suit is so weird. Park it over here, Miss Miracle.”

“Hey!” Chesca calls. Iris goes to sit on a chair while Cisco and E52 Barry talk to her. “You damage that suit and I will have your ass, doppelganger or not!” She comes over to stand next to Barry, who’s leaning against the table while Caitlin taps away at the computers. “How you doing, big guy?”

“I like this better than sharks,” he admits. “I’m just going with that feeling.”

“I’m glad that’s something we can all agree on,” Caitlin tells them wryly.

“Hey, what was that beeping before?” Barry asks. “It sounds like what happens at home when someone enters the building.”

“It is,” she tells him. “Harry called Detective West – look, there he is.”

“Oh, God,” Chesca breathes, as they hear E52 Iris say ‘Dad!’. “Barry, her dad’s alive on this earth! I completely forgot!”

Barry is already looking around for Iris, to warn her, but it’s too late. Detective Joe West looks like the faded photos that Iris has in her apartment and that Francine has on her mantelpiece, but older, greyer, and he’s wearing a suit and holster. He has her kind eyes, and takes one look at him, standing next to Chesca, and his doppelganger, and sighs. “Jeez, Bar, what did you do this time?”

“I’m getting really sick of that, you know,” he says, but he sounds far too good-natured about it for him to think he’s truly annoyed. “They came from another earth – they need our help.”

“Barry?” Iris is standing behind E52 Barry and can’t see. “Who are you talking to?”

She slips out from behind him, and her eyes land on her doppelganger’s father. Barry watches as shock reverberates across her face and stills her, and she looks around. Detective West, however, just smiles at her. “Hey, that’s your doppelganger, baby,” he says, glancing at his daughter. “She looks just like you! But Val was always the one with the glasses, not me. And do I even want to know about the suit?”

“Not _everything_ is the same, Dad,” E52 Iris laughs. “You’re a lounge singer on Earth-2, remember?”

“Right. What, you guys didn’t bring my doppelganger with you?”

Iris opens her mouth and blinks several times, and Barry can see that her glasses have misted up from the tears that are filling her eyes. She looks down at the ground, her hands shaking. “I’m s-sorry,” she stammers, unable to look at him. She steps away from him, from them, and backs away towards the door. “I have to – um, I have to go to the bathroom, to use the…I’m sorry.”

She shoves a hand over her mouth and walks out, and he only hears the end of a sob before she disappears. Detective West looks at them, alarmed. “What did I do? Where did she go?”

“She doesn’t know this earth, she could be lost,” Cisco says, but Chesca is shaking her head.

“Your STAR Labs is set up exactly like ours, she probably didn’t go far.”

“She’s right,” Caitlin says, looking at the monitors. “She’s in one of the upstairs workshops.”

Barry is moving before the words are even out of her mouth, but Chesca stops him. “I’ve got it,” she says gently. “You stay and explain what’s happened. You’re much better with words than Dr. Asshole over there, and besides, he doesn’t know me.”

“Okay,” he says. “Just makes sure she’s alright before you bring her back.”

“I will.” She looks at Jesse. “Come on, Chambers.”

He grumbles but follows her out, and Barry takes a deep breath as he approaches Detective West. He regards him, worried. “Is she alright? What’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry…sir,” he says, trying not to stare. He’s seen the similarities between Iris and Francine, but now he’s realising that Iris looks a lot like her father. “Just, uh, where we come from, everything that you know is flipped. So rather than my mother being the dead one and me living with you, Iris came to live with me and my mom, and you’re the one who’s…who’s dead.”

“My mom’s alive on your earth?” E52 Barry asks. “And – and Joe’s dead?”

“Yes,” he says quietly. Barry turns back to him. “Iris saw you die, when she was small. And she’s seen a lot over the past year, since she got her powers, but I don’t think she’s seen you. I think it freaked her out a little.”

Detective West doesn’t look all that great himself, but then he supposes he’d be freaked out if he found out that he wasn’t around to raise his child, even if it was on another earth. Barry, for his part, can’t stop staring at him. _Iris’ dad_. The concept is so foreign to him – he has always been past tense, always the kindly doctor who fixed him when he did something silly. “You’re shorter than I remember,” he says suddenly.

“I am?” he asks.

“Yeah, uh, it – you always seemed so much taller when I was little.”

He shrugs, still surprised, but smiles. “Guess you grew, son.”

“I guess I did,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you, Detective West.”

He blinks at that. “You can call me Joe. He does,” he adds, pointing to his doppelganger.

“Joe it is.”

“Um,” a quiet voice says. Iris is back, a little steadier than before, with Chesca and Jesse on either side of her. “H-Hi.”

Barry walks up to her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Bar. I’m sorry,” she adds to Joe, who smiles kindly at her. “About the whole…I’m sorry. I’m just not used to it.”

“Well, that makes two of us.”

Iris nods. “It’s good to see you, Da-” She breaks off and swallows. “Detective West. I – I like your, um, badge. It’s nice.”

“Thank you,” Joe says, and his daughter clears her throat.

“Dad, this is Jesse Chambers and Francesca Ramon.”

“Chesca,” she corrects. Joe gapes at her.

“Chesca?” he repeats. “Like Cisco?”

“A little better than Cisco.”

“Don’t get all high on yourself, Twizzlers,” Cisco says. “You’re the new kid around here.”

“They came here,” E52 Iris continues, giving Cisco a look, “because a metahuman from their earth kidnapped some people and is keeping them here.”

“And I thought, because you guys are helping us,” Iris continues, “we can help you with Zoom, and your breach problem. I know you guys said he was dangerous, but we’ve dealt with a murderous speedster of our own,” she tells them, thinking of Cobalt Blue.

“Yeah, but in the opposite direction to you,” Chesca adds. “Like, the murderous speedster turned out to be our friend.”

“And more than a friend, for some of us,” Jesse smirks, and Barry sniggers. Iris glares at them both, her eyes glowing, and they stop immediately. Joe, looking around at them, laughs.

“You know, you’re more like Iris than I thought.”

***

Barry knows when Iris isn’t sleeping – a habit that he picked up from their childhood and singing her to sleep, he guesses – and he also knows when she’s worried.

After making the arrangements for who was doing what the next day, Team Flash decided that they would stay in STAR Labs while E52 Barry watched over them. “I don’t mind,” he’d said, when Joe and the other Iris had protested. “I have to patrol anyway, and I can keep them safe.”

“Well, I can do it tomorrow, if you want,” E52 Iris had said immediately. “So you can get some rest.”

“Then you better make sure you get some sleep tonight, Iris,” her father tells her, and she rolls her eyes but nods. It had reminded him of himself and his mother and Iris, when they remind her to sleep or to eat or that there is a reason they make sure Iris has scheduled time where she is most definitely not saving the world. They left after that, but not before giving them strict instructions on how to reach them if anything went wrong.

He likes Team Flash, he finds. They are mirror images of their own little family, though with him as the hero. He likes Cisco’s warm enthusiasm that he hides under all those jokes, likes Caitlin’s quiet intelligence, though he wishes she would smile more. He’s also a little jealous that Team Flash got the kind Dr. Snow, and they got the sociopath.

As for Joe, the other Barry, and the other Iris…well, they are nice as well, but odd to look at. Not like Detective Allen and Dr. West-Allen, which awakened a strange, keening ache in him – they were hard to look at. But they are familiar while being completely strange territory. Seeing them is what cements it. Joe is strong and warm and capable, a lot like his mother, but the relationship he has with E52 Barry is so alien. They are close in a way that he’s never been with any father figure in his life, and he is jealous for a moment, just a moment, because then he remembers that this Barry never had their mother.

Looking at his doppelganger is like looking at a mirror in a funhouse. E52 Barry is quieter, more turned in on himself, more pensive. The same weight that sits on Iris’ shoulders when she talks about how worried she is about all the problems they face sits on his doppelganger’s, something he’s not used to seeing. But there’s something else – his doppelganger can handle it. He can see the same quiet fire that Iris has, even before he knew it was her, like when she saved that plane from crashing into the bridge. The determination that practically seeps out of her every damn day of her life is right at home on the Flash.

And then there is Iris’ doppelganger. She’s not as subdued as Iris, probably from years of knowing her place in the world, of not being called crazy and sent to all those psychiatrists. Her laughs come easier, her smiles come more often, her confidence catching. He wonders if he is like that for Iris, because he sees that his doppelganger looks to her like a lifeline, watching her face carefully for any sign of approval or dissent, like his Iris does to him.

It does make him defensive, though, because he has never thought of his Iris of weak or indecisive or incapable. He’s always thought that she was strongest person he knew, and that everything that happened made her confidence more awe-inspiring, her laughs real, her smiles more precious. Her real ones, that reach her eyes and make them shine like stars.

Barry’s thinking about all this in the room that he’s sharing with Jesse in STAR Labs, and somehow he just knows that Iris isn’t sleeping. Sure enough, when he wanders down to the Cortex, he finds her sat against one of the walls, her eyes closed. The sight of her in pyjamas and a Keystone City Patriots sweatshirt with her hair tied up in a brightly-coloured scarf reminds him strangely of home. He sits down next to her and pokes her gently in the ribs. “Hey.”

She opens her eyes. “Hey.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

She wrinkles her nose. “No. I mean, I guess you could say I’m homesick, but this is kind of like…”

“Home?” he supplies, looking around. But he knows what she really means before she says it. She isn’t wearing her glasses – she’s playing with them in her hands, and she looks a lot younger without them.

“He’s here,” she whispers. “He’s alive and – and it’s so normal, they get on so well, everything is so easy for them. They look at each other like it’s normal, like it’s not-” Her voice cracks and she wipes a tear away from her face.

“I’m sorry,” she says. He frowns at her.

“What are you sorry for?”

“All of _this_. We’re supposed to be concentrating on looking for your sister and finding a way to get Colin back to our earth, and all I can think about is my dad.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been to over a dozen earths and faced aliens, and seeing him just-”

“Iris,” he interrupts forcefully, grabbing her shoulders. He can’t believe the words that are coming out of her mouth. “Don’t ever think I’m going to be mad at you about reacting to something like this. You may have superpowers, but you’re still _human_. You don’t have to be strong all the time – not for me, or anyone else. Okay?”

She bites her lip and nods, and Barry realises just how much she has gone through for him. For all of them, without complaining, throwing herself through breaches and in front of guns whenever the situation called for it. He pulls her into a hug, letting her head rest on his chest and holding her until she calms down.

“I don’t know what I would do without you,” she tells him. He stills, remembering Christmas, and their kiss, and that elusive future that was taken away from them. And he decides, right in that moment, that he isn’t going to ask her about it. Not now, not when they’re on another earth fighting for their lives and the lives of so many other people. Iris does not need a best friend who’s wondering whether desperate kisses that tasted of lightning meant anything, or what their married doppelgangers mean to her, or whether she’s thinking about the fact that, no matter where they seem to go, when lives are different or flipped entirely, they are together. Always together.

“Well,” he says, swallowing, “you’ll never have to worry about that, sunshine.” To make it less heavy, and to calm his thudding heart, he smiles, tries for a joke. “Besides, if I’m gone, who’s going to reach the high things on the shelves for you?”

“Jackass,” she laughs quietly, hugging him tighter.

He rests his cheek on her head. “Nerd.”

***

“But I like my glasses,” Iris says stubbornly, and even though he isn’t her Barry, she can see E52 Barry trying not to smile at her. Cisco laughs.

“Well, Miss Miracle, the Iris of this earth doesn’t need them. You don’t have contacts?”

“Yeah, I have them,” she shrugs. “They’re just weird.”

“This whole thing is weird, _chica_ ,” Chesca points out. It’s not like she’s wrong. The next morning sees them all gathered in STAR Labs, ready to enact the next stage of the plan. Iris is going to call it a successful morning because Chesca and Cisco have only insulted each other’s suits once, and it was all in good humour. Barry, meanwhile, is staring at his doppelganger, and though the expression on his face is genial, he’s wondering why E52 Barry enjoys wearing so much plaid. He didn’t do anything to indicate their meeting in the hallway the night before, apart from a subtle look over the breakfast that E52 Iris dropped off for them.

She switches her glasses out for her contacts, and blinks around at everyone. “Okay, what are we doing today?”

“I’m taking Barry to work,” her doppelganger says. “We figure if we search for anything weird that happened around the same time as Killer Frost turning up, we might find clues about where he is.”

“Yeah,” Barry agrees. “Weird appearances, people reporting temperature spikes, that kind of thing.”

“Plus, half of that stuff is on my blog,” Iris says. “After Barry came out of the coma, I started documenting all the weird stuff that’s been happening in the city. If he’s been keeping them here for years, it’s probably in one of tips I got.”

“You did that?” Barry asks, grinning. “Me too!”

“God, that was so much fun. Although _someone_ ,” she remarks, turning to her Barry, “thought it was dangerous.”

“Yeah, they’re like that,” Barry replies. “I seem to recall someone welcoming me to 2002.”

“Oh, I stand by that,” Iris says, making everyone laugh. “What are we doing?”

“I’m taking you to CCPD,” he says. “If he’s people in some sort of warehouse, he has to be feeding them, right? And he’d have to be getting those chemicals from somewhere. I can use my clearance there to search for that kind of stuff.”

“Do you have any idea what he’s doing?” Caitlin asks, and Jesse shakes his head.

“Chesca’s vibes don’t come on often,” he tells them. “So we don’t know exactly, but it’s not good.”

“Oh, that guy was about seven different flavours of jackass, we _know_ it’s not good.”

“Wait a minute,” Cisco frowns. “We can do all that searching stuff, I’m sure we can find it.”

“Ah,” Iris tells them. “But you guys are doing something else. If I can get Colin back alive, we’re going to need to find a way to keep him subdued. So we’re giving you the specs of how to adapt the Pipeline on how to keep him in there.” But E52 Iris is frowning at her.

“You said if,” she says quietly. “What did you mean?”

Iris hesitates, goes to adjust her glasses, and pushes some hair out of her face instead. “Well, it…the way to defeat Colin is to hit him with lightning after I’ve taken away his source of heat. It might kill him. I don’t think I’m that powerful,” she adds, “and I want him subdued, not dead. But that’s what I meant.”

“As soon as we find out where he is, we can work out a plan to ambush him,” Barry tells them, sharing a look with Iris. “It might not have to come to that.”

“Right,” E52 Barry agrees. “I’ll take Iris to work first, and then I’ll bring her back at lunch.”

“And we’ll go after that,” E52 Iris says. She looks up at Barry. “Until then, you’re going to give me a profile on all those people that need saving.”

“Posse out!” Cisco yells, and Chesca glares at him.

“I was going to say that!”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I was going to.”

“But you _didn’t_.”

“Oy,” Caitlin and Jesse say together. Iris is watching them, shaking her head, when she feels a light touch on her shoulder. “We should get going,” E52 Barry says softly. She nods, after glancing back her doppelganger and Barry already chattering about writing.

They walk to CCPD, and Iris is trying to find differences in this Central City. But everything is the same – Jitters, the road that leads to Nora’s, the apartment block where she lives. The only difference is that she can’t read anyone’s minds here. She sees something then, a car about to crash into an oncoming bicycle, and makes to move – but then she feels a gust of wind next to her and a flash of red. Between that breath and the next, the bicycle is safely on his way down the street.

“Okay,” she says quietly. “I don’t know how anyone ever gets used to that.”

He shrugs modestly. “It’s been almost two years. The whole city’s pretty used to it by now.”

That’s another thing about this Barry – he is shyer, more modest. Nothing like her Barry, who enters every room deliberately and wants everyone to know that he’s there, filling up the room with his smile. This Barry is more of an observer – though she supposes a lot of that comes from being able to perceive everything at a much slower rate than everyone else. Her powers made her like that – even though she makes a conscious decision to never read minds, she can generally understand the shape of thoughts without effort. It makes people-watching more interesting, anyway.

“I do that,” she continues. “The whole ‘saving people as a civilian’ thing. You don’t realise how much danger people are in, just on their way to work.”

“Right?” he agrees. “Statistically, you’re most likely to get hit by a car within five miles of your home.”

“And the way people in this city drive, that wouldn’t surprise me.” She looks around. “They’ve mostly fixed that problem on Earth-2, though. They mostly use monorail, so there’s no buses.”

He gives her a sidelong. “You went to Earth-2?”

“Yeah, it was a trip. All the…relationships were different.”

He glances down at his shoes. “Yeah, it was like that for us too.”

Iris looks at him. There is a deeper meaning behind his words, she can tell. “Barry was a detective.”

“So was Iris.”

“And I had a PhD.”

“Me too.”

“And we were-”

“Married?” he asks, and she can see it, the wonder and hope and…is that longing?

“Yeah,” she says slowly. “Which was certainly something, after the year we’ve head.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asks, eyebrows raised. He licks his lips. “Are you and Barry…”

“No, we’re just friends. What about you and Iris?”

“Just friends.”

Iris knows, right at that moment, that the fact that they are metahumans isn’t the only thing they have in common. Nobody who says ‘just friends’ like that is happy about it. “How long?” she asks quietly. She keeps her gaze ahead, and he does the same.

“Since the day that I met her,” he replies. “I was going to tell her, but then the lightning…” Iris sighs, because really, she thought that her situation – that she has kissed two Barrys and neither count – couldn’t be more ludicrous. But apparently, even in their perfect mirror earth, Barry Allen and Iris West always miss each other.

“Hey, at least we have superpowers,” he continues lightly, and she recognises that most of all, the ‘hey, I’m fine, I can deal with an all-consuming love that’s never going to be returned, haha’. They make their way up the steps of CCPD, and Barry runs a hand through his hair and turns to her. “You know that thing where everyone kept saying that I had superspeed but I’m always late?”

“Yeah…”

He winces as the elevator opens up into the atrium. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

“Allen!” someone yells, and Iris blinks when a handsome Indian man in a suit marching up to them. “There you are, it’s nice of you to join us.”

“Sorry, Captain Singh,” Barry apologises, and Iris’ mouth drops open. He peers at her.

“Iris? Are you alright?”

“F-Fine. Captain. Just a little tired.” She smiles, and he returns it before looking at Barry with a stern expression. She can kind of see it – he looks a little like her Captain Singh, especially when he’s looking at Barry like he’s going to kill him.

“What are you doing here, Iris?” he continues jovially, looking at her. “Here to bat your eyelashes into a scoop?”

“Ha!” she laughs, almost a beat too late. “That’s funny, because I’m a journalise, and scoops are…my thing.”

“Iris is here to get a quote on some stories, sir,” Barry answers quickly. “I thought, with all the robberies that were going on, I would help the detectives out.”

“Where’s the Turner report?”

“I have that! I do have that, just – I will have that to you as soon as possible, Singh. Captain Singh. Sir.”

Singh glares at him for a full four seconds, and E52 Barry gives him his best smile. Then he nods curtly and walks off, and E52 Barry breathes a sigh of relief. “That’s Captain Singh?” Iris hisses to him as they move across the atrium.

“Of course it – oh. She’s a girl on your earth, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, and he’s so much hotter here.”

E52 Barry just rolls his eyes. “Figures. Oh, there’s Joe.”

Iris stills like she had when she first saw him yesterday in the Cortex, like he hadn’t just walked out of her dreams. Her dreams where her dad was alive and her parents were together and they were happy. But this is not her dad, this is Detective West. He raised his Iris without Francine and took in E52 Barry. He is not hers. _He is not yours_.

“Hey, Barry,” he says easily. “Hey, baby.”

“Hi, D-Dad,” she says, mindful of her impersonation. Thankfully, he seems to realise what’s going on.

“Sorry, are you guys…”

“We’re just looking into some stuff to see whether we can get a clue on where Colin is,” Barry says. “We just need to use the computers.”

Iris distracts herself by looking around while E52 Barry and Joe talk, her gaze roaming around the room. She stops, feels a shiver pass over when she gets to Patty’s desk, which is sitting innocently next to Joe’s. Then her eyes fall on a picture of Eddie, of all people, and she grins. “Eddie works here?”

They share a look. “He…used to,” E52 Barry says carefully.

“Oh, did he move?”

“No, he…he died, Iris. In the singularity.”

She stares between them, her mouth suddenly dry. Good, sweet, kind Eddie, who is sometimes far too serious, gone. Wiped out by the singularity. “Oh.”

“He’s still alive on your earth?”

“Yeah, we’re friends. But that’s – I’m sorry I brought him up,” she says quickly. “I’m sure he meant a lot to you guys.”

“He did,” Barry says quietly, but he is searching her face, almost as if he’s expecting her to say something else. But it passes, and Joe says goodbye, and they head upstairs to his lab. As soon as Iris gets there, she stops. “No. Uh-uh.”

“What?”

“Barry, everything is in the wrong place.” She looks around. “Your shelves? Right corner. The case files should be on the left wall. And that centrifuge should be next to your computer for easy access.”

“It has wheels! And I’m fast.”

But she’s shaking her head. “Savage,” she says, pointing at him. “And you call yourself the saviour of Central City.”

“Shut up,” he says good-naturedly. He pulls up a chair for her. It does look a lot like her lab – though if someone had tried that whole feng shui thing on her carefully cultivated organised mess. He starts typing. “Okay, here is a list of every place that delivers food and drink in Central City, everywhere that supplies chemicals, and every warehouse in the areas of Central City, Coast City, and Star City. I figure if we go through their backlog of orders, we can figure out where he’s hiding them.”

She comes to stand over his shoulder. “That’s a lot of words, are you sure-”

Barry clicks a couple of times, faster than what she can see. “First four done,” he says, somewhat smugly. He throws her a pan and lists a load of names, gesturing to the whiteboard. “Think you can remember all that, Miss Miracle?”

“Watch me, Flash.”

***

E52 Iris hangs up and turns to Barry, who’s watching Chesca and Cisco try not to be impressed with one another. He supposes that Chesca of all people would be the one to try to one-up their doppelganger, and it’s been fascinating to watch them reel off their powers and accomplishments.

“Iris’ suit adjusts to her environment to accommodate for changes in heat and body temperature,” Chesca says.

“Barry’s suit is fire-resistant.”

“Iris’ lenses make sure she doesn’t burn her eyes when she makes them glow.”

“Barry has a defibrillator in his suit.”

“So does Iris’.”

“Believe me,” E52 Iris says, “they will still be doing that when we get back. And Caitlin and Jesse will still be unimpressed by it.”

He glances over to the two doctors, who are discussing the materials that will be used for the enhanced Pipeline to hold Colin. At this moment, they are only shooting glares to the doppelgangers, but he gets the feeling that once they actually need the help of engineers to, you know, build a prison, he knows that Jesse at the very least won’t be too friendly. Barry closes his notebook, since they were just going over which people had been kept on their earths. “We’re heading out?”

She nods. “Barry and your Iris just got done trying to narrow down where he could be hiding them, but it’s hard. There’s at least five dozen places it could be, and Iris can’t go with him to check – something about Colin knowing that she’s coming?”

Barry thinks for a moment. “Yeah, that makes sense. Iris can only read the minds of people from our earth, and I’m guessing Colin is the same. If he can suddenly pick up a mind in this sea of, sort of, thought-nothingness, he’ll know something’s up. Plus, the guy is a grade-A sociopath.”

“Right,” she nods, “that’s what she said. So, she’s coming back here, Barry’s starting a patrol on all those places, and we are going to the paper. I want to see whether we can get some facial recognition on these people, or see whether anything weird that can be linked to Killer Frost can be found on my blog.”

They leave Chesca and Cisco arguing about the best material for gauntlets, and make their way across the city. E52 Iris’ phone beeps a couple of times, but she silences it. “People are always telling me about when they see the Flash,” she explains. “And Barry’s on patrol right now. That all kind of becomes redundant when you know who he is, but it’s not like you can be all-”

“’Hey, guys, quit telling me about it because my best friend literally just texted me where she’s going’?” Barry tries, and she laughs.

“Right!” She pauses. “Thank you. It’s nice to talk to someone who…gets it.”

“Yeah, I don’t think many people can say they have a superhero for a best friend,” he admits. He pauses. “Apart from maybe Clark Kent.”

“Well, I think I can honestly say that we’re the only two people on any earth that understand our situations.”

Barry considers that. He has never thought of that before, that even though he shares a name with E52 Barry, he may actually have more in common with this earth’s Iris. But he has no time to ponder this when they walk into CCPN, and has to fight the urge to walk to his desk. Which is _Iris’_ desk, he’s finding as she leads him to it. She gestures for him to sit down across from it. “I’m going to print out some stuff that I haven’t accounted for,” she says. “Most of it turned out to be a metahuman, or sightings of the Man in Yellow when he was running around freaking everyone out. If anyone asks, you’re here on police business.”

“Can do,” she says easily. She bites her lip.

“What is it?”

“Look, my Barry is great – he’s the best, really – but he has a tendency to blurt.”

“I won’t blurt. I won’t,” he adds, seeing her face. “I work here on my earth, remember? I’ll be good, I swear.”

She smiles. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

E52 Iris walks off to the photocopying room, and he takes the opportunity to look at some of the stories she’s sending out for approval. He frowns when he recognises the names of one of the people in a story. “The new DA is taking bribes?” he mutters to himself. He’d heard rumblings of that, to be honest, but he didn’t know whether it was going to be anything. But Earth-52 _is_ a couple of months into the future…

“Who are you?”

“I’m with the police,” he says immediately, and then his face clears. “Scott! How are you?”

His friend’s doppelganger regards him. “I’m…good.”

“Great!”

“Now, who are you, and how do you know who I am?”

He blinks. “I’m Iris’ friend, with the police, I have-”

“Scott!” E52 Iris says quickly, appearing behind them. She dumps her papers on the desk. “You – this is Barry,” she continues. “My best friend. He works with my dad at the precinct, remember?”

“Oh, right,” he says. “The CSI guy?”

“Yeah. Bar, this is Scott, my editor.”

“You’re an editor?” he repeats, grinning. “Cool!”

“…thank you. Iris, you invited him?”

“Yeah, he’s just helping me with a story, I need some science to clarify some of the points.”

“Yeah,” Barry agrees. “Yeah, I have some science stuff I have to… science the… stuff, out of.”

Scott looks at him like he may have lost his mind, but E52 Iris clears her throat. “But don’t worry, he won’t get in the way. He’s saved my life on lots of these stories.”

Then he turns to E52 Iris, and his face changes. “Well, that’s okay. I know if you need him, it must be for an important story.”

“Yeah, it is,” E52 Iris smiles back, and Barry notices that…is she flustered? And Scott is looking back at her in the exactly the same way.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to work,” he says, touching her arm, before turning. “Let me know how it goes!” he calls over his shoulder.

They both sit down, E52 Iris dividing the papers for them to sort through. “I can’t believe Scott’s an editor,” Barry says. “That’s so cool! You know, he’s always wanted to be one?”

Iris freezes. “You and Scott are friends on your earth?”

“Yeah,” he says in surprise. “Why?”

“Because he kind of hates you. Well,” she adds, “not _you_ , you. Flash you. Barry you, he may think is a little in love with him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’ve never met him before, and you were gushing about how cool it is that he’s an editor,” she laughs. “Plus the whole ‘science stuff’ thing.”

“Hey, that’s Iris’ specialty,” he points out. “I don’t know the first thing about science, unless is psychology. Besides, it seems like he likes _you_. And he’s your boss, so that’s important.”

“Well, we didn’t get off to the best start.”

He bends over the papers, already highlighting things that may have been of interest. “Why’s that?”

“Well, we kind of went on a…date.”

“Oh! Right, that’s…well, I guess that makes sense.”

She gives him a curious look. “Why do you say that?”

“Because Scott kind of dated Iris for a while.”

“And you were alright with that?”

Barry tries not to recall the sick feeling that sat in the pit of his stomach when he first saw Scott and Iris kissing, and keeps highlighting. “Yeah,” he replies. “Scott’s…awesome. He’s – awesome, and she’s awesome, and you’re awesome, so, yeah.”

It might be his imagination, but he thinks that E52 Iris looks kind of disappointed. She clears her throat. “Anyway, we have a job to do. Could you give me your estimates for when Killer Frost showed up on this earth?”

They work diligently through the rest of the afternoon, writing down specific things that could have been Killer Frost or anything that could indicate that people were being held against their will in the city. Eventually, Barry finds something. “Iris?”

“Mm?”

“Are you finding that people keep going to the hospital with cold burns?”

She frowns, looking at her notes. “Yeah, actually. But I’m pretty sure they were Captain Cold, doing his thing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. If you look at the dates of all those reports, they all coincide with when he turned up.” She reads from a sheet. “The first time was October, then January, then March, and then May.”

Barry thinks for a moment. “Do you know what kind of injuries they had?”

She tips her head. “What are you thinking?”

“Well, I’ve seen Cold’s gun in action, and I know how it works,” he explains. “And I’ve also seen – Killer Frost attacked Iris. I know what it looks like when he injures someone.”

E52 Iris clicks some stuff on her computer and then leans forward. “ _Patients reported that they had injuries similar to those who were accosted by Captain Cold – burns on the face and torso, severe pneumonia, sudden chills, and lacerations caused by icicles_.”

“There.” He points at her. “Those last two – Iris had those on her arms and shoulders, that’s how he operates. They must have just got confused because everyone assumed that it was Captain Cold.”

She keeps clicking. “All of these were reported near the Veller Plant, which was owned by Simon Stagg.”

He frowns. “The millionaire scientist?”

“That’s the one. Wells – evil Wells, killed him – and then when he stopped showing up to help explain why the board should fund his pet projects, a lot of his properties were closed.”

“And who owns it now?”

E52 Iris clicks some more and then swallows. “As of two years ago, this company became the property of Helena Amelie Wells.”

***

Iris paces up and down the Cortex, her mind spinning. Miraculously, both Barrys and E52 had come to the same conclusion – Colin had mind-controlled someone into giving over ownership of the warehouse to Colin, who of course registered it to Dr. Wells. Even on another earth, he didn’t want anything to be traced back to him. Everyone’s gathered in the Cortex, working on what to do next.

“What do you want to do?” E52 Barry asks her. He’s in his suit, the cowl pulled down, and Barry has to remind herself that it’s not _her_ Barry standing like this, instructing a team that he has to lead. She scratches her head. “Well, we need to figure out a way to get close without him finding us, lower the temperature in the surrounding area, get everyone out, and hit him with lightning strong enough to subdue him.”

“Is that all?” Cisco mutters. E52 Iris clears her throat.

“Iris is right-”

“I bet,” Joe says, “you just love how you can say that ironically.”

“It’s not like she’s _wrong_ ,” Iris adds, grinning.

“Anyway,” her doppelganger continues, “she’s right, it’s a lot. But we can split everything up, and that’ll be easier.”

“How are you guys coming with the Pipeline prison?” E52 Barry asks them, and Cisco sits up.

“Pretty well, but we would go a lot faster if we had Miss Miracle around with her photographic memory,” Caitlin admits. “We’re been working on, it though.”

“Actually, Red Vines had a great idea earlier,” Chesca admits. Cisco gives her a slow smile.

“Point to Earth-Prime Vibe.”

“ _I_ am Earth-Prime Vibe, Red Vines.”

“Not if I-”

“CHESCA!” at the same time Team Flash yells, “CISCO!”

“Um,” Chesca says. “Anyway, he has these power dampening cuffs that stop you from using them. If Iris can get close enough, she can use them on him. Nice alternative, as much as I would like to turn him into Frost Fricassee.”

“I didn’t know how to work them before,” he admits. “But your specs for the Pipeline really helped.”

“If you’re helping, Iris,” Jesse adds, “we should be done with that soon. Tonight, probably.”

“Okay,” she replies. “Have we figured out how he’s getting his power?”

“Yes,” Barry answers. He pulls out two sets of blueprints. “This warehouse was used for research into nanotechnology, and it specialised in melting different kinds of metal for the casings. There were four generators around it, and it was always really hot. They also had cooling devices, which we can use to lower the temperature.”

“We need to find a way to shut that down,” Jesse points out. “Any ideas?”

“Who’s the best hacker in the world?” Chesca grins, tapping at the computer.

“Freddie Smoak,” Iris, Barry and Jesse say. She glares at them.

“Y’all are wrong.”

E52 Iris giggles. “Now that we’ve got that straight. What happens when we get everyone out? They’re coming here, right?”

Iris hesitates, and Barry narrows his eyes at her. “Yes,” she says. “That’s the plan. And I’ll take care of the lightning, obviously.”

“Question,” Harry interjects. “How do we get close enough without him figuring it out?”

E52 Barry throws his shoulders back. “We don’t.”

“What?” Cisco wants to know. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“No, he’s right, Cisco,” Iris says. “I’ve fought him before – we have maybe a few moments to surprise him. This is going to be us fighting hard and fighting fast. As soon as we get close enough, it’s going to be a race to defeat him as quickly as we can.”

“Well, why don’t you two come over for dinner and come up with a game plan?” Joe suggests. Iris freezes. “I – I don’t-”

“I can go,” Barry suggests. “I know her powers really well – we all do. Plus, everyone kind of needs her here.”

“Two Barrys.” Joe shrugs. “Alright. Hope you like spaghetti.”

“And I can stay here,” E52 Iris says. “I’m sure I can help with something.”

They all move off to their respective jobs, and Iris catches Barry on his way out. “Thank you,” she says. “I know he’s trying to be nice, but I don’t know if I-”

“Of course,” he says easily. He hefts his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

She reaches up to hug him, breathing in his Barry scent, and smiles at him as he leaves. When she turns back, everyone is sat around the Cortex poring over notes or tinkering with parts. She frowns down at them, trying to figure out where to help, when her doppelganger taps her shoulder. She’s holding her glasses. “Barry told me to give you these.”

“Oh, thank God,” she mutters. She takes out her contacts and slips on the frames. E52 Iris is staring at her. “Weird,” they mutter.

“Hey, at least we still dress well,” E52 Iris laughs. “So, where do you need me? I never know what to do at this part.”

“Barry is usually the one telling us to use our common sense whenever we’re acting like idiots,” she replies. She sits down. “For a room of science nerds, it happens a lot more often than you think.”

Iris pulls one of the blueprints to her and starts reading. “My god, how does she come up with this?”

“She’s amazing,” Chesca answers. “And she knows it.”

“Who?” Caitlin asks.

“Linda,” Iris says, and both women stare at her.

E52 Iris’ eyes widen. “Linda. Linda _Park_.”

“Yeah,” Iris says slowly.

“Barry’s ex Linda? Cisco asks, and Chesca drops her screwdriver.

“Barry dated Linda here? Oh God,” she snorts. “Oh my God, Wally would _kill_ him.”

“Why would Wally do that?” E52 Iris asks, confused. Chesca and Iris share a look.

“They’ve been dating for like…how long?”

“Forever, that boy’s been following Linda around since we were kids.”

Caitlin laughs. “Your earth certainly is different. I don’t think I can see Wally dating Linda.”

“God, Cait, didn’t I tell you?” E52 Iris shakes her head. “He shows up all the time at work just to gawk at her.”

“Hey, don’t knock him!” Cisco says, turning away from the board. “Young West has game. And your brother and Linda would be all cute, talking sports together.”

“My…my brother?” Iris whispers. “Wally’s my brother here?”

“Um, yeah,” her doppelganger replies. Iris looks down.

“Oh. I didn’t – he’s just my cousin, where I’m from. But I guess because Barry has his sister…”

Cisco clears his throat. “Hey, what else? Anyone fun date me?”

“Does Louis Snart count?”

Caitlin lets out an unladylike snort and collapses in laughter. Cisco rolls his eyes. “Every earth.”

E52 Iris glances at her, part shy, part something else. “Do you know, um…Eddie?”

“Eddie Thawne?” Iris nods. “Yeah, he’s awesome. We never dated, though.”

“He’s alive on your earth.” Her doppelganger’s breath sounds like it’s been punched out of her. Iris hesitates.

“Yeah. Barry told me he – what happened to him.”

“We were together. He was…going to ask me to marry him.”

It’s Chesca who speaks next, her voice soft. “He’s a hero where we’re from,” she tells her. “The only reason we could come here is because we knew that he was there taking care of things.”

E52 Iris smiles. “Good. I’m glad.”

“Oh!” Cisco says. “Patty. What was she like?”

Jesse lets out a chuckle. “This should be good.”

“We liked Patty,” E52 Iris says firmly. “Barry liked her; so did we.”

“That’s true,” Caitlin agrees. “Barry did like her.”

Of course, that is the moment when all the objects in the room start shaking uncontrollably. “Okay,” Cisco breathes. “I’m guessing you guys _didn’t_ like Patty?”

“Given the fact that she was a sociopathic liar,” Jesse tells them idly, “no, I don’t think they did.”

Everyone looks at each other. “Patty…Spivot?” Cisco asks. “Tall, blonde, likes science jokes.”

“If she was telling the truth,” Iris mutters. Chesca touches her arm.

“Calm, Iris.”

“Sorry,” she says shortly, and everything stops. She sighs. “I don’t know about your Patty, but ours was…not who she said she was. She worked for a rogue faction of A.R.G.U.S., and she only dated Barry so she could kill him and Nora because of some old vendetta.”

That is a lot, she can tell, and Chesca clears her throat, giving her a meaningful look. “But I’m sure your Patty was fine,” Iris adds quickly, not wanting to panic them. “Ours had a whole dossier on him and us. It’s not like she knew a weird amount about your Barry before she got here, is it?”

“Well,” Cisco says. “Didn’t read all of his case files? And know which ones he worked on?”

“His _case files_? Wow, that’s weird.”

“Not that weird!” Chesca tries.

“Right, that-”

“Our Patty came here to kill someone,” Chesca points out. “I’m sure your Patty didn’t become a cop to kill a person.”

Another uncomfortable pause. “Well,” E52 Caitlin mutters, “she did. She came here to kill Mark Mardon. After Barry stopped her, she quit being a cop.”

Iris and Chesca look at each other. “I – look, Patty _shot me_ ,” Iris says desperately. “Like, right here, in the arm. Did she do that?”

“Yeah, like your Patty would shoot someone on the team,” Chesca adds. She looks at them. “R-Right?”

“Um.” E52 Iris looks acutely uncomfortable. “Didn’t Barry say she shot Harry?”

“Yes, for holding a syringe,” Caitlin snaps. “Honestly. I can’t believe she almost killed him.”

Jesse is laughing silently, and Chesca clears her throat. “Do you – maybe – know where she went? Because Iris had a pretty effective method of dealing with her-”

“Chesca!”

“She’s right,” Jesse says. Caitlin looks at her.

“What did you say?”

“I told her if she ever went near Barry again I’d snap her spine in half.”

“Effective.”

“You guys!” E52 Iris hits Cisco’s shoulder. “You said she’d fit on the team!”

“I did not say that,” Caitlin corrects her. “Cisco said that. Who says she wouldn’t have shot me next? But Barry was so excited…”

“Hey, you liked her too!” Cisco points out.

“Iris likes everyone, Cisco. Especially people who make Barry happy.”

Iris doesn’t think she’s imagining the change in Caitlin’s voice, or the look she’s giving E52 Iris. Iris herself is happy that this Patty didn’t try to murder them all – thought that story is a little troubling. “Iris?” she says. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

Her doppelganger looks grateful to be away from talk of Patty, and she doesn’t blame her. She leads her outside and then hesitates, not sure how to say what she wants to say. “I don’t bite, Iris,” her doppelganger says kindly.

“Right,” she laughs, adjusting her glasses. “I guess I just wanted to know – what is it like? What is _he_ like? My – our – _your_ dad?”

E52 Iris gives her a knowing look. “Right. Iris, are you sure you want to know this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is this going to help you? I’ve seen the way you look at my dad, and I know it seems like you missed out on something. But I don’t want you to torture yourself about it. Because the truth is, you probably got all the love you needed from your mom.”

Iris pauses. “I’ve never…looked at it that way.”

She shrugs, giving her a sad smile. “Wally was mad that he never knew us, but he never felt unloved. I’m sure your mom was the same way.”

“What about you? How do you feel about Wally?”

E52 Iris pauses. “Before him, when it was just Barry and Dad and school, I thought my life was full. I thought I couldn’t let it get any bigger.”

“And now?”

She smiles. “I couldn’t imagine life without him.”

Iris nods. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“You just helped me decide something.”

***

“Okay, we should be sleeping,” Chesca complains. “What’s with the clandestine meetings in the dark, Bambi Eyes?”

Iris paces in front of the breach as Chesca comes in. She’s been thinking about this since her doppelganger spoke about Wally, about how her life had changed because he was in it. “I want you to promise me something.”

Chesca looks at her. “No. I hate this part in the movie. This is always the part where the hero makes the best friend promise them something, and then they get in their spaceship or their ship or give birth to their Targaryen-Stark baby and then die.”

“I’m not going to die,” she says firmly. “But I will be busy. You see this breach?”

“Yeah – we stabilised it before bed.”

“I know. I’m going to tell everyone that, no matter what, the people who were kidnapped go through the breaches first – that way, they can get to their families sooner.”

Her friend nods slowly. “That’s a good plan.”

Iris takes a deep breath. “And if anything happens to me, or the breach is about to close, make sure you’re through it.”

“Iris-”

“Chesca. You, Jesse, Henry, Malina, Barry. You make sure they are through that breach the minute something starts to go wrong. If anything happens to me, I do not want you on this earth. Are we clear?”

Chesca’s chin wobbles. “You’re not going to die.”

Iris grins. “Course not. But you’re forgetting the part of the movie where no one ever has a contingency plan and everyone always ends up stuck on an alien planet? I’m just covering our bases.”

Chesca regards her for a moment, and then pulls her into a fierce hug. “ _I have been_.”

“ _And always shall be_.”

“ _Your friend_ ,” they finish together, and Iris laughs, teary-eyed. “We’re such nerds.”

“And we’re about to save the world.”

Iris isn’t surprised to find out that everyone agrees with her the next evening, when they’re preparing to get Killer Frost. Both Barrys spent all night coming up with a plan, and now they are about to strike. They stand at the board, while everyone else was sat around in a circle.

“Everything starts when Cisco and Chesca turn off the power to the generators,” Barry explains. “You’ve both studied the blueprints, so you know how to get around. But as soon as they go off, he’ll know what’s going on.”

“So Iris, you’re going to concentrate on finding him and fighting him,” E52 Barry says. “I’ll find the people and get them here as quickly as I can.”

“Iris and I are going to direct you,” Barry adds, and everyone else will be watching the security feeds to see whether there’s anything you need to watch out for.”

“I’ve given you both the power dampeners,” Cisco tells them. “In case you don’t want to fry the guy.”

“But feel free to fry the guy,” Caitlin smiles. “We won’t hold it against you.”

E52 Iris clears her throat. “Are you guys doing medical checks?”

“Of course,” Jesse says firmly. He marches over to Iris and starts prodding her, while Caitlin does the same to E52 Barry. “Ow,” she mutters. “Ow, _Jesse_. What’s the matter with you?”

“Are you hungry?”

”I had a whole casserole for dinner, no I’m not hungry.”

“What about thirsty?”

“You made me drink about a gallon of water, so no. You’re lucky I went to go pee.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. Look, vitals perfect, eaten, rested.”

Jesse shakes his head, and for once looks completely sincere. “I mean are _you_ alright. Iris. Are you scared, or – or worried?”

She lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “A little. But I always am. It means I’m paying attention.”

“That’s smart,” he admits. “Look, Iris, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You didn’t have to let me in, or even help me, but you did. And I don’t think Central City could ask for a better hero.”

Iris fights the urge to cry, and grins instead. “Duh. You’re a part of the Miracle Workers now, Chambers. Just try getting away from us.”

He finishes the check and goes to sit next to Chesca, and then Barry is in front of her, handing her the domino mask and taking her glasses. “Remember what we said,” Barry tells her. “We’ll be right here.”

“I know.”

“And you don’t have to feel guilty about anything, because we decided – remember?”

“I know.”

“And-”

“Barry,” she interrupts. “ _I know_. Quit worrying.”

Then, because it is them and she can’t say goodbye to him, and hugs him. “When we bring your sister home, she’s going to like my Playstation and not your Xbox, and won’t you be sad?”

Barry’s laugh shakes her, and then E52 Barry is calling them to leave. She takes a last look: E52 Iris showing Barry where to stand, Joe and Harry worrying like den mothers, Chesca and Cisco talking, Jesse and Caitlin going over the medical supplies. Then she pulls on her mask and disappears into the night with the Flash.

***

The night is cold and dry, strangely silent as they leap over buildings and across roofs to reach their destination. They have to be careful, silence, one with the night, because the minute Colin feels her presence, there’s no telling what they’ll do.

“How close are you?” Cisco asks.

“About two miles away,” E52 Barry answers, his hand to his ear. Iris scans the horizon. She can see the warehouse, dark and abandoned, the only sound the swishing of the ways and the occasional toll of a lighthouse bell.

“Iris’ mind can range about that long,” Barry says, his voice tinny in her earpiece. “Do you know about Colin’s?”

“About the same, probably,” she admits. “I think we should stop here.”

“Do you guys have infrared imaging on this place?”

“Getting it up now,” Chesca says slowly. “Okay, eight floors, and a basement. By my count, that’s…six people.”

“Toni Woodward’s uncle, Miriam Farooq’s son, Everywoman’s sister, Malina, and Henry,” E52 Iris says. “Is that last one Killer Frost?”

Iris’s stomach twists. “Probably. Can you tell who it is?”

“Not from here, they all just look like blobs. I’m seeing movement on the upper levels, though.”

She nods. “That might be him. Are we ready?”

“Ready ready,” Chesca says.

“Iris, don’t forget, when we turn off these generators and lower the temperature,” Barry says, “it’ll affect you too. Your powers and your reaction.”

“I know. I’ll handle it.” She turns to E52 Barry. “You know what to do?”

“Get in, get everyone out, come and back you up,” he nods. “I’ve got it.”

“Shut it down,” they say together. One by one, the generators power off, and Iris hears the low metallic whine stop, rendering the night even stiller. Now they are on a clock, because even though Killer Frost won’t stop using his powers straight away, eventually, he will notice that he cannot transmute heat to cold. E52 Barry grabs her and speeds them down to the entrance, before crouching down in front of the door and pressing his hands against it. They start to vibrate, shaking the door, until it falls off its hinges. “Anyone ever tell you you’d make a great thief?” Iris grins.

“All the time,” Cisco says.

“Cisco,” Joe warns.

“Sorry.”

They step into the dank hallway, and Iris reaches out with her mind. She immediately feels the welcoming sensation of people she can read, can understand, but something is different. “There,” she points, frowning. “There’s one in there, and another upstairs. But…”

“Iris?”

“It’s okay,” she realises. “They’re just sleeping.”

“Temperature decreasing,” Chesca warns them. “Look alive.”

Iris feels that, too, feels her reflexes slowing. She shakes her head as Barry vibrates the door again, and then they hear a child’s whimper. There’s a cot, with someone one it, handcuffed to one of the railings, and a table full of chemicals. Iris turns on her eyes, and breathes a sigh of relief. “Barry,” she says, hand to her ear. “It’s Miriam Farooq’s son.”

E52 Barry races to him and vibrates the cuffs off, soothing him when he starts to cry. “Hey, it’s okay buddy,” he whispers. “We’ve got you.”

Iris, meanwhile, is checking out the chemicals. There are neatly arranged beakers, different kinds of substances. “What was he doing?” she whispers.

“Iris,” E52 Barry says. Sami is clasping his hand, already trusting him. She nods, and leads him upstairs, careful not to disturb anything. The next is Annalise Bates, who almost screams before Iris has a chance to do anything.

“ _Stop_ ,” she orders, and she stops, leashed by the power of her mind. Like Sami, is is shackled to the bed, surrounded by chemicals. “We’re here to help you,” she says quietly. Annalise looks at her with frightened eyes. “I’m going to let you talk now,” she tells her. “You can’t scream. Alright?”

Iris lets her go, and she breathes out. “Run.”

“What?”

“ _Run_. He’ll – he’ll hurt you, and-”

“Take them back,” Iris tells E52 Barry. “Make sure they-”

“ _NO! STOP IT, PLEASE_!”

“ _You’re not listening, Malina_ …”

Iris’ mind is split with headache so bad she almost sees starts. The thoughts come thick and fast, pain mixed with terror, awakened when she recognised his voice. Killer Frost was here, he’s upstairs.

“Iris?” Chesca asks her over the intercom. She’s about to reply when another voice come, laced with agony.

“ _Honey_ , _don’t listen to-”_

“ _DAD_!”

Henry. And Malina.

“Barry,” she says. “There are two more people on each of these floors, you have to-”

Then she can see them, through Malina’s eyes – Colin standing with his arm around Henry’s neck, a knife pressed to it as he looks directly at Malina. The tip of his kisses his throat, and she can feel the sob that wracks through Malina at the sight of blood that drips down it. She takes off running without a word, ignoring Barry’s shouts, ignoring them all, racing up the stairs as visions flash through her mind: Colin’s slow smile, Henry’s hidden terror, the scream pushing it’s way up Malina’s throat…

The door buckles inward as Iris clenches her fist, and then she is bursting through it. Colin has about a split second to react before Iris is on him, tearing Henry from his grip and hurling him across the room with her mind. She crouches next to Henry, but he waves her away, despite the blood on him. “Get Malina!”

“Barry, I need you!” she shouts into her intercom, over the noise of all the chaos. Malina shrinks back from her when she gets to her, but she doesn’t stop. “Malina, it’s okay.”

“W-Who are you?”

“I’m a…friend of your brother’s.” Because, really, there’s no time. “Come with me, I’m going to-”

“Dad!” she screams, and Iris whips around just in time to see that Colin has gotten up. She sends the table of beakers flying off in his direction, making them explode al over the room, and then grabs Henry, flashing outside to deposit him there. But she’s too late, because when she gets back, Colin has Malina.

“Miss Miracle,” he snarls, wrapping his hand around Malina’s neck. “Long time no see.”

***

 

E52 Barry bursts back into the lab with a woman and a small child in tow, and Barry leaps out from behind the terminal. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, she just ran off-”

“Give them to us,” Jesse says. “We have to make sure they’re okay before we send them through the breach. Chesca, go make sure it’s ready.”

He hands them off to him and Caitlin, and they hear several loud crashes. E52 Barry disappears again, and when he’s back he has Henry in tow. Barry’s so relieved to see him that he hugs him.

“Malina…” he says weakly.

“It’s okay, we’re getting them-”

“Barry,” E52 Iris says, “you have to go back and get the others.”

“I know, I-”

“ _Miss Miracle_ ,” Colin snarls, “ _long time no see_.”

***

“Killer Frost. Not long enough.”

Malina lets out a choked noise, and Iris locks eyes with him. It is amazing, that there’s nothing of her friend in there. “Colin,” he says, and he holds her tighter.

“Don’t do this…”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Iris, what is it?” Barry asks desperately. But she blocks him out, she has to, because if she lets his sister die, he’ll never look at her again.

“Come on, please – look, I’m begging, alright? Just don’t – _don’t_!”

“I need her,” Colin says, almost conversationally. “She’s the only one I can make like you.”

“What is he _talking_ about?” E52 Iris wants to know, and then she hears Chesca gasp.

“You guys, the chemicals he’s been ordering.” She swallows. “They were the same ones that were in Iris’ system during the lightning strike.”

“You’re trying to make another Miss Miracle,” Iris realises, and Colin grins over the sounds of Malina crying.

“Bingo.”

“It’s alright, Malina, it’s okay – Colin, take me,” Iris says desperately, and everyone starts yelling at her. Beneath her, she can feel the ground shake as E52 Barry flashes in and out of the building.”

“Iris, no!” Chesca screams.

“Iris,” Barry snaps. “Iris West, don’t you dare, _don’t you dare_ …”

“I already have p-powers,” she says. “And you wouldn’t have to do anything to me.”

“I can’t use mind control on you,” he muses.

“But I can’t use it on you,” she points out. Colin pretends to think for a minute…and then shakes his head.

“Or I kill this one and take you anyway,” he says silkily, and lifts his hand.

“NO!” Iris surges towards him, but a flash of lightning knocks him away from her, and then Barry is there. “Who is _that_?”

“That’s the Flash,” Iris answers, but her eyes are on Colin, electricity dancing around her fingers. He looks up at them, hatred burning in his eyes, but he can do nothing.

Because Iris sends out the first arc of lightning, and it illuminates the room, make all the objects rise off the floor, and sends him crashing through the window outside.

***

“Is there always so much crashing when iris stages a rescue?” Cisco asks no one in particular. Jesse, who is giving Hannah and Sami to Chesca to take through the breach, looks over to where he’s just brought Eli Woodward and Henry.

Barry paces, listening frantically for any sound amongst all the crashes. “Guys,” E52 Iris says. She points to the windows – lightning is crashing and rolling across the sky.

“Its’s them,” he realises, his heart working it’s way up his throat. “They’re fighting, he-”

“Barry,” she tells him. “She’ll be fine.”

He can only nod.”

***

Iris doesn’t let him breathe.

All of it comes spilling out – the anger, the hurt, the rage, _all of it_. She punches him across the parking lot, sending him spinning into a wall. It’s anger, yes – but she also needs to build up enough lightning to strike him, once and for all.

Then a searing pain cuts across her arm – his ice powers. She leaps back, yanking the shard out of her arm, and he makes to attack her again…but he can’t. He looks down at his own hands in disbelief. “What did you do to me?”

Iris laughs.

She shouldn’t have.

Because when Colin hears it, his eyes turn lack and he launches himself at her, punching and kicking and throwing her places with his stolen powers. She can barely keep up, but, worst of all, she can’t build up enough to stop him.

***

Chesca marches back through to the Cortex just as the monitors start showing the fight, lightning arcing all around them. “Henry and Woodward are through,” she tells them. “How’s Iris?”

“Uh-oh,” Cisco breathes, and they all look at the monitors. Barry’s heart constricts quickly, painfully. Iris is fighting him, and she’s holding her own, but – “She’ll never be able to build up enough to stop him.” He looks around. “Can Barry throw lightning?”

“Yes,” E52 Iris says. Barry nods.

“Good. He needs to help her build it up, then let her catch it.” He speaks into the intercom. “Did you get that, Iris?”

“Yeah,” she says weakly. “I got it.”

“Just hold on.”

***

 _Hold on_.

She can do that, has been doing it, for years. And when she sees the yellow lightning, sees the Flash run around in a circle fast enough to create lightning, she knows what she has to do.

She throws Colin off and runs _through_ it, catching it in her hands, feeling it punch through her, and aims it directly for Colin. It explodes out of her, hitting him directly in the chest, slamming him into a wall where he lies.

Still, at last.

Iris crawls over to him and puts the cuffs on him, careful not to look at him. She has had enough nightmares about this. E52 Barry comes up to her, panting. “You good?”

She nods. “Take her back.” Malina is still there, shell-shocked, and E52 Barry nods.

“I’ll come back for you,” he promises. He goes, and Iris slumps on the floor, closing her eyes. Every bone in her body feels like jelly, and she doesn’t remember when she was so exhausted.

That’s why she doesn’t her him. Doesn’t hear him grab the pole, stand over her, hatred blazing in his eyes, until it’s too late.

The lightning is automatic then. Brilliant, glorious, powerful. It smashes out of her, illuminating her, and knocks Colin away. When it hits him, he shudders. When she sees it, she cannot breathe.

And when it kills her, bright and deadly, Iris West only thinks of beautiful the lightning was before it took her.

***

The Flash arrives with his sister and Barry has no idea what to do.

Thankfully, Jesse does. “Not now,” he says. Chesca disappears with them, reappearing a few seconds later, and E52 Barry goes back for Iris. “Shit,” Cisco mutters. “All that lightning, and the video feed cut out.”

“It’s okay,” E52 Iris assures them. “Barry will find her.”

“I’m not waiting,” Barry says. Chesca stands.

“Me neither.”

They walk out into the corridor – and suddenly, Barry’s heart constricts so badly he stumbles. “I can’t,” he chokes on the word, his vision going blurry, “I can’t breathe-”

“Barry? Barry, what – JESSE!” Chesca cries desperately, trying to look at his face. She holds him up even as he doubles over, pain lancing through his lungs. Jesse runs back to them.

“Barry – okay, it’s ok. What happened?”

“ _I can’t breathe_ …” he tries to drag air back into his lungs, and walking is like his legs are made of lead.

“Barry, come on, please,” Chesca whimpers, and Jesse calls for the others.

“Snow! I need oxygen and a mask, hurry it up!” He turns back to Barry, who is bent double and heaving. “It’s okay, Barry.”

Chesca wanders back into the Cortex just as E52 Barry turns up with Colin, who looks so murderous she takes a step back. E52 Iris steps in front of her. "Where's Iris?" 

"She's not with you?" E52 Barry frowns. "She was gone when I got there!" But before anyone can say anything else, Cisco lets out a choked noise.

“No….oh,  _no_ …”

“What is it?” Joe asks. He looks at Colin. “Him. He…you should watch. I got the feed back up.”

Chesca looks up at the monitor. Watches Iris cuff him, slump down, exhausted. Watches Colin grab a pipe. Watches Iris light him up – only for it to be reflected back at her.

Watches her friend die, lightning destroying her.

Her heart just shuts down, her hands shaking, tears blurring her eyes already. “W-What did you do to her?” she screams, whirling on Colin. She shoves him hard as she can and he falls. “You _bastard_ , WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?!”

“I didn’t do anything, she-”

“What the hell is going on?”

Jesse runs back into the room, Caitlin behind him, and they both look around. “Iris,” Chesca sobs, a hand over her mouth. “He – _Iris_ …”

“Maybe if she knew how to handle her-”

E52 Barry punches him, and he falls, knocked out. Jesse watches the video, and his legs almost give out underneath him. He gestures to Colin’s unconscious form, not taking his eyes from the screen. “Put…Put him in the Pipeline.”

“But he’s wearing the cuffs,” Cisco says.

Jesse laughs, and there is absolutely no humour in it. “I’m not scared _of_ him, I’m scared _for_ him.”

“Why?”

“Barry is a nice guy. I would trust him with my life. But when he finds out what that man did to Iris, he just might kill him. And I won’t stop him.”

E52 Iris and Caitlin are crying, silent tears tracking their cheeks. Even Cisco has some unshed tears. “What was wrong with him?” Cisco asks.

“It seemed like he was having a panic attack, but it was very severe. I finally got him some oxygen.”

“No,” Caitlin disagrees. They look at her. “That wasn’t it. When Barry collapsed…it was the same moment Iris died.”

Chesca lets out a sob. “Jesse. Jesse, what are we going to tell him? And I promised…”

“You promised what?”

“I promised if anything happened to her I would take us all home. Jesse, _what are we going to tell Barry_?”

***

Heaven is her childhood bedroom. She isn’t expecting it.

Michael Jackson singing ‘Human Nature’? A golden elevator to take her to the pearly gates? Her dad’s welcoming arms? Yes.

But the room she left as a child? No. No way.

She gets up, feeling light, and it hits her. The fight, the lightning…dying. She doesn’t _feel_ dead, but then, what does that feel like? She’s not wearing her suit, but a plain white jumper, black jeans, and boots. Her eyes fall on the door, and she gets up and heads down the stairs. It is oddly lit, bright, and a breeze is coming from somewhere.

“Hello, Iris.”

“Nora?”

She’s in her beat cop uniform, surrounded by tape, and Iris sees that this is the night her father died. “Where am I? How do I get home?”

Nora smiles, and Iris is terrified. “Oh, Iris. I’m not Nora. And you’re not going home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was the last DRAMATIC cliffhanger. The next one is a lot friendlier. I hope you liked it!


	29. Keep Listening (I’m Still Listening)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has some much needed conversations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like what I did with this.  
> This episode is still in 2x18 'Versus Zoom'

Chesca is still in shock, watching the footage over and over again. Watching Iris’ skin start to disintegrate, flakes of it dissolving in the air before she explodes in a shower of sparks. When she chokes out another sob, Jesse glares at Ramon. “Can’t you turn that off?”

And that’s when she knows it’s bad, because he only met Iris two months ago and his voice is already raw with grief. E52 Iris is in shock, but then she supposes that’s what happens when you have to watch your doppelganger die, and Joe keeps checking his daughter to make sure she’s still. E52 Barry keeps running his hands through his hair.

“Are you – how did this happen?” Caitlin asks. “She was fine before the video cut out; she was fine the entire time. And hasn’t she done that before?”

E52 Barry clears his throat. “It was…when we were fighting, and getting Malina out, there was a lot of lightning around. All of those chemicals that he ordered, the ones that were in my – our labs the night of the explosion? We were all covered in them.”

“And then the lightning hit,” Cisco breathes. “That combination of chemicals…no one would have been able to take it.”

“And that amount of electricity would have killed a normal person,” Harry points out. Chesca scoffs.

“It _did_ kill her. For nine months. And now I have to go tell her best friend that we killed her again.”

Everyone looks at her. “Chesca…” Jesse tries.

“No,” she shakes her head, her voice still shaking. “You don’t know, you weren’t there. _She’s his family._ He yelled at the doctors who wanted to turn her off. He came to STAR Labs almost every day. He begged her to wake up. Oh, and then there’s Nora. And her mom! You know, the woman who had to come visit her daughter in handcuffs, because she was falsely imprisoned, because the guy who was pretending to fix her fucked up their lives? Remember her? Who wants to tell Francine that _her daughter was blown up_? _Again_?”

She shouts the last part, before letting out another sob and leaving the room, still crying. Everyone stares after her, helpless. Joe looks pained, no doubt by the mention of Francine, and E52 Barry is running his hands through his hair, looking around as if a solution will jump out at them. It’s Cisco who speaks first, though, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “How is he?” he asks. “Is he – um, awake?”

“No,” Jesse replies numbly. “I got some oxygen in him, like I said, and then I gave him something to go to sleep. He seemed exhausted.”

“Why do you think he collapsed, when Iris…” Harry hesitates. “When it happened?”

Jesse shrugs. “Those two have always had a special bond. Besides, Dr. Wells – my aunt – figured out a year ago that the better Iris knows a person, the stronger her mental connection to them is. Maybe when she died he…felt the same pain.” He shakes his head, rubbing his eyes. “Look, I wasn’t kidding about putting Colin in the Pipeline-”

“He’s in,” Cisco promises.

“And you’ve modified the prison?”

“Cold as ice in there.”

“Good.” Jesse throws his shoulders back. “I’m going to get Chesca. We need to tell him together.”

***

Iris blinks at her. “Of course you’re Nora,” she says, but even as she says it, she hesitates. Her Nora has kindness in her features, and radiates warmth. Though this woman certainly looks like her, there is a strange lack of warmth in her eyes, and there is a sense that this woman does not really know Iris as Nora does. Besides which, Nora stopped being a beat cop when she and Barry were teenagers – why would she be wearing those clothes now?

“You’re…not Nora.”

“I am not. But it _is_ good to see you, Iris.”

She looks around, takes in the breeze that flutters the curtains, the strange ethereal light with no source. _You’re not in Kansas anymore, Miss Miracle_. “And all of this? It’s not real?”

Not-Nora shakes her head. “No, it isn’t. How do you feel, being here?”

Iris thinks, flashing back to that awful moment when Colin hit her with the lightning and it felt like every nerve in her body was on fire. “Awful,” she whispers. She glances back up at her. “Am I dead?”

“In some ways, yes. In others…not so much.”

“Well, at least you’re not being vague about it.”

She laughs. “It’s complicated. But we thought you would be more comfortable talking to someone you recognised in a place you knew.”

“…’we’? Who’s ‘we’, exactly?”

“That’s a little more complicated. Sit, Iris,” she tells her, gesturing to the table. “Listen. Are you listening?”

Iris sits. “I’m listening.” Nora puts her notepad away. “How much do you know about the Mindscape?”

“It’s the source of my powers,” she answers, remembering what Dr. Wells and Gideon told her. “It’s what makes me a miracle worker.”

“Yes…and no. When the first subatomic particle sprang forth from the Big Bang to form reality as you know it, we were there. When the last proton decays, stops vibrating, and plunges the universe into heat death, we'll be there too.”

Iris blinks. “And yet when I talked about my physics papers…”

She laughs again and Iris rubs her eyes behind her glasses. “Let me get this straight: I am talking to the Mindscape. Isn’t that like saying I’m talking to gravity? Or…time, or something? I’m talking to the source of my powers?”

“Mm.”

“That’s trippy.”

“Trippy is kind of our thing over here.”

Iris sighs. “Look, I don’t know why you brought me here, and you say I’m not all dead, but I have people who care about me back home, and responsibilities-”

She’s interrupted by a loud whooshing noise, and a shadow falls briefly over the room. “What was that?” Iris demands, standing up. She looks out at the street. “Did you see that?”

Nora nods, going to join her at the window. “I did. And I should tell you, you aren’t going back home until you catch that.”

“The floating, vibrating, shadow thing?”

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

Iris concentrates, making to fly, but… “My powers. My powers are gone!”

“I told you things were complicated.”

***

Jesse finds Chesca sitting in front of the breach, which is still stable despite everyone jumping through it. She had left everyone with Eddie while Iris had been fighting Colin, ending with Malina and Henry. She was happy that he’d been reunited with his family and would have stuck around longer, but Iris’ promise kept sounding in her head, pounding through her brain with each beat of her heart. _If anything happens to me, I do not want you on this earth_. She was happy to see that Barry didn’t want to wait, either.

But then her heart had been ripped out of her chest when she saw Iris killed by that lightning. And now she has to tell Barry and Nora and _Francine_ …

“Chesca?” Jesse calls. “Chess?”

She looks up as he approaches, before facing the ground again. “Is he awake?”

“Not yet.” He sits down next to her.

“What’s everyone else doing?”

“Well, Flash Barry is running around doing cleanup, since they left that area kind of a mess. And…reporter Iris is putting out an alert on her blog to let everyone know everything is safe, and calling CCPN to say that the Flash fought there tonight.”

“Right,” she says bitterly. “The Flash. Can’t talk about Miss Miracle, ‘cause she’s dead.”

“Chess-”

“You know what I promised myself after she woke up? That nothing I did would hurt her again. That nothing _we_ did would hurt her again.” She shakes her head. “We hurt a lot of people with that explosion, Jesse. I know you must have seen it on the news, but…every week, it seemed like someone else was dead or missing or a metahuman. But then when we realised what Iris could do, and how good she was, I thought it was my chance to fix things. Not only did we bring Iris back, but we were helping all these people.” She rubs her eyes.

“And now we killed her again. Not only is Iris gone, but all the hope and belief and inspiration that came with her is gone too. It’s bad enough that we hurt our friend, but…but we took Miss Miracle too.”

Chesca dissolves into sobs again and Jesse hesitates. He hasn’t known Chesca that long, and Barry and Iris are so much better at this. But Barry is sedated and Iris is… He puts a hand on her shoulder. “Chesca,” he says quietly. “Chess. Iris knows what it is to be her. Even for the little time I’ve known her, it’s clear that she knows exactly what could happen every time she puts on that suit.” He pauses again, taking a deep breath. That video had been horrifying. Little cracks of light appeared in pockets on her skin, and then her skin started flaking off before she exploded in a shower of sparks. He is almost glad that Barry never got to witness it, never had to see, because he’s fairly certain he would have killed Colin with his bare hands.

“And…and it happened,” he continues. “But you can’t let that outweigh all the good we did. We saved all those people, and Barry has his sister now. And we helped the people on Earth-2, and we helped send all those other criminals back to their earth. We all know the risks – I know it, you know it, Barry knows it, and so do Nora and her mom. It’s part of we all love her so much. She knows the risks and she did it anyway. If we’re going to blame ourselves – when, really, we should be blaming Colin – we may as well blame Iris for coming up with the idea in the first place. And my aunt Helena for teaching her to use her powers. And Nora and her mom for making her want to help people-”

“Okay, I get it,” she says. She wipes her eyes and wraps her arms around herself. “Hey, at least you got your aunt back. If we hand Colin over to Waller, I’m sure he’ll let her go.”

He lifts his shoulder in a half shrug. “Team Miracle wins again. Doesn’t feel like it, though.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Chesca stands, and he stands as well. “We have to tell him.”

“We do. But – look, just let him sleep for a little bit, alright? There’s no need to wake him up to…to tell him this. Not this.”

***

Iris quickly learns that maybe if she’d gone running with Barry when he was trying out for the track team, she wouldn’t find chasing a moving shadow so exhausting. Not to mention frustrating. It always hovers on the edge of the horizon, too far to catch, too close to ignore. When she stops, it stops. When she gets close, it puts on a sudden burst of speed to flit away from her, and she’s left chasing after it. None of this is helped by the fact that she keeps staring at the Mindscape.

Nora – or, rather, the Mindscape-Appearing-As-Nora – told her that it had appeared like this to give her comfort. It had, for a second, but that comfort had fallen apart like paper in water when she saw that Central City is not as she knows it. Everything is muted – the sound, the colours – even the sky, which is in a strange limbo between the beginning and the end of sunrise, as if something is holding it in place. There are cars, but no one driving them. Restaurants and stores are open, but there is no one in there, only music coming from televisions and radios. It’s like she is the only one alive in this strange, ghostly town.

If that.

Before Iris knows it, she makes it to the bridge, but the shadow disappears over the horizon. She sighs, bending over to get her breath back, and makes towards the bench on the footpath. Then she sees a familiar figure and starts. “Barry?”

He’s standing with his legs apart and his hands behind his back, looking out onto the bay from the bridge, before her turns to her and gives her a casual nod, a smile that isn’t quite like his. “We’re glad you made it, Iris.”

“Oh,” she sighs, irritated. “Not Barry. Just you again.”

“Us,” he agrees. “Again.”

“Look, Not Barry, you mind if I sit? Chasing a vibrating ghost really takes it out of you.”

“Be my guest.” He comes around to join her after she leans back in the bench. “I’d like you to listen to me anyway. Are you listening?”

“It’s not like I have much of a choice.”

He smiles, looks around. “You remember this place? Where we first kissed?”

Iris scowls. “Of course I remember. But that wasn’t you.”

Barry – or the Mindscape, whatever – looks out onto the still water again. Iris wonders what the hell he could find so interesting – _there’s nothing there_. “We thought you might find this place and our appearance less…upsetting,” he explains. He turns to her. “And yet, you seem upset.”

“Gee, I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s because you brought me here, took away my powers, and are making me catch Sonic the Hedgehog’s shadow!” She shakes her head. “I just defeated the most powerful villain on all fifty-two earths, and my friends need help on how to make sure he never gets loose again. Now, I’m sure you know that, but you’re _keeping_ me _here_!”

“Indeed, we are.”

“ _Why_?”

Barry regards her. “Because you don’t understand your gift, Iris. It is rare, precious, wonderful, what we gave to you. And you’re misusing it.”

Iris glares at him. “Mis – That is the _last_ thing that I’m doing! I use my powers every day to help people! I almost die on a daily basis trying to be a hero – and today, it actually happened! I got struck by lightning and died, all because I was trying to save the world!”

This Barry looks regretful. “That’s not what we meant, Iris. Do you know what the Mindscape is? Do you know why we gave you your powers?”

She lets out a groan of frustration. “Of course I do. You gave me my powers to make me Miss Miracle.”

He lets out a short laugh. “No, Iris. That isn’t it. That isn’t how it works.”

“Well, then, what is it?”

Barry puts his hands on either side of her face, making her look at him. His hands are slightly cold, nothing like the real Barry’s. Instead of comforting, it feels controlling. “We didn’t give you powers to make you Miss Miracle, Iris,” he tells her. “We gave them to you because you _are_ Miss Miracle.”

“ _What does that mean_?”

“Iris-”

“You’re not making any sense!” she snaps, slapping his hands away. “If I’m Miss Miracle, if I’m so powerful and important, why did you bring me here, take away my powers, and try to make me catch this thing?” She shakes her head. “Look, I’m begging you, just please let me go back home. I need to get back and help my friends. I’ll do anything you want – you can even hit me with lightning again!”

Barry raises an eyebrow. “Because that worked so well the last time?”

She glares at him and he chuckles, giving her an apologetic look. “Sorry. Little Mindscape humour. But I will show you your friends.”

Barry waves a hand, and a swirling whirlpool appears in the middle of the bay, showing the blurry visage of the Cortex. She can make out several figures, standing around and talking, as if the whirlpool is showing a completely different place. Iris stands. “That’s…”

“Your friends,” Barry tells her, coming to stand next to her. Chesca has her arms wrapped around herself, and everyone else looks tense as they speak. She can see the other Iris, her dad, Caitlin, Cisco, Jesse, and Chesca. She frowns. Where’s Barry?

“I can’t hear them, why can’t I hear them?”

“You’re not supposed to, Iris. That place is for the living. Though I can make a guess as to what they’re saying.”

“What?”

“They are dealing with your death,” he says simply. “And trying to work out how to tell Barry that you are dead.”

“Ba-” she can’t even say it; her words come out in a choked whisper. “Barry thinks I’m dead?”

“Not yet. But he will. Soon.”

She feels a shock pass through her. It’s weird, to hear him talk about it as if he isn’t taking on the appearance of her best friend, but the thought is too horrible to process. Barry has already been through a lot – he can’t have this, too. She wishes she could reach them, could call their names and have them hear her across the vast expanse of time and space. She even tries it, thinks _Barry_ as hard as she can, but nothing happens. She turns to the impostor next to her, who still looks infuriatingly calm. “Please,” she begs, her voice raw, “ _please_ , just send me back. Barry, and Nora, and my mom – I can’t do that to her, not when she’s been through this much. Why can’t you just send me back?”

“We never said we couldn’t do that,” he disagrees. “We can send you back.”

Her heart lifts. “You can?”

“We can. But it will be without your powers. And they will not be returned to you.” He gives her a small, sad smile. “You’re not ready, sunshine. Not yet.”

“And when will I be ready?”

His gaze moves on something over her shoulder, and the whirlpool disappears. “I think you know.”

Iris turns. The shadow is back again.

When she turns back to Barry, he is gone.

Iris moves again, the words running through her mind, ricocheting against the walls of her skull in a reckless pattern. Barry hadn’t made a single piece of sense during that conversation. She hadn’t become Miss Miracle until _after_ she had her powers – that was the whole point. Before that, she was just a CSI who was trying to prove her mother was innocent. And what was that nonsense about her misusing her powers? Is she supposed to be like what Colin turned Dr. Wells into? Running around murdering people and abusing her powers for fun? How else is she supposed to use her powers?

But that vision, of everyone in the Cortex worrying about her, is troubling. She figured, when this place’s Nora said that she is at once dead and not dead, that she would be unconscious. That maybe everyone just thinks she’s sleeping. But if they’re all standing around, trying to figure out how to tell Barry that she’s dead, and not to mention when Nora and her mother find out…she runs faster, new determination pushing her forward. She has already died on them once.

She will not do it again.

But the shadow is faster than her, again, and when Iris stops for just a few seconds to get her breath back, it seems to evaporate. She looks around, wishing for at least a breeze to cool her down, and frowns. A sense of foreboding creeps into her bones, and her throat goes dry. She’s in a graveyard, headstones of different shapes and sizes scattered around the place like forgotten relics. Then she spots someone else, still as the stones standing around her, with that infuriatingly relaxed pose. “Who are you pretending to be now?”

Iris is barely even surprised when she sees who it is. “Hi, baby,” her mother smiles.

“ _Don’t call me that_.”

“What should I call you?”

Iris ignores her. “I don’t have time for this,” she snaps, stalking up to her. Her mother, however, shakes her head.

“No, my girl, you do. We brought you here to tell you something, and you have all the time in the universe to listen. Are you listening?”

“Yes, I’m listening! I’m listening to all of you standing there and judging me, accusing me of misusing my gift! As if I’ve done _nothing_ since I was first struck by lightning!” The anger is almost blinding now, so vicious that she’s spitting her words out. “There is nothing – _nothing_ – that I haven’t given up to help people. My time, my relationships – even my life, as you damn sure know!”

Her mother – but this isn’t her mother, she has to remember that – gives an understanding smile. “Oh, Iris. You think that we don’t see you, doing all you can to help people – we do. We see you every day. Most days, you are the only thing standing in between your world, and unspeakable evil. You have witnessed and seen things that men and women on any earth can only dream about. And yet,” she continues, walking away and gesturing for Iris to follow, “for all of that, you’ve never been _here_.”

She steps away, and the feeling of foreboding intensifies. Her throat tightens, eyes already burning in anticipation of the tears that will fall, and her fists automatically clench. She looks away, throws an accusing glance at this woman who is not her mother, before she can register the words on the stone. “That’s not true,” she lies. “I came here before, at the funeral, I-”

“You did. But you never saw them put your father in the ground, and you never came back after the funeral.”

The memories flash past even as she kneels in front of the gravestone. She remembers no one being able to look at her during the funeral, because she remembered exactly which adults called her crazy and she refused to talk to them. Then when they were putting his body in the ground she couldn’t watch, so she ran from them, from all of it, and went to go hide behind one of the cars. Barry had to coax her out for the wake, which was held at her aunt’s house. But then she felt sick, sick of being here, sick of pretending she was alright, so she called Nora and asked her to bring her back home. But since then, she’s never been here. Her mother went when she got out, and she always marks the anniversary with a day off work, but that’s it.

Iris smooths her fingers over the stone, over the words that are carved into it. _Joseph Donovan West_ , it reads, _loving husband and father_. “Why did you bring me here?” she whispers, her voice already tight with unshed tears.

“Your father died, Iris,” she tells her, and Iris flinches. “See? It still hurts. He died, it is a thing that happened to you, and it made you who you are, but have you accepted it? Have you really accepted losing him?”

“Of course I ha-” But she can’t even finish that sentence, because it’s not true. She thinks of prom, and learning to drive, and going to college, and all the other days that she wanted to have her father behind her and her mother beside him, instead of what they were given instead.

“Maybe that’s why you never came here,” her mother says softly. “Because that would make it real.”

“I know it’s real,” she manages, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I still see it, every night, when I’m not having nightmares about Patty and her mother coming back to kill me, or Killer Frost and Deathstorm, _I see him killed in front of me_. He’s gone, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“And are you at peace with that?”

“Peace?” she scoffs through her tears. “How can anyone ever be at peace with seeing their father killed? And now, now I know that it was a mistake, that it was never supposed to happen! It was Colin the whole time, we were supposed to be happy and have a life together, and he – he _took that from us_!” She is snapping now, raw, angry cries that make her throat ache. “ _Nothing_ is the way it’s supposed to be! Dr. Wells isn’t supposed to be in prison, my dad’s not supposed to be dead, and Barry-”

“Ah,” she interrupts. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Iris, all of the people you’ve helped, all the lives you’ve saved, on your earth and on others, what was supposed to happen to them? Do you really think your father would have wanted them to die so he could live? That if he could choose, he’d rather have a world with no miracles?”

But Iris has seen the shadow again, several feet away, and it appears to be looking right at her, daring her. And she has had enough of this. “I don’t have to listen to this,” she snaps roughly. “I have to get home.”

Because that is something else she has noticed, something she is remembering from Dr. Wells. She had said, that day when Henry took Iris to that bunker, that the call of the Mindscape was addictive, that it would make her want to stay here. It was heaven for miracle workers, she said, but giving into it would mean that she’d die. She is noticing that each time she tries to chase after that shadow, her limbs are getting heavier. And for all their talk of how much they want to help her and them telling her how she can get home, she gets the distinct feeling that they do not want her to leave.

***

 _Barry_.

He hears it, hears Iris’ voice, and wakes up.

Then he lies back down because of the headache that’s pounding between his eyes. He rests back on the cot, willing the pain to subside, and letting out a sigh of relief when it does. Then he sits up, bracing his arms on the edge of the bed, taking several deep breaths. He’s never had a panic attack so bad that he felt like something was squeezing his heart, cutting up his lungs, and making his vision go blurry all at the same time. But still, he is fine now, and he has to go and make sure that everyone is safe.

That Iris is safe.

He still can’t believe that they did it, but they did. All of the people that went missing are safe on their earth, thanks to Chesca’s ability to take people through breaches at top speed. They can take Colin to Waller, release Dr. Wells, and he can finally have a life with his sister. The thought makes a smile stretch across his lips, and he makes his way to the Cortex. Everyone’s already talking, their voices subdued. Maybe they think he’s still sleeping.

“…explain the burn marks on the suit, that’s never happened before.” That’s Jesse’s voice.

“Maybe it was the chemicals?” E52 Barry replies. He frowns as he walks. What are they talking about?

“I don’t know why that would only have this effect the second time,” Caitlin disagrees. It’s Chesca who speaks next, her voice uncharacteristically despondent.

“It doesn’t really make a difference. I’m still not sure how we’re going to tell Barry.”

“Tell me what?” he asks, making it into the room, and everyone turns to look at him. Cisco and Harry avoid his eyes, while Caitlin purses her lips. E52 Barry and Iris share a look, and then look at Joe. Chesca steps forward, her eyes bright with something that he can’t quite recognise, as he starts scanning the room for Iris.

“Barry,” she says. “You’re awake.”

“Are you feeling better?” Jesse asks. Barry shrugs.

“Yeah, actually. I guess I had another panic attack, but they’ve never been that bad before. Did you give me something?”

“Yes, to make you sleep. But I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Uh-huh,” he says absently, frowning as he looks around the Cortex. “Hey, where’s Iris? I thought she’d be back by now.” Then his face clears. “Oh, is she resting? She must be tired from all the running around.”

Caitlin sniffs, and Barry frowns at her. “Caitlin? Is…everything okay? Why are you all looking at me like that?” His blood chills, and he suddenly gets the feeling that Iris isn’t resting. “Where’s Iris?”

Nobody says anything, and his feels his palms start to shake and his throat go dry. “Somebody talk to me.” The voice seems to come from somewhere else, somewhere dep and dark and desperate. He takes a step forward, fixing each of them with a stare. “I said, _somebody talk to me_.”

Chesca and Jesse look at each other, and E52 Iris steps forward. “Barry, we-”

“We have something to tell you,” Jesse interrupts. He takes a deep breath. “When – when Iris fought Colin, she knocked him into that table of chemicals, which doused them both in it.”

“So?” he snaps, fear making him rude. “You said she defeated him.”

“She did,” Chesca tells him. “He’s in the Pipeline. But then, before we brought him back, he tried to – hit her with something, a metal pole, and metal’s a conductor, and I guess she didn’t know her own strength, and with the chemicals-”

 _Didn’t_. Not ‘doesn’t’. _Didn’t_ know. “Don’t say it,” he begs quietly, shaking his head, his voice cracking. “Chesca, please, don’t – _don’t-_ ”

Her face crumples. “She’s gone, Barry, I am so sorry, I’m sorry…”

Barry’s vision darkens and he shakes his head, because he can’t believe this, it can’t be true, not after everything they’ve been through. “She can’t – she’s not dead,” he tells them, voice aching. He runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “If – if she were dead I would know, we’re best friends, I–I would _know_ -”

“We think that’s what your panic attack was,” Jesse interrupts, and God, it must be true, because now Jesse is crying too, silent tears that Barry is sure he can’t even feel. The ground rocks underneath him.

“What?”

“When it happened,” Cisco says. “When we saw it on the feed, Caitlin says that’s when you collapsed.”

He frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“Dr. Wells said that the stronger Iris’ emotional bond with a person is, the easier it is for her to hear their thoughts,” Jesse explains. “So we think that’s what happened.”

Barry stumbles, grips the chair for support, and they all rush towards him, but he waves them off. He takes several deep breaths, but it feels like he’ll never be able to fill his lungs up, never get enough air. Tears slip down his cheeks and he wipes them away quickly, angrily, because they’re not necessary. _Iris is not dead_. “Are you-” he swallows, steadies his voice, his breathing. “Are you sure she didn’t just get knocked somewhere? M-Maybe she’s lost and we need to bring her back.”

Chesca steels herself. “Barry,” she says quietly, and he knows she’s going to start crying again. “She didn’t get knocked anywhere. We saw her die. I can’t – I won’t let you watch that, because you shouldn’t have to. But she’s not coming-”

“No,” he interrupts desperately, shaking his head. “No, I heard her voice. I heard her, she called me.”

Jesse frowns. “You heard her voice? When?”

“When I woke up, I heard her voice in my head. She said – she said my name.”

Caitlin gives him an apologetic look. “Barry, you were sedated, you could have-”

“No, _no_. I know what I heard, I heard her voice, I’m telling you…” He trails off then. Not because he believes her, or because he doesn’t believe himself, but because he sees something that chokes off all the air in his body. Everyone sees what he’s looking at, and E52 Barry swears. “Barry-”

“Her suit,” he says hollowly. It is ripped in places and charred black in others. He moves towards it as if drawn by some invisible force. “What… _happened_ to her? You said you had a video, or-”

But Chesca has had enough – before he can reach it, she stands in front of him. “Barry, I told you, you’re not watching that. And you’re not looking at th-this, either.” She reaches behind her for the suit. “So we’re just going to take _this_ -”

Then Chesca sucks in a sharp breath, and her jaw goes slack as she staggers against the table. Barry catches one arm and Jesse catches the other. “What is the _matter_ with the two of you today?” Jesse wants to know. “Dr. Snow, get me another oxygen mask, just in case.”

“No,” Chesca mutters. She’s out of it now, shaking her head to clear it. “I’m fine, I just…I saw Iris.”

Barry’s heart swells. “You saw her? She’s alive?”

“N-No.” She scrunches her face up. “Not…really.”

“Chesca,” Jesse says carefully. “What does that mean?”

“When I vibe people, I usually get a sense of their…presence. I can feel them. Like, when I first started getting my powers, whenever I hugged Linda, I could see Wally in the hospital, and I could feel the vibrations coming off him.”

“I got that,” Cisco adds, and everyone looks at him. “All those times I vibed Light, or Kendra, or even Jay’s helmet, I always felt the vibrations as if they were standing right next to me.”

“Right,” Chesca agrees. “And Iris is…she’s in this weird, crazy, lightning storm place.  I tried calling her, but she couldn’t hear me.”

“What else?” Barry asks, because he knows his friend well enough to know that there is something else. She blinks, and more tears fall out.

“Barry, she’s in the Mindscape. The heaven for people like her. You know, the place that gives her and Dr. Wells their powers?”

But Barry is remembering something else. “Iris said – she said that place was addictive for people like her! What if it doesn’t let her leave? What if-”

“Francesca,” Harry interjects in that gravelly voice, and they all look at him. Truth be told, Barry had forgotten he was even in the room at all. “You said that Iris wasn’t quite alive. What did you mean?”

“I couldn’t feel her. Not strongly. It’s like she’s…fading. Really quickly. I think that the longer she stays there, the harder it’ll be for her to…” But she can’t finish.

Barry lets out a choked noise and his doppelganger shakes his head. “No. No, we’re not letting this happen. We can fix this.”

“How?” Caitlin asks. “If she’s in her version of heaven, then…”

“Yeah, but it’s like the Speedforce, right? And Chesca vibed her, so she must be _somewhere_.”

“You think you can build something to get her out?” E52 Iris asks, and he nods, pointing at Cisco and Harry. “You guys get me a list of everything that I’ll need, and I’ll get it.”

“Slow your roll, slick,” Cisco tells him. “Where do we get all that stuff last minute?”

“We’re going to borrow it from Oliver.”

“Because he’s going to be happy at that?”

“It doesn’t matter!” E52 Barry says forcefully. He turns to Barry. “We’ll find her, alright?”

He just nods, because that’s easy for him to say – his Iris isn’t locked in some realm that would rather kill her than let her leave. Barry slumps in a chair, his head in his hands, as everyone runs around talking. He hears snippets of the conversation float over his head – something about using a helmet and a conductor thing to help them see Iris and see whether they can bring her back, but he is not thinking about that. He’s thinking about all the times he thought Iris was going to die, like when they were in the accident as teenagers, and then the coma from the lightning, and then the jellyfish sting that had her hallucinating and bleeding in his arms. She came back from those, she always came back, but those times, she was here in front of him. She could hear him talking to her.

“Come back, Iris,” he whispers. “Don’t go away again. _Please_.”

He repeats it to himself, over and over, ignoring everyone else – he’s not sure he’d be much help anyway, not when he’s like this.

_Please don’t go._

Over and over and over again.

_Come back to us, sunshine._

_Please_.

***

Iris makes it to her house as the sun is setting, and the shadow disappears inside. But then, there was never any sun, it’s just that weird light was coming from everywhere. She stands outside of it for a moment, wondering. It’s smaller than she remembers, but that’s just because she grew. She walks past it sometimes, when she’s thinking about her dad or that night, but she never gets close. Some middle-aged divorcee lives there now. But this is the Mindscape, so she wonders what she’ll find inside.

“Look,” she says, closing the door, “I don’t know what you all have planned next, but I need to get home, and-”

“Hello, baby.”

Iris stops in her tracks as she recognises the man sitting at the table is her father.

“D-Dad?” she breathes out. His smile widens, lit up by the warm glow of the crackling fire. He looks exactly how he is supposed to – a book in one hand, a tumbler of something in the other, in a plaid shirt and a sweater. Exactly how he looked when she came back from school and he was mercifully off duty. Younger, as well, not like Detective West – but then she supposes her father never got to live past forty-one. But of course – “You’re not my father.”

He shakes his head, regretfully, and she lets out a sob. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“We’re not doing anything to you, Iris,” he says. He puts down the book and the glass. “You’re just so tired, and I don’t just mean today. You spend all your time explaining to people what’s going on, and telling them everything’s going to be okay, but I think it’s time someone did that for you. I think it’s time for you to listen. Are you listening?”

She nods slowly. “I’m…still listening.”

He gestures for her to sit and she does, settling gingerly in the chair across from him. She gets an odd flashback to when she broke the vase that came from her great-aunt Esther and she tried to cover it up. But he’s not bringing that up now, of course. “You can tell the truth now, Iris. When we asked you whether you’ve accepted your father’s death. Was that the truth?”

Iris looks down at her hands, which are shaking – and the tears that are spilling on it. “N-No,” she replies finally, looking back at him. “I haven’t. I know I’m supposed to, I know that’s the way I’m supposed to handle it, but I can’t help it. And – and it’s worse, because I know what we were supposed to have – you were supposed to be alive, and we were supposed to be a family…”

“Oh, Iris,” he sighs, smiling. “My brave baby girl. What happened to you is incredible. What we gave you…no one could imagine that kind of power. It truly is a miracle. But when we said that you were misusing your power, and that you didn’t understand it, we didn’t mean that you’re not a hero.”

Iris frowns, sniffling. “Well, what did you mean?”

He stands. “I want to show you something.” He waves a hand, and the same visage that appeared at the bridge shows up, but not the same vision as before. She sees herself, fighting Calamity, lightning crashing all around them. “That’s Dr. Wells. But we never fought like that – and my suit looks different.”

“That’s because this is the original future,” he explains. Iris’ eyes widen. “You and her were always destined to fight, Iris. In one way or another, you were going to be enemies. Miracle and Calamity. Hope and devastation. Total opposites, always destined to be in each other’s lives.”

He waves his hand again, and another picture appears. This is a picture of STAR Labs, this time with Terrence Chambers, Jesse, and Dr. Wells, all smiling as they cut a ribbon in front of a crowd. As they watch, cameras flash and people start asking them questions. “This is another thing that would have happened. STAR Labs would have become so successful that they would open several smaller facilities all over the country to spread their research.” He pauses, and his voice becomes stern. “This will never happen. Terrence is dead, and Dr. Wells’ reputation is too damaged for her to be allowed to open up anything of this scale again.”

Iris frowns as he shows her more images. This is her and Olivia, clad in their outfits, surrounded by people she has never seen before. She appears to be spread around a table, planning something, and Iris is explaining something. As she watches, the image flashes to some sort of fight going on over a city. She gasps when she catches a red cape, a swish of brown hair. “Superwoman – is that-”

“The Justice League,” he confirms. “You founded it, remember? You and Olivia met and decided that you could not face this earth’s dangers alone, and thus the League came together.”

“And does that still happen?”

“I can’t tell you that, Iris, because I don’t know. But have you noticed? Olivia Queen is already in your life. You were meant to meet the Green Arrow; you were meant to become friends. The opportunity is there, if you want to take it, but it also may never happen at all.”

Iris shakes her head. “I still don’t understand how I’m misusing my powers. Why are you telling me this?”

Her father gives her a smile. “Because there is nothing certain about life, Iris. Nothing in your life, or you loved ones lives, is permanent, or decided by some unknown entity. Things happen, people make choices, and those choices affect everything else, and dwelling on that is a grave misuse of the powers that we gave you. Your father was no more supposed to live than anyone else. Yes,” he adds, seeing that Iris is about to interrupt, “he would have, had Colin not abused his own powers and taken control of Dr. Wells. If the universe wants something to happen, it will find a way to make it happen. But if it doesn’t, you have to be alright with that, too. There is no ‘what’s supposed to happen’. There’s only what’s right in front of you.” He gives her a meaningful look, and knows that he’s talking about the biggest _what if_ she’s had – her and Barry.

Iris can’t reply at first. Because the truth is, with everything that she has already – Chesca, Wally, Linda and Chesca, Nora and her mom, her powers – and even the fact that she and Barry may never be together – she’s okay. She has spent every day since the singularity thinking of what’s _supposed_ to happen and what is _supposed_ to be, using Gideon to explore all those opportunities, but maybe the truth is her life is turning out the way it should. And she wouldn’t want to change anything at all. “I know,” she says quietly. “I just miss him. I – I miss you, _so much_. And all the stuff I c-can do, all the…miracles, and I still can’t bring you back.”

He strokes her hair. “What if I told you he was proud of you?”

Iris sniffles. “Is he telling me that, or are you?”

“He is,” he admits. “But we are proud of you too. You were always supposed to be Miss Miracle, Iris. The Mindscape is just the thing that gives you your powers – you’re the one that’s the hero.”

Iris ducks her head, overwhelmed, and he gets up and starts pottering around. After a while she hears something familiar, and her heart lifts.

_I’ve got sunshine, on a cloudy day_

_When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May_

Her dad is singing along with the record player, smiling at her as she does so. She can’t quite believe it, how familiar it still is after all these years. She can’t quite get the next few lines, because her voice is still wobbly from the crying, but she joins in eventually.

_My girl, my girl, my girl_

_Talkin’ bout my girl, my girl_

_I don’t need no money, fortune or fame_

_I’ve got all the riches, baby, one man can claim_

He holds a hand out to her and she takes it, and then she is laughing as they dance around the room, exactly as they had when she was small. She closes her and takes it in, revels in it, because she will never get the chance to dance with her father like this again. They keep singing as well, him with his rich baritone and her with a high soprano that’s still a little emotional, and carry it all the way through the song.

_My girl,_

_As long as I can talk about my girl…_

The song fades out, the notes hanging in the ear, and he wipes the tears off her face. “Yes,” he nods, letting her go. “You’re ready.”

It happens right then.

It’s like all her senses come back at once, but she realises it’s just her powers. Her mind can range out, far and away out of this house, and she feels connected to every object in this room, can feel the invisible forces that will enable her to reach out and pick it up. So she knows exactly when the shadow blasts into the living room through the door, and her mind catches it in place. She closes her eyes and grabs it with one hand, its movement sending little vibrations through her body. When she opens her eyes, she is back in the familiar leather of her outfit. Her father is looking proudly at her, seeing his daughter as Miss Miracle for the first and last time. He smiles. “Time to go home, Miss Miracle.”

Iris is about to tell him wait, you still haven’t told me how to get home, but then that storm vortex thing appears in the dining room behind him, lightning crackling around the swirling blue. It lights up the room and send a swift breeze through everything. Something is pulling her through it and she can’t explain what, but then she hears:

_Don’t go, Iris._

_Come back to us. Please._

And she thinks _of course I know how to get back home._

With one last look at the Mindscape behind her, Iris lifts herself off the ground and launches herself straight into the storm. It swirls around her, crackling and booming and making her bones shake. In any other situation, she’d be terrified, because this kind of lightning should be able to tear any normal person apart. But she is not normal, she is Miss Miracle, and she has a family to get back to. So she closes her eyes and braces against it, willing herself to go faster, push herself a little more, just hold on a little longer…

“Whoa!” Iris gasps as she finally lands on solid ground, swaying a little. It takes her about half a second to get her bearings, and she looks around. Barry is pacing next to Jesse and Chesca, who is wearing a helmet on her head. She’s the first to notice, her mouth dropping open in shock. “IRIS!”

She is about to reply, but Barry has cleared the room in three strides and snatches her up into a fierce hug, his chest rising and falling with his rapid breaths. She wraps her arms around him, needing to feel that he’s real, not just some figment of the Mindscape designed to keep her there, and breath in his familiar _Barry_ smell. “H-Hi.”

“Don’t you dare, don’t ‘hi’ me,” he mutters, still not letting her go. “Iris, do you realise that’s now sixty-eight times you’ve died on me? You don’t – God, _you don’t get anymore_ , do you hear me?”

She nods silently and he lets out a breath. “Everyone-” he cuts himself off, steadying his voice. “I thought you were gone,” he says quietly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into his shoulder. “I got…lost. But I’m back now.”

Barry nods and sets her down, and identical grins break out on their faces. This lasts about a second before Chesca launches herself at her. “I’m so glad you’re back!” she says, her breath coming out in shocked gasps. She pulls back and looks at her, even as Jesse pushes Chesca out of the way to hug her as well. “Wow, I should disappear more often,” she laughs, letting him go. Iris is sure Jesse has never smiled that widely the entire time she’s known him.

“What the hell happened to you?” Chesca demands, hugging her again.

“We thought you were dead, Iris,” Jesse adds. “We _watched_ you die.” Iris adjusts her glasses.

“I wasn’t dead. Well,” she amends, “I was. Kind of.”

“’Kind of’?” Barry repeats.

“More…dead-adjacent.”

“Iris,” everyone says, and she blinks.

“But not dead! See? Totally, totally fine. I think. And where’s-”

She’s interrupted when Cisco, E52 Iris, Harry and Caitlin spill out into the Cortex, all letting out sounds of disbelief when they see her standing there. “Hi!” she says brightly at all their shocked faces. “I’m back.”

“I’m not the only one who can see her standing there, right?” Cisco asks, pointing at her. “You guys can see her too?”

“You’re not another doppelganger, are you?” E52 Iris asks.

“No, it’s me. But wouldn’t that be something?” Harry snorts.

“I can’t wait to hear how you got out of this, West.”

“I don’t even know why I’m surprised anymore,” Caitlin mutters, but she’s smiling as she sits down at the terminals. “I’d better tell Barry and Joe that you’re okay.”

Meanwhile, Iris’ doppelganger comes up to her and gives her a tight hug that surprises her. “I’m really glad you’re okay,” she tells her quietly, and Iris pats her back.

“Me too,” she laughs. “Oh! I hear you had to watch me die, I’m sorry about that. Must have been rough.”

Her doppelganger laughs. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Iris!” E52 Barry and Joe make their way into the Cortex and he speeds over to her, hugging her automatically. “You’re back! Wow, that was fast.”

“What was fast?”

“Ramon – both Ramons,” Harry adds, “and I were building something to see whether we could get you out of the Mindscape.”

“Oh! Is that why Chesca is wearing this helmet thingy?”

“It’s not a helmet thingy,” Harry snaps, and Caitlin clears her throat.

“Well, the most important thing is that Iris is back, and she looks completely fine. Maybe we can give all the tech we took from Oliver back to him.”

Cisco looks offended. “How many times do I have to tell you that we never waste good tech? Besides, I’m still mad at him for shooting down my suggestion about his sleeves.”

“Yeah,” Chesca adds, taking off the helmet to show it to them. “I can’t wait to take this back home and show it to Linda. Think of all the stuff we could do with it!”

“Excuse me, Twizzlers. My earth, my tech.”

“Who designed the semiconductors?”

“Whose idea was it to add fibre-optic cables?”

“Okay,” Iris interrupts. “Maybe we can talk about that later? The room is starting to spin a little.”

Barry immediately puts a hand on her back, steadying her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. But they don’t feed you in the Mindscape.”

“I’d better get us all some Big Belly Burger,” Joe says. “Everyone give me your orders. And for goodness’ sake, give Oliver back his stuff. I don’t need that crazy man getting pissed at all of you. Much as I’d love an excuse to put a hot one in him.”

“Dad!” E52 Iris admonishes.

“Kidding.”

“Besides, it’s not like you guys will need it,” Jesse points out.  “Unless Barry over here is planning on running into…what did you call it? The Speedforce?”

“No,” E52 Iris answers firmly, before the other Barry can open his mouth, “he isn’t.”

“Although I am curious, Iris,” Caitlin tells her. “How did you make it back? What we saw was…I mean, I’m glad you’re okay, obviously, but _how_ are you okay?”

Iris blinks again as everyone turns to look at her. “Well, it – um, Barry.”

“Me?” they both repeat. Iris laughs.

“No, um, my Barry. It’s complicated,” she laughs, “and I’ll explain later, but I – kind of – had to do some thinking, and some listening, before I was allowed to come back. But you called me, and I heard you. I heard your voice.” Joe’s eyes widen.

“Wow, you really weren’t kidding, were you son?”

“I told you!” Barry exclaims. “I _told_ you I wasn’t hearing things.”

“You really…heard each other,” E52 Iris says. “That’s amazing.”

“Unbelievable,” Cisco mutters. “We spend all this time defying physics, and all it takes is for these two to have a mental conversation.”

Iris grins up at Barry, nudging his shoulder. “Some best friends like to go bowling. We’re a little cooler than that.”

“Yeah,” Barry grins back. “We are.”

***

“Jesse-”

“Shush. Are you getting this, Snow?”

“Her vitals are coming through loud and clear.”

“Jesse, I want breakfast-”

“Shh!”

Iris rolls her eyes as Jesse continues taking her blood pressure, Caitlin dutifully recording everything on her computer. Barry and Chesca share identical looks over their own breakfast, which Iris isn’t allowed to have until Jesse has determined that she’s fine after her sleep.

After Iris almost fainted after coming back from the Mindscape – and was so tired that Barry had to just carry her into a medbay – they carried out all manner of tests on her, scared that something would be wrong with her after her visit to the Mindscape. Everything seemed fine and she was finally allowed to eat – more than she’d ever eaten since becoming Miss Miracle. Then, after one more round of tests, she was allowed to sleep, which she did for almost twelve hours. Jesse, unfortunately for Iris, insisted on doing another test as soon she woke up, worried that something might have changed while she slept.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she insists, eyeing the pancakes that Joe picked up for everyone this morning. “Seriously, can I just eat?”

“I am your doctor,” he replies, not pausing as he fixes the blood pressure cuff to her arm, “and I watched you die. If you think that’s going to make me less cautious, you must have left your mind in the Mindscape.” He pauses. “Just a couple more, Iris. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Fine. But someone tell Barry that he’s going to need to get more pancakes.” She lies back on the bed. “What do you think it’s like to be able to do everything that fast? He’s awesome.”

Barry nods into his breakfast. “Yeah. Awesome.”

“Did you know he can phase through walls? And he once outran a nuclear explosion? And-”

“Iris, would you stop talking for a second?” Jesse frowns. “I need your resting blood pressure, and it doesn’t help when you’re fangirling over The Flash.”

“Sorry,” Iris giggles, and Caitlin smiles.

“Everyone’s like that when they first meet Barry, believe me. You’ll get used to it eventually. Besides, he seems much more fascinated with what you can do.”

“Really? With the running back in time and between earths and stuff?”

Chesca, who has noticed that Barry is concentrating very hard on his pancakes, clears her throat. “Yeah, but we can talk about that later. I want to know about the Mindscape.”

“Yeah, you were very mysterious about that,” Jesse adds, and Iris snorts.

“I wasn’t _mysterious_ , I was exhausted. You try being struck by your own lightning and then dying.”

Barry laughs along with the rest of them, but he’s still curious. He’d been so concerned with making sure she was okay – along with everyone else – that they hadn’t gotten a chance to talk. About _anything_. She frowns slightly as Jesse takes off the cuff. “It was...weird. I thought it was heaven, at first, but they kept telling me that I wasn’t quite dead.”

“They?” Chesca asks.

“The Mindscape. And no, it doesn’t make more sense the more you ask. They had to explain some things to me, about my powers and why I got them, and then they let me go back. And they gave me some really good advice about…well, everything.”

“That sounds a lot less scary than what we were all thinking,” Barry admits. He still can’t shake the feeling he got when everyone told him that she was dead. He keeps having to look at her to reassure himself that she’s still alive. But Iris is still frowning.

“Well, it wasn’t _not_ scary. Even though they kept telling me how to get back home, they were being really vague. And I don’t know, it kind of seemed like they were…enjoying it? Like they’d enjoy not letting me leave.” She pauses. “I don’t think I’d like to go back there.”

“I second that,” Chesca says. “And you’re sure there’s nothing different?”

Iris jumps down from the bed and goes for the leftover pancakes. “No. Although I don’t know why I keep repeating myself, I know you all don’t believe me. Barry thinks I’m going to disappear, Jesse is planning another test, Chesca wants to take the helmet home, and Caitlin is thinking about when Barry got his back broken by Zoom.”

Everyone stares at her. “Iris,” Barry says carefully. “Did you just read Caitlin’s mind?”

She frowns. “Yeah, so – Oh. _Oh_!”

“I guess the Mindscape left something positive behind after all,” Jesse grins. “Okay, you’re all done. Now, Barry, are you _sure_ you don’t want me to check on you too?”

“I told you, I’m fine,” he laughs. “But thanks, Jesse.”

“Are you sure? Because after what happened yesterday…”

“Wait,” Iris interjects. “What happened to you?”

Barry hesitates. “Well, when you…left, I kind of – felt it. It felt like I was having a panic attack, but much worse.”

“We think it’s because of how close you guys are,” Chesca adds. To his surprise, Iris doesn’t look shocked by this.

“Right, yeah, Dr. Wells said-”

But she’s interrupted by the rest of Team Flash showing up in the Cortex, Joe carrying a bag of food. “Good to see you awake, Miss Miracle,” Cisco grins. “What’s the plan for today?”

“Food,” Iris answers, snapping her fingers. The bag jumps out of Joe’s hands and floats towards her, and she immediately starts eating it. Joe just stares at her, and Chesca laughs.

“I always love it when people look at her like that.”

“I didn’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, here,” Cisco continues, “but I meant how are we dealing with the crazed supervillain we have in the basement?”

Iris swallows her bite of pancake, and her doppelganger looks around at all of them. “You know, I totally forgot about him.”

“I didn’t,” E52 Barry shudders. “I had to go down there and feed him. That stare he has is really unnerving.”

Iris doesn’t say anything for a moment. Truth be told, she still can’t believe that they did it, but that doesn’t mean she’s any less terrified of going to talk to him. “I’ll talk to him,” she decides. “I need to make sure his powers are gone anyway. Who wants to come with me?”

“I don’t think I’ll be any use,” Barry admits and Jesse nods.

“Me neither. Besides, he’s your villain.”

“I’ll take care of him later,” Iris decides. “Chesca?”

“Yeah, I have a few things to say to him,” she admits, unusually steely-eyed. “But that can wait. What are your plans for today, Team Flash?”

“We need to get Barry fast enough to defeat Zoom,” Harry says immediately. “This little excursion was fun, but we have work to do.”

“He’s right – maybe we can use that tachyon device again,” Caitlin says. “Although it would be nice if we had someone to test you against.”

“If only we had a Supergirl,” Barry admits, and E52 Iris clears her throat.

“You guys. We don’t have a Supergirl, but we do have the next best thing.”

Everyone turns to look at Iris, who’s finishing off the last of the pancakes. She swallows. “Me?”

“Your top speed is incredible,” Jesse reminds her. “Especially when the only thing you’re doing is flying.” Cisco whoops.

“The Flash versus Miss Miracle, awesome! I guess we’ll see who has the better suit now, huh, Twizzlers.”

“I don’t have to be at work until later,” E52 Iris admits. “I’d love to watch a race.”

“This’ll be good,” Joe mutters, and Iris grins.

“You’re on, Flash.”

They drive to Ferris Airfield and dump their stuff in the STAR Labs hangar, before setting up right outside of it. “Crap,” Iris mutters. “I need to check whether I paid the rent on this place when we get back home.”

Caitlin stares at her. “Oh, you own this place?”

“Chesca and I,” she admits. “Our Dr. Wells left it all to us. Chesca owns all her patents, Dr. Wells’ patents and research, I own the buildings and my patents.”

“Barry owns this place too. Iris keeps telling him to do something with it, but we’re not sure what yet.”

Meanwhile, Chesca and Cisco are setting up all the equipment to monitor Barry’s speed. He affixes the tachyon device to Barry’s chest as everyone watches. “Okay, so the rules are pretty simple,” Chesca says. “Barry and Iris are going to run and fly as fast as they can to the end of this airfield, and we’ll see who wins.”

“It’s not a _race_ , really,” Caitlin points out as she and Jesse check Iris and E52 Barry’s vitals. “We’re just trying to push Barry to-”

“Caitlin,” E52 Iris interrupts, laughing, “I think we should let them have this.”

“Besides, it looks like fun,” Joe says. “And God knows we need that around here.”

“The sooner we know what we’re working with, the sooner we can find Zoom,” Harry adds. “And since the…miracle children have an extensive knowledge on the breaches, they can help us with that as well.”

“Miracle children?” Iris repeats, and Barry shrugs.

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s going to change about that. Are you ready?”

“Sure. It’s only flying, I’ve gotten pretty good at that in the past year.” She takes off her glasses and slips off her mask, before tying her hair up so it doesn’t get in the way. Barry pockets them.

“Yeah, you have. So, good luck and…kick his ass, sunshine.”

Iris grins and walks up to his doppelganger as they approach the starting place. “Ready to eat my dust, Golden Grace?”

“You’ll be eating those words when I beat you on your home turf, Scarlett Speedster.”

He shakes his head and kneels, while Iris gets in the ready position, feeling lightning snap and crackle through her. “Ready?” Chesca calls.

“Ready!”

“ _Go_!”

They shoot off in twin streaks, her through the air trailing green, and E52 Barry on the ground flashing past in yellow. She barely makes out a red blur before he’s speeding away in front of her. At the equipment desk, Cisco whoops. “Told you our boy was fast,” Joe says proudly. But Chesca just grins.

“Wait for it…”

“Wait for what?” E52 Iris asks. “I mean, they don’t call him the fastest man alive for – _oh my God_!”

“H-How is she doing that?” Caitlin splutters. Barry smiles when they see Iris suddenly shoot ahead to catch up with their Barry, showering them all in green sparks.

“There is no way in hell she can be as fast as Barry,” Cisco says in disbelief, even as he watches their progress on the screen. E52 Barry is still in front, but the gap between them isn’t that big anymore.

“She isn’t,” Jesse says. “But think about it – Barry propels himself forward through running, which means that his legs are pumping to push him faster. Iris’ powers don’t work in the same way. They’re mental rather than physical, so they’re usually directly proportional to how she’s feeling and how tired her brain is.”

“What does that mean?” Joe asks, and Barry smiles proudly, watching Iris fly.

“Your Barry needs his feet to propel him forward. All Iris needs is her mind.”

“Believe me, once you get that girl on the ground again, she’ll be slower than a snail,” Chesca tells them. “But Iris doesn’t need to use her feet to fly.”

Nevertheless, it’s a victory for The Flash, though everyone is certainly impressed that Iris was able to keep up at all. E52 Barry flashes back to them, removing his hood and grinning. “How fast was I?”

“Well, you got up to Mach 5 without breaking a sweat,” Cisco says. “So yeah, I’m thinking Zoom isn’t that much of a pipe dream anymore.”

“Where’s Iris?” Caitlin asks, looking around. As if she hears, Iris appears in front of them, stumbling a little.

“Whoa!” she gasps. “Sorry, took me a minute to get my bearings. Dude,” she says, turning to the other Barry. “You are _fast_. We’re totally doing that again! You still need to train to beat Zoom, and it’s not like I have my job on my earth.”

“And it’d be a great time to see how much your powers have changed,” Jesse says. Barry looks around.

“Actually, I was kind of hoping that I could have a look at your files,” he admits. “Since you guys are so far into our future, I wanted to see whether there were any people we haven’t looked at yet.”

Chesca frowns. “Wouldn’t that technically count as cheating?” Iris snorts and puts a hand up.

“As the person who has been beaten up by a giant shark twice, attacked by a jellyfish, and had to fight mist, I hereby let the cheating stand. That’s a great idea, Barry.”

“We have computers and equipment in the hangar,” Caitlin tells him. “I’ll get you set up and you should be good to go.”

“Well, I’ve got to go into work,” E52 Iris says ruefully. “A lot of people still want quotes from the city’s Flash expert given the mess he made yesterday.”

“Hey, it wasn’t just me!”

“But I was dead,” Iris points out helpfully. “Besides, I hear everything on your earth is your fault anyway.”

“Unbelievable.”

***

They make it back to STAR Labs in the evening, exhausted from all the running around. Iris immediately takes a nap, since before E52 Barry did the same he promised that they’d go on patrol after dinner. But finally, after rest and dinner, Iris can’t ignore it anymore. Having him down there means she cannot be at peace quite yet. She looks at Chesca and her friend nods, knowing what she’s about to do before she even talks about it. “What are you going to say to him?” Iris asks as they leave the others in the Cortex. She feels it getting colder as they get to Colin’s part of the prison, but strangely, it isn’t affecting her as much. Maybe that’s another effect of the Mindscape.

“Just something that’s been on my mind,” she says quietly. The reach the prison and press the button, and Iris knows that he can’t do anything, not with the power-dampening cuffs that Cisco put on him after E52 Barry knocked him out, and not with him in this prison, but the chill passes over her anyway. His stare is devoid of emotion as he stands, but then he realises who it is and a smile spreads across his face. “Hey, you two. Long time no see. Glad you see you aren’t dead, Iris. I wanted to be the one to kill you.”

None of them say a word. And then, before Iris can do anything, Chesca slams her fist down on the button to open the door. Colin looks surprised – neither of them have any food, which is usually why people come to visit him. But then that surprise turns to shock as Chesca clocks him with a right hook that sends him sprawling to the floor. Iris looks between the two of them, wide-eyed, and Chesca clears her throat. “In case you couldn’t figure out how I felt.” She looks at Iris. “He’s all yours,” she sniffs, and walks out.

“Good to know,” Colin mutters. Iris resists the urge to run, even though every nerve in her body is screaming _Danger!_ She wonders what she should say to him, what she can get out that will convey the anger and loss and devastation that she blames him for, but then she realises that it’s impossible. Because Colin’s actions over the past year – hell, her whole life – have made it clear that he doesn’t care. Nothing and no one, with the possible exception of Ronnie, matters to him. And she knows, just by looking at him, that he’s never going to believe he did anything wrong.

“You’re coming home with us,” she says simply. “We’ll knock you out for the journey back, and then we’ll hand you over to Waller. You’re never going to be free again, and I can’t guarantee that they’ll be nice to you, but I can at least ask that they don’t do any experiments on you.”

“You have my eternal thanks, Miss Miracle.”

And that is about as much time she ever wants to spend with this man. She turns on her heel to leave, but his voice stops her. “Iris,” he says, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “I know you want me to explain myself. I know you want me to be sorry, or regretful. But I can’t. I wanted to win, I wanted your powers, I wanted to control the future. So you had to die. Look at it this way,” he adds, and she can hear the smile in his voice, the one that will be devoid of warmth, “I was a great starter villain, wasn’t I?”

Iris does not look at him as she leaves.

She finds the others gathered in the Cortex finishing a movie. Cisco gets up and stretches. “And that’s what we mean when we talk about the Wrath of Khan.”

“Yeah, I think you’re going to have to stick with Barry for this, Cisco,” Caitlin laughs.

“Well, I can’t do that if he’s at home power napping, can I? And – hey, Miss Miracle, you’re back!”

Barry swallows. She looks hesitant, and a little preoccupied about something. “Did you talk to him?”

“I…did. Wasn’t a long conversation, but then I wasn’t expecting much. Actually, I’m sorry, could I talk to Barry for a second? I don’t want to interrupt your movie, if-”

“No, that’s alright,” Jesse says. “We’re all going downstairs to look at the breach anyway, see whether we can offer some help.”

“Great,” Iris nods. “I’ll see you guys later.” Once they’ve left, Iris pulls up a chair and sits down in front of him.

“What’s up, sunshine?”

“Nothing. Um. How are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m good. Worried about you.”

“Me?”

He laughs. “You’re doing that thing you do when you worry. With that little furrow between your eyebrows.”

“Oh,” she laughs, adjusting her glasses. “Right. I just – I have to tell you something, and I don’t want it to make you uncomfortable, or freak you out.”

Barry’s heart speeds up. Is she going to tell him about the kiss? “Oh. Well, uh, fire away. Whatever you need to tell me, I’m listening.”

“Sure. Um, it’s about something that happened last year, and I would have brought it up sooner, a lot sooner, but it was a really stressful day, and we all almost died several times, and it’s kind of… weird.”

 _She’s going to tell him about the kiss_. That she remembers it, or she wants to talk, or-

“Do you remember the night of the singularity?”

Barry blinks, thrown. “I – yeah. When Colin turned into Killer Frost and Patty…I remember.”

Iris nods. “And when I was fighting, and I could suddenly hear you when you were across town.”

Barry nods again and she keeps going. “And could you feel a weird tugging sensation under your ribs whenever you were worried about something? Like…here?” She points to the relevant spot on her chest. “Yeah, I think so. What does that mean?”

“It explains why you had that panic attack when I died.” She pauses and hesitates, knotting her hands together. “You’re my…lightning rod.”

“I’m your what?”

“Lightning rod,” she repeats. “Dr. Wells explained it to me. People like me and her have to have people that we’re emotionally connected with on earth, or we’ll get sucked into the Mindscape forever.” She hesitates again. “And I guess, because we’ve been best friends for so long, and we’re so close, it kind of…picked you.”

“Oh.” He sits back in his chair. That wasn’t what he was expecting at all. Iris keeps going.

“And that’s why, when I heard your voice, I could come back home. And why I can tell when you’re worrying about something, and I can sometimes feel your emotions, and read your mind when you’re far away.”

“Because I’m your lightning rod.”

“Right.”

“And that’s why I had a mini heart-attack when you disappeared.”

“Yeah, but Barry, that won’t happen again, and I am so sorry-”

“It’s okay, Iris,” he interrupts. “It’s not like you’re the one who made the decision. So, uh, what do you think about all this? This…lightning rod business.”

She shrugs. “Just another weird thing in my life, I guess. And having a best friend who makes really great brownies is a great person to come home to, so it’s not like they picked the wrong person. Though I promise not to die again on you,” she adds, laughing.

“R-Right. And there’s – there’s nothing else you want to tell me?”

Iris tips her head to one side, thinking. “No, I don’t think so. I-”

“Iris!” E52 Barry flashes into the room. “Ready to go on patrol, Miss Miracle?”

“I think so,” she says, glancing back at Barry. She squeezes his hand. “We’re good, right? You’re not freaked out?”

He shakes his head, trying for a smile. “No. No, I’m not freaked out. Of course we’re good. Hey, you’re both going to be running up and down the city, right?”

“Well, she’ll be flying,” his doppelganger answers. “But yeah. Why?”

“I kind of just wanted a walk. I don’t thinking having two of us walk around the city will be good for keeping this stuff a secret.”

“Well, you’re free.” He nudges Iris, grinning. “I’m going to show this one how we do it on my earth.”

“Oh, whatever, Streak Boy.”

They wish him goodbye and leave, and Barry grabs his jacket before heading out into the cool night air. He doesn’t have any idea where he’s walking at first, just that he needs to thinking. He’s Iris’ lightning rod. He’s actually surprised by how not weird it is to him, that he’s the person Iris is closest to, so she has to think of him to come back home. It makes sense, if he thinks about the logic from all the comic books that Iris made him read. It’s just…she was so casual about it. And she kept repeating the fact that they’re best friends, and she didn’t even _mention_ the kiss. Maybe she really does want to forget about it. Ironic, given that he only remembered it three days ago. He sighs, and keeps walking.

Barry’s at Jitters before he knows what he’s doing, and is gratified that his key works here as well. He walks up to the roof from the back, but then stops when he sees a familiar figure already there, looking out at the city. “Iris?”

“Huh?”

“Oh,” he realises. “Other Iris.”

“And you’re not my Barry,” she smiles. “What are you doing here?”

“I kind of needed a place to think, and I was hoping maybe the key Tyler gave me still worked.”

E52 Iris holds up her own key. “I guess I know who Tracy’s doppelganger is.”

“Guess so. Look, I can go, if-”

“No, you can stay. I came up here to do some thinking myself.”

He comes to stand next to her, watching the city spread out beneath them like a map dotted with stars. “It looks like home,” he says ruefully.

“Do you miss it?”

“Yeah. No offence, we can’t appreciate you guys enough, but I’ll feel really glad when we’re back on our home turf again.”

“I guess I can understand that.”

As they watch, twin streaks burst over a building, green and yellow, before disappearing again. “Well, I’m glad to see they’re having fun,” Barry says dryly.

“He’s been talking about her all day,” she admits. “I think he likes having a superhero friend that’s not going to shoot him with arrows or isn’t an alien from another earth.”

“Yeah, Iris loves him. But you’re right, she doesn’t have a lot of metahuman friends that don’t want to murder her.”

E52 Iris nods, before giving him a sidelong look. “Well, I’m about to tell you something that could make you hate me, or reveal that we have a lot in common…but I think I am jealous of my doppelganger.”

“God, me too,” he replies immediately, and she looks at him.

“Really? I thought it was just me!”

“Your Barry is dorky and scienc-y and a superhero. That’s already three things that I’m not and Iris is, and the fact that one of them is that he literally walks on water doesn’t help.” He sighs. “Believe me, I get it. It’s like she’s found a better version of me. One that understands her.”

“It’s really weird,” she says slowly, “that _we’re_ the ones who have the most in common.”

He shrugs. “That’s doppelgangers for you.”

She nods again, and doesn’t say anything for a while. And then, “ _When we were kids I loved you before I even knew what the word ‘love’ meant_.”

Barry just stares at her, and then realises that yes, they do have this thing in common. “You’re kidding me. Christmas?”

“Yep. Walked in while I was decorating the tree and just dropped it on me. You?”

“ _I remember when we met and you said that you liked my glasses. And I was in love with you right from that moment, even though I couldn’t tell you what love was, and I probably couldn’t even spell the word._ ”

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters. “We’re supposed to be good with the words, and they come out with _that_?”

“Right? I thought – well, I don’t even know what I thought she was going to say, but it definitely wasn’t that.”

“How do they _do_ that?” E52 Iris wants to know. “They just walk around with all of that locked up inside them for years, no, _decades_ , and then, they just…” She trails off, speechless.

“She looked so heartbroken,” he remembers. “And I wanted to hug her, or something, but it was the one thing I couldn’t help. And I was so…so…”

“What?”

“Look, I was mad at her.” He shakes his head. “I really, _really_ didn’t want to be, but I was. Because – because she ruined it, and it wasn’t her fault, I know, but we were never going to go back to being us after that. And she looked at me like she was losing me, but _I lost her too_.”

“I was mad for weeks,” she tells him. “I wanted to yell at him and scream at him and ask me why he didn’t _tell me sooner._ And everything, _everything_ , started to make sense. Why he didn’t really want to hang out with Eddie – who totally figured it out straight away, by the way.”

“Tell me about it,” he mutters. “Patty kept asking me, but I told her there was nothing there.”

“And then he got distant, because of this, and the Man in Yellow.”

“Calamity,” he admits. “It attacked her, and we didn’t talk for weeks, and I thought it was me. When I found out it was because of Calamity too, I was okay, but I also kept wondering if I even knew her at all.”

“Right? Every look, every hug, every time he’s dropped his life to come and help me, and I never figured it out. And then it was too late to do anything about it. He just went right back to normal, and I barely had any time to process it.”

Barry remembers that too, of rethinking their entire lives with the knowledge that Iris was in love with him. “And then before I knew it, she was dating someone else.”

“I dated – oh, right. Scott.”

He clenches his jaw. “Scott.”

“And did you – you said you guys were friends, but-”

“I couldn’t stand him,” he admits. This, he’s never been able to tell another person, but he kind of thinks that this Iris will get it. “It’s awful, I’m a terrible person, I know. But it wasn’t even him, because he’s great. It was that ever since Christmas, I couldn’t stop…thinking about her. I’d spent my whole life with Iris in this box of ‘she’s my best friend’. Even with all the times I kind of thought ‘maybe’, like at Prom or when she came back from college. But I kept her in that box. But when she told me she loved me-”

“She came out of the box,” E52 Iris interrupts. She sighs, leaning against the railing. “And everything changed.”

“Right. And I would see her and Scott together, and I knew I was supposed to be glad, because she was moving on and everything would be fine between us. But every time I saw them hold hands or him kiss her I just got this… _overwhelming_ sense of…of…”

“’Mine’?” Iris tries.

“Yeah. But she wasn’t mine, and she’s not mine, and I do not know what to do.” He looks at her. “You said it was too late to do anything about it. Did you want to?”

“I didn’t know what I wanted. I walked around confused for weeks – every time I saw him it was like I was looking at a different person.” She runs a hand through her hair. “And I didn’t recognise myself around him, either. I got really nervous around him, and I started noticing all these things about him. Stupid stuff, like his hair and his shoulders and…” she shakes her head, embarrassed. “Both of you have this, but your eyelashes are really, _really_ long. And I kept wanting to touch them. So all that stuff kept building up and up-”

“And then you told him you loved him and you kissed,” he finishes. She frowns at him.

“What? We’ve never kissed.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I would remember kissing Barry.”

Barry isn’t so sure about that. “Really think. I guess your dad was maybe in danger from a crazy metahuman, and Barry took you somewhere to rescue him…”

She frowns. “When was this?”

“March.”

“I don’t – oh. Oh God. _That’s_ what he was talking about!”

“What do you mean?”

“Barry time-travelled,” she explains. “He was trying to save the city from a tsunami, and he went back a day. Only none of us realised, and we had coffee, and he was acting really weird…because we kissed. And…I told him I loved him?”

“Not in as many words, if it happened like me,” he admits. “But the implication was still there.”

They break off as they see more sparks – each of their doppelgangers, saving the day again. “Do you think they’re over us?” she asks quietly. He laughs.

“You’re asking the wrong Barry. After everything that happened, I thought she didn’t see me that way anymore. She’s kind of seeing someone now, and I think he wants to get serious. And every time something happens, I keep thinking that she just fell out of love with me.”

“Like what?” she asks.

“Well, you never technically had your kiss. Mine was wiped from my memory, but Iris has never brought it up. And then we go to Earth-2 and our doppelgangers are married.”

“Yeah, that was a picnic,” she mutters. “Finding that out.”

“You never went?”

“No, did you?”

“Yeah. And I’m guessing you didn’t kiss your doppelganger’s husband?”

E52 Iris throws her hands in the air. “So every Barry makes out with an Iris? Are you kidding me? Did your Iris at the very least get to kiss your doppelganger?”

Barry frowns. He certainly doesn’t want handsy, confident Detective Allen kissing _his_ Iris. He hadn’t wanted to kiss his wife; that was an accident. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But they’re married. Like, _married_. About to have a baby, married.”

“Wow,” she breathes.

“Exactly. I had to kiss her doppelganger to remember it, and she said it didn’t mean anything. She just took it as another weird thing that happens when you go between earths.” He lets out a breath. “And then the Mindscape picks me to be her lightning rod-”

“Okay, lost again.”

Barry explains the concept of lightning rod to her, and she stares at him. “Barry. Do you mean Iris told you that you are the reason she can literally come back from a metaphysical entity, and you think she _isn’t_ in love with you?”

“I’d think that, but she kept going on about how we’re best friends,” he points out. “And she’s dating someone else. But with me remembering the kiss, and us being married on another earth, and in the future we were supposed to be married-”

“Oh, that got screwed up too?”

“Join the club. But I keep thinking, if everything had happened the way it was supposed to, that I…” he looks at the ground, “I’m supposed to be her Prince Charming.”

“Her what?”

Barry laughs. “Sorry. It’s this thing…Iris loves Beauty and the Beast, and I always used to tell her she would marry a prince, because she deserved one. Prince Charming.”

“Barry, that’s probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard…but Prince Charming is Snow White.”

“That’s exactly what she said, and I’m not changing it. And I, kind of, always thought no one was good enough for her. But maybe it’s because I always subconsciously thought it was me that was good enough for her.”

E52 Iris nods. “I get that. Girls never saw how big his heart was, or how strong he was. And even then, if they did, they never knew how to make him smile properly, or how to handle him when he was down about his mom, or understood his need to find the impossible. I was dreading him finding someone he liked more than me.”

“Me too.” He shrugs helplessly. “In the past three days, I’ve remembered a kiss, seen our married doppelgangers, and brought her back from the dead. Every single sign is telling me that we’re supposed to be together – apart from Iris. And Patty doesn’t help at all.”

“How do you mean?”

He regards her. “Do you know about her?”

E52 Iris nods slowly. “Iris told me what she…did to you.”

“She had all these files on me. On all of us. She talked to people I knew, she followed me on the internet. She manipulated me in to falling in love with her. I had no say in the matter. I don’t want that to happen again, Iris, I don’t want fate or destiny or the Mindscape telling me who I want to be with.”

“I just can’t believe she did that to you,” she says quietly. “Our Patty was so different.”

“Yeah, I heard. And if she wasn’t in the picture – this whole time, I could’ve been happy.”

“With Iris?”

“Yeah. If she told me how she felt, the night of the explosion, I think we would be together. But I'm a different person now, and-"

“Barry, you’ve had – what, 72 hours to deal with all of this? Nobody can blame you if you’re uncertain. God knows it’s taken me this long to get to this point.”

Then it’s his turn to ask. “What are you talking about?”

She keeps looking at the city. “I was supposed to go on a date with Scott tonight. I was just telling Caitlin I couldn’t go through with it.” She shrugs. “Barry’s the one I want to be with. I keep going around it, trying to talk myself out of it, but there it is.”

“Good for you,” he says sincerely. E52 Iris laughs.

“Don’t congratulate me yet. I keep thinking I’ll chicken out. Or that he’ll suddenly realise he loves Patty and chase her to Midway.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re the second of Iris’ doppelgangers to be worried about Patty – forget about her, alright? If your Barry is anything like me, he’s not thinking about her at all.”

“Good to know.” She pauses again, for a long while. “But I keep worrying – we hurt them, didn’t we? We didn’t mean it, it’s not our fault, but we did. I don’t want him to resent me for that.”

Barry looks down at his hands. That’s one of his biggest fears as well, that she’ll never get over him rejecting her for a woman who turned out to want them both dead. “I guess we have to hope. But you get it, right?”

“Of course.”

“Because she’s one of the few people I have in the world, and if I lose her again-” He can’t even finish the sentence. “I don’t know if we could come back from that.”

E52 Iris pushes off the railing and faces him. “You know what? We need to promise each other something. Those two aren’t the only ones who can have a special bond.”

“Promise what?”

“I promise you that I’m not going to chicken out of telling Barry how I feel about him,” she says. “And you have to promise me you’re going to let yourself see how you feel about Iris. Without any crazy distractions, just her and you. Because you have a sister now, Barry, and that’s going to be a lot to deal with. You have to let yourself adjust.” She holds out a pinky finger. “Promise?”

Barry grins and links fingers with her. “Promise.”

***

“I can’t believe Olivia is a guy on this earth,” Iris says. She looks at Barry’s doppelganger as their feet dangle over the edge of the roof. “He’s so much hotter than she is, and his arms are, like, twice the size of yours.”

“Every earth,” he mutters. “But I’m glad you had fun.”

“He and Oliver have the same vein that pops in their head when they get mad.”

“Uh-huh. So, how do you like my earth, Miss Miracle?”

Iris considers this. “Once you get over the shock, it’s actually pretty normal. And it’s nice to be back on any earth after the Mindscape.”

“I never asked you what that was like,” he says quietly. It occurs to Iris that he might be on the few people on all 52 earths that can understand what she’s going through.

“Weird. I meant what I said, I don’t ever want to go back there. But I need to tell you something about that.”

“What?”

“We’re not all-powerful beings, Barry,” she says. He frowns. “I know what you’re thinking when you put on your suit, because I thought it too. But they helped me see that’s not it. We’re not gods, Barry. We’re just normal people with powers, and the sooner we realise that, the better.”

He closes his eyes. “The singularity. Everything that happened this year is because I opened it up. I’m the reason that Zoom is here.”

“Barry, you can beat yourself up about that. Or you can consider that Zoom would have found another way to get here. Or maybe it was that Thawne guy. But if we keep blaming ourselves for everything, we’re never going to be able to move forward.”

“I think I still have to work on that.” He squeezes her shoulder. “But thanks.”

“No problem.” Then she hesitates. “Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“Do the…nightmares ever go away?”

Iris isn’t surprised that he shakes his head no. “But I always find a person to – help. To make it easier. I’m guessing that’s Barry for you.”

“And Iris for you,” she counters. They smile at each other, and Barry clears his throat.

“I wanted to ask you a favour about my Iris, actually…”

So that is how Iris finds herself in the West home the next day, looking at all of their pictures and trying to stay strong. There are dozens, all with her and Detective West, or her and Barry. But she’s fine. Her life is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Right then, E52 Iris walks back into the living room with a plate of cookies and a tape recorder. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this myself,” she says, sitting down. “An interview with The Flash’s new ally, Miss Miracle? This is gold!”

Iris smiles. She’s fairly certain there’s nothing that Barry wouldn’t do for his Iris, and she’s slowly coming to terms with what she and Barry are. Even though after he came back from his walk, her own Barry has been looking at her differently. But she supposes that’s because she almost died. “Well, I’m happy to do it. But I do have something to give you first.”

Her eyes widen. “Give me?”

“Yeah. I know you said that I didn’t miss out because I had a mom, and I’m sure you feel the same way about your dad, but I wanted to give you something from her anyway.” She lifts her watch. “Gideon?”

“Greetings, Iris,” he says pleasantly. “And Iris.”

“Um, hi,” her doppelganger says.

“Gideon, play that voice message I bookmarked, and then send it to Iris' phone.”

“Certainly.” There’s some mechanical whirring, and then her mother’s voice comes out of her watch. “ _Hi, baby, it’s mom. Listen, I know you’re really nervous about today, but there’s no reason to be. I know you’re going to kick ass like you always do. I love you, baby. Don’t forget your lunch. And drink water_!”

“I know it’s not much,” Iris admits. “I was nervous about my first day since my promotion, and I thought you could, maybe, listen to it when you’re down?”

E52 Iris’ eyes are glistening with tears. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” she shrugs. “It’s the least I could do. You deserve a piece of her, too.”

She sniffles, and then hugs her. “I can see why you’re the hero on your earth.”

“For what it’s worth, Iris, I think you’re a hero, too.”

***

A true success of the mission, Iris thinks, is that Chesca and Cisco are calling each other by their actual names by the end of it. As she watches, they are in the corner excitedly telling each other how to stay in contact after the breaches are closed. “Miss Miracle, uniting nerds across earths,” she says, smiling. “Thanks for everything, guys. Really, I don’t know what we could have done without you.”

“Eh, it was fun,” Caitlin admits, hugging her. “Good to get out of our own problems for a while.”

Iris comes to Detective West next, who hugs her too. “Look after yourself, okay?”

“I will. I promise. Ace Reporter me,” she grins, turning to her doppelganger. “Cisco will show you how to find me.”

“Yeah, I need to come visit this earth where the Green Arrow and I hang out.”

“Everything thinks that’s a lot more glamourous than it is,” E52 Barry says, and Iris smiles up at him. “If you need anything – I mean it, anything-”

“I’ll run straight to Earth-52.”

“ _You’re_ Earth-52.”

“Whatever.” He hugs her. “Nice working with you, Miss Miracle.”

“You too, Flash.”

As they say their final goodbyes and walk to the breach, Iris nudges Barry’s shoulder. “What were you talking to reporter me about?”

“Reporter stuff,” he shrugs. She regards him, but he looks at the unconscious Colin, who’s in handcuffs. “Jesse?”

It’s in awkward fit, with both of them carrying an unconscious body. But still, they hold hands and, for the last time, step through the breach that will take them back home. They land exactly where they took off a few days earlier, only this time it’s Linda, Wally, Nora and Francine that greet them. And half a dozen of Waller’s agents that make a beeline for Colin as soon as they see them. They put him in more handcuffs and a straitjacket. But Iris is barely paying any attention to this, because her mother is alive, not a figment of the Mindscape, so she hugs her as tightly as she can, not even trying to stop the sobs that escape her.

“Okay, _okay_ ,” she says, stroking her hair. “I’m guessing that was an eventful few hours.”

“What do you mean? We’ve been gone for days.”

“Iris, it’s the same night you left,” Nora replies from around Barry, who has latched himself around her as well. “Remember, that temporal stuff you talked about?”

“Oh,” she sniffles. Linda and Wally are grinning at her, and it hits her then, that they did it, that they’re all safe and sound. Before she can say anything else, though, one of the agents approaches her. Her mother grabs her arm. “It’s okay, mom. What is it?”

“Director Waller wants a meeting with you next week,” he says. “To discuss further collaboration.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not privy to that information. He will contact you in due course.”

They leave then, taking Colin with him. “They showed up after Eddie left with the people you saved,” Linda explains. “He says everyone’s fine, they’re just doing medical checks on them.”

It will be hard, she knows, the recovery from such an ordeal, but they have gotten through the hard part. She isn’t surprised to find that she’s crying. “Are you okay, honey?”

“Yeah,” she answers simply. “I’m home.”

***

The next few days pass by quickly…because the entire team is asleep.

Jesse figures out that they are suffering from a strange form of jet-lag because of all the earth-hopping. Even though they were only gone for a few hours, it felt like days. Which is why they sleep through the new year and don’t realise how much of the last few days they’ve missed. When Iris goes to Barry’s a few days later to give them an update, they have somewhat recovered.

“So Waller says he wants me to work on something with him,” she says. “Of course, he won’t say what it is. But I’m taking Jesse and Chesca to pick up Dr. Wells this week. Any news on Malina?”

“She’s doing great,” Barry answers. “They all are. Henry called me yesterday – he says we might be able to see her soon.”

“Good,” Iris sighs happily, and Barry and Nora look at her. “What?”

Nora takes a deep breath. “Iris, what you did, I don’t know how we’ll-”

“Stop it. Do you guys have any idea where I’d be if you hadn’t taken me in?” She shakes her head. “Because I don’t, and I don’t want to think about it. This was the least I could do, and you would have done the same for me.”

“Of course,” they say together, and she hugs them both.

“Now, I have to go. Work and everything. God, I have so many reports to write…”

They wish her goodbye, and are settling in for dinner when the doorbell rings again. Barry rolls his eyes and goes to answer. “What did you forget – Oh.”

“H-Hi,” Malina says. She looks different – clear-eyed, cleaner. Apprehensive. “You’re my…You’re Barry, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” he breathes. She peers behind him.

“Is she here?”

“Barry? Who is that?” His mother appears behind him, and lets out a choked gasp.

“You’re here.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Dad brought me. I can’t stay, I just wanted to say…hi.”

“Oh.” Nora swallows. “Well, I’m Nora. I’m your mom.”

“I know. It’s great to meet you both. I wanted to tell you something. Director Waller is moving my rehab her; he thinks it’s best if I stay close.”

“Why?” Barry frowns. Malina takes a deep breath, and removes a hand from her pocket. She’s holding a small marble in her palm. As he watches, it floats out of her hand.

“Because I’m a metahuman.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you understood Barry and Iris' feelings in this. I know they got together at the end of the Runaway Dinosaur in canon, but I need Barry to understand his feelings a little bit more before they can get there. Don't worry, we're going to get lots of Barry being chill-less over Iris, Malina trolling tf out of him because of his feelings, and one of my favourite tropes: the Unrequited Love Switcheroo.  
> Hope you liked it!


	30. You Make My Heart Beat Like the Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry and Iris find their footing on new ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so clearly this was a 20K monster. I'll be better next time, promise.  
> Title taken from 'Electric Love' by BØRNS

These days, Barry Allen spends a lot of time wondering.

Wondering about the future, but not worrying. Wondering about the past, but not dwelling. Wondering about the present – how to live in the here and now. His job, his friends, his life. But, mostly, he finds himself wondering about Iris West.

Their lives are back to normal now – well, normal-ish. There are no more doppelgangers, no team missions to other earths. The Miracle Workers still do their part in saving the city, taking turns to help out with shifts at the terminals. Chesca and Jesse are the regulars, but Barry, Linda, Wally and Eddie help out when they aren’t busy. Iris is still working as hard as before, being the force’s metahuman specialist due to her connection to STAR Labs, but she is much better at handling her secret identity now. Barry’s even busier with work now, since he’s the only connection to Miss Miracle, and now the Green Arrow. People frequently contact him to go on their radio shows and he’s even a regular on a podcast now, which is nice.

But still, even with all that new ground, he spends a lot of time wondering, most of it about his best friend who might actually be the love of his life. Whether his lingering on her sometimes is the result of lifelong friendship or romantic feelings that he’s always had but never realised. Whether he likes to make her laugh out of habit or wanting to be blessed with her smile. And wondering whether it would be a good idea to ask _would it be so bad if we…?_

Barry took Iris’ – E52 Iris – words to heart, though readjusting in the weeks afterward with all the new stuff has been weird. She had been right, having a sister, albeit one who had to go to rehab three times a week because she was held by a sociopath for two years, is odd. They’re still taking things slow, trying to work each other into their respective lives. But E52 Iris also made him realise that constantly thinking that Iris was going to die, or remembering a kiss that happened under dire circumstances, or seeing versions of them that were married would definitely screw his perception of them and their relationship. But now all of that is over, and it’s time to concentrate on whether he has feelings for Iris West, his best friend since childhood, who is currently sitting in front of him while they have their regular end-of-day coffee and telling him about the craziness that she’s been getting up to.

“…like hurling a football through the end zone,” she continues, chewing on a biscotti. “And Chesca keeps – Barry, are you listening?”

He blinks. “Uh – What? Of – Of course I’m listening. Why would you think I’m not listening?”

“Because you look all spaced out. If you were listening, what was I saying?”

“You were saying that you figured out a way to close all the breaches, but you’re worried because it takes precision and strong hand-eye coordination.”

Iris gives him a sheepish look. “Oh.  You were looking at me weird; I thought I was boring you.”

“You could never bore me, Iris.” He pauses when she raises her eyebrows. “Okay, maybe a little, but I would never complain about it.”

Iris smiles. “Great. And it’s not _all_ the breaches, by the way. We’re keeping a couple open.”

“Really? Why?”

“In case I need to go over there and help with something,” she explains. “Jay from Earth-2 might need help with something, or Flash Barry with…”

“Zoom.”

“Zoom, right. And Kaden is really strong and fast, but even Superboy needs help sometimes. Not to mention that there might still be people from other earths wandering around that I’ll need to take back.” She shrugs. “It just seems safer to play it by ear.”

Barry hesitates. “Yeah, but you know that you don’t have to take care of everyone else all the time, right? It’s going to get exhausting eventually being a hero for all fifty-two earths. You can still…be a hero here.” _With me_.

“I know,” she assures him. “Believe me, Jay said the same thing. I’m not overworking myself, I promise.” She shakes her head. “Ugh, I got totally distracted. I was supposed to be asking you about today. I would have been there, but…”

“Olivia needed your help, I know. It’s okay, you can meet her at Sunday dinner.” But Barry still can’t help the grin that spreads over his face at the memory.

***

“Barry,” Iris interrupts his stream of speech, “ _calm down_. It’s going to be fine.”

Barry taps his fingers impatiently on his desk, holding the phone to his ear as everyone flits in and out on their lunch break. Malina is coming to CCPN so they can meet his mother at the precinct for lunch, and he couldn’t be more nervous about it. This is going to be the first time she’s seen them without Eddie or Henry since she showed up at their house to thank them.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. You’re just hanging out and – _Olivia Jade Queen, do not rush me, I was at work_!” Iris says to someone else on the phone. “Barry, you’re just hanging out and getting lunch with her and your mom. No pressure.”

He rubs his face. “I know, I know. It’s just…new ground, you know? I can do the comms with you and I can jump out of a window for a story, but this?”

“I know this is scary, Bar, but you have to remember that there’s no right way to do this. The thing to remember is that she’s going to be just as nervous as you are. It’ll be weird at first, but you can ride it out.”

He nods. “Right. How’s things with Olivia? What does she need?”

“Eh, something or other is threatening to level her city again,” Iris answers dismissively. “ _I’m not wrong, Liv_. I’m sorry, I know I was supposed to be there.”

“It’s okay. Guess that’s what happens when your best friend is a superhero.”

“Right, but let’s meet at Jitters – _Liv, I swear to God_ – and you can tell me all about it, okay?”

Barry wishes her goodbye and hangs up, nervously waiting for her to show up. He knows he’s distracted because Missy called him Bart four times today and he didn’t even bother to correct her like he’s learned to do. The original plan had been for Iris to be there with them, just as a buffer, but then Olivia had called needing her help. It’s still hard to wrap his head around, that he has a whole, grown-up, real-life sister, walking around with his DNA and his nose and his strawberry allergy. But still, they have faced powerful metahumans, insane criminals, and been across universes. He can handle this.

Malina walks in as he’s thinking this, pushing the door open and looking around for him. He’s frozen for a minute, his heart beating wildly in his chest, but then he stands and she spots him, a smile breaking out over her face as she spots him through the glass door of his office. He walks out, smoothing his tie down, and automatically holds his hand out. She looks at it for a second and then he lets it drop. “Uh, sorry,” he says, embarrassed. “That was…”

“Thank God you’re nervous too,” she tells him, smiling shyly. Barry scratches the back of his head.

“Yeah, I bet they don’t teach you this in spy school?”

“They do, actually, but you’re not usually related to the mark. But it usually ends in me putting a tracking device in your jacket, so…”

“Okay, I’m glad we’re not going there,” he chuckles. She looks around.

“So this is CCPN, huh? I walked past this place a few times when I was doing recon work, I had no idea you worked here.”

He shrugs, shutting and locking his office door. “Well, I’ve only been working here for a year.”

“And you have your own office already? Impressive.”

“That’s what happens when you’re the only one superheroes will trust with their stories. So, uh, are you ready to go? We’re meeting my mom and then going to Jitters.”

“Lead the way,” she says easily, and they head towards the door when Scott intercepts them. “Barry, could you cover the story about the state senate this week? With Preston gone we’re still moving things around.”

“Sure,” he replies. He takes a deep breath. “Scott, this is Malina, my sister. Malina, this is-”

“Scott Evans,” she interrupts, doing that wide-eyed, open-mouthed thing that people do when they meet Scott. She shakes his hand. “I…You’re so much taller in person.”

Barry smirks while Scott just smiles and shrugs. “I get that a lot. You’re Barry’s sister?”

“Yeah, it’s…complicated,” Malina says carefully. “I lived with our dad and my adopted brother. This is all pretty new to us; we’re still getting to know each other.”

“Well, Barry and Nora are great, I’m sure you’ll love getting to know them,” Scott says kindly. He pats Barry on the shoulder. “I’ll get one of the interns to put the notes on your desk.”

“Cool, thanks.”

When he’s walked off, Malina is staring after him. “You know Scott Evans? He’s on TV?”

“Aren’t you a spy with an organisation that works with Superwoman?” he asks her quietly as they walk outside. She waves a hand.

“Yeah, but I’ve never _met_ her. Scott is on TV! And he’s even hotter in person.”

“That’s what everyone says,” he chuckles. They walk towards CCPD, trying not to slip on the ice that’s still coating the ground. “So how’ve you been?”

“Okay,” she shrugs. “When you guys brought me back, they took us all to a safe house to debrief us and get medical care. I’m also going to rehab to deal with…you know.”

“Right. Well, I’m glad you’re okay. And I’m glad you’re doing this. Ever since we found out about you I never let myself believe that you were out there, you know? But now you’re…here.”

Malina doesn’t reply for a while and Barry curses himself, thinking that he’s said the wrong thing, because she’s staring straight ahead and her hands her in her pockets, her breath coming out in little puffs of air. “I always knew about you,” she tells him. “I wasn’t supposed to, not ever, I guess, but I found a picture of you from your birthday in dad’s room.”

Barry nods once. Malina swallows before continuing. “I wanted to know who it was, and he didn’t want to tell us at first, but he did. Me and Eddie. When he told me who you were and why you left, I understood.”

“And you weren’t mad?”

“No, I was mad. I had a whole other brother and a mom, and I wouldn’t ever get to meet them. But…” She turns to him, her blue eyes earnest. “I understood, because I knew about that feud. I grew up with it – it defined me. Barry, I know you’re probably mad at dad, and you have _every_ right to be, but – people like the Zolomans and the Carlisses – they were dangerous-”

“I’m not mad at him,” he interrupts. He realised it weeks ago, that he can’t hold that anger in him anymore. “I’m not. Besides, I know how dangerous they are. And if they’re that bad, I can’t imagine what the agent called Savitar was like.”

“Oh, she wasn’t just an agent,” she corrects. “That was just a name one of the bad ones took from a villain that used to exist. The first Savitar was…I guess you could say she was a metahuman, but that’s all I know.”

“Does Eddie know about her?”

“Barry, no one knows about her. The only people who do are Waller and my dad, and they won’t even say anything about her. It freaks dad out.”

“She must be bad news,” he says. “And seriously, we’ve had enough of crazy metahumans running around this place.”

“Don’t worry, she’s gone now.” The make it to the precinct, where his mother is standing at the top of the steps, trying not to let the apprehension show on her face. She lights up when she sees them, and holds her arms out for a hug, before realising at exactly the same time that Barry had that maybe it isn’t the best idea. But Malina just laughs, looking between the two of them. “Wow, you guys really _do_ look alike.”

Barry bursts into laughter, easing the tension between them, and he sees the nervousness seep out of them both as they greet each other and head inside. Malina is eager to see where his mother works, given that it’s so different to where she usually does, and she’s only happy to show her.

“…and this is the atrium,” Nora explains cheerfully, “where we book the criminals. That over there is Rose, one of our beat cops.”

“Cool,” Malina smiles as they walk further into the station. “You know, I interned at Gotham City Police Department. This place has less screaming.” At Barry and Nora’s slightly horrified looks, she gives them a sheepish grin. “Joke. Guess I have to work on those. I _did_ meet Batgirl, though.”

Barry whistles. They’re still getting used to that, that she just drops random facts about how she used to work with _this_ team of spies, and you’ll never guess what really happens in Belle Reve, and they think they’re going to find out the identity of the Green Lantern any day now. “What’s up there?” she continues.

“That’s the lab, where Iris works,” Barry says. Malina blinks.

“That’s – she’s the one who saved my life,” she says quietly. “Right? I read all the stuff you gave me about her.”

Barry nods. Part of the thing with the people who were held by Colin for so long is that they’ve missed so much. Miss Miracle might be second nature to everyone in Central City, but Malina had no idea who she is. Eddie asked for Barry to send her everything he’d written about Iris over the last year, which is helping.

“Around here she’s just Iris,” he tells her. “But she’s amazing, really, and she can’t wait to meet you.”

Malina nods, still looking around, and that is when Captain Singh comes out of the office. She smiles when she sees them. “Nora, Barry,” she says pleasantly. “And you must be Malina.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Captain,” she replies, shaking her hand. Explaining where Malina actually came from was a level of complicated that no one really wanted to get into, so they just decided to tell everyone that there had been a mix-up at the hospital she was born at, resulting in Malina ending up with her dad. “It happens way more than you might think,” Eddie had said. “Seriously, I think ‘swapped sibling turned into evil twin’ was the villain origin story for half of this country’s bad guys in the eighties.”

In any case, most people didn’t ask, especially when they saw how happy all the Allens were. “Malina is transferring here to finish up her law classes,” his mother continues proudly.

“How are you liking our city so far?”

“It’s nice. Safe. Which is a nice change, you know…”

They lapse into a short silence. Everyone also knew that Malina had been one of the people taken by Calamity, along with her adopted brother Eddie. People were still abuzz with it, that Miss Miracle had returned almost all the people missing alive. For the Allens, especially after the year they’d had, it certainly did seem like a miracle.

“Well, I look forward to seeing you around here,” she continues. “As long as you keep out of trouble like Barry always has.”

Barry grins and Nora rolls her eyes. “Now I _know_ you’re still in honeymoon mood, Dee. You need me today?”

“Just to sign something…” she trails off, looking at the screen. It’s a car chase in Star City, complete with guns and police vehicles. As they watch, one of the bikes shoots over the cars in traffic and Barry recognises the svelte figure of Olivia chase after the three cars. She touches something on her control pad, making the bike drive itself, before reaching behind her for her bow and firing three arrows in quick succession. Then, before they can flee the bikes and get away, a golden blur stops them on the road. Iris grabs them all and leaves them in a heap in the road, nodding modestly at all the cheering. Malina whistles. “That is going to take some getting used to.”

“Well, I’m sure Barry here will give you the inside scoop on the Golden Grace.” She looks around and then sighs. “Where’s West? Did she forget she’s supposed to help with the induction for the new recruits this afternoon?”

“She actually had to go follow up on the arson at the bakery,” Nora says quickly. Barry casually takes out his phone and fires off a quick text to Iris. Then he tries not to grin when she, still in Star City, looks at her watch and sighs. She whispers something to Olivia, before waving once more at everyone and then rising into the air, flying off in a shower of green sparks.

“I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” Barry says easily.

“I hope so. We couldn’t run this place without her, but _where does she go_?”

After she’s walked off, Malina laughs. “Did anyone ever tell you that you two would make great spies?”

***

“How Olivia deals with Darhk AND the nonsense that goes with living in Star City, I will never know” Iris mutters, stirring her coffee. But she takes in Barry’s fond smile and smiles herself. “But she sounds great, Barry.”

“She is.”

“How’s she doing?”

He hesitates. “Okay, actually. I mean, obviously, it’s a lot, being captured by someone like…him, but she’s adjusting faster than I would think of someone like her.” He shifts in his chair, and Iris knows that he’s about to switch into the guy who spent years talking about psychology. “Like, the danger with people like her are things like Stockholm Syndrome, persistent feelings of isolation, survivor’s guilt…all kinds of things. But-”

“She was trained by Waller’s people,” she points out. Barry nods and Iris sits back. Olivia told her what kind of training they go through in order to become agents. Even at her young age, Malina would be an expert at withstanding torture, escape tactics, and coping mechanisms to deal with tough situations. The only reason she hadn’t escaped was because Colin probably would have killed her before she got to the door. Barry shakes his head.

“And we’re not supposed to talk about it, either. It won’t help her recovery, so we have to tell her about positive things. And then, with her being a metahuman…”

“Talk about complicated,” Iris mutters. Barry told her about his sister’s powers, which appeared to be exactly like hers. Iris suspected, later to be confirmed by Jesse, that it was because Iris had thrown Colin across the room, dousing them all in chemicals, and then blasting the whole place in lightning. Her powers manifested a few days later, and then she went to go tell Barry and Nora about it.

“I think she wants to just deal with one thing at a time,” Barry shrugs.

“Yeah, that’s what Waller said,” Iris agrees. Barry regards her.

“Have you thought anymore about that? What he said?”

“I try not to think about Amadeus Waller on a regular basis, but he keeps _calling_. And it doesn’t help that he knows my real name, knows where I live, and all my family.”

When Iris and the others came back from Earth-52 and Waller carted Colin off to a secure facility, she got an anonymous call at work a few days later instructing her to come and see Waller about something. As usual, he was maddeningly secretive about it, even instructing two agents to come and pick her up from Jitters, driving her somewhere unknown in a tinted vehicle so that she wouldn’t know where they were going. She had been more than a little irritated, especially since she and her mother were planning to go to the movies and then have dinner afterwards, as they were wont to do whenever they both got a spare moment. Which was rare, given that Iris was still dealing with the multiple earths problem. But then, there was one thing that made it all worth it.

***

Iris steps out of the armoured car and onto the sandy ground, looking around in apprehension. She didn’t think she’d ever be in a situation where she wanted Henry Allen here to protect her, but there it is. Henry himself hadn’t even known about the meeting until Barry told him, and then regretfully said that he couldn’t go with her.

“If Waller wanted me there he would have told me,” he’d pointed out. “And besides, I’m supposed to be in Fiji.”

“You know what? It’s fine,” Iris had said. “It’s not like I can’t fight my way out of there if there’s trouble. Not that I think there’s going to be trouble,” she adds at Chesca and Barry’s identical worried looks.

“Waller isn’t going to _hurt_ her, guys,” Eddie had reassured them. “Although I’m not sure what he’ll want to talk about.”

“Eddie’s right, there’s no reason to worry,” she’d nodded. “And I’ll come right back when we’re done and tell you about it.”

Chesca had nodded. “Awesome. You,” she’d pointed at Barry, “are _not allowed to pace_.”

“What do you mean?”

“Barry, I love you, but whenever you worry, you pace. Your ass wears a hole in the STAR Labs floor and it makes me nervous, especially when you’re worried about Bambi Eyes over there.”

“Because that’s much worse than you dismantling everything in STAR Labs whenever you’re worried,” he’d said, though he was blushing a little. Jesse had snorted and Chesca had glared at him, but he hadn’t backed down.

“Come on, it’s true!”

“The last time you were worried you took apart my iPhone.”

“I put it back together!” she’d countered. “Besides, what about the good Dr. Asshole doing random medical tests on everyone when he’s nervous?”

“Yeah, I didn’t I’d ever want to strangle someone with a stethoscope,” Eddie had mused. “But I suppose there’s a first time for everything.” Henry looked contemplative.

“It’s effective, you should try it.” Then he’d sighed at everyone looking at him. “My jokes aren’t funny, are they?”

Bad jokes or not, he is a comforting presence, and Iris wouldn’t mind having him here with her as she’d led into the building. The agents didn’t appear to know who she was, given that their minds had not exploded with awe and recognition when they saw her, which is what usually happened when people found out she was Miss Miracle. They are, in fact, the picture of professionalism, expertly patting her down and then taking away the tracker that Chesca put in her earrings as they stand in the lobby.

“Can you blame me?” she asks when they give her a look. “Whatever. I want those back, they were a gift.”

“Nice of you to join us, Miss West,” someone calls, and she sees Amadeus Waller come out of absolutely nowhere. She looks around, irritated. “What is it with you people and mysterious entrances? Is it fun for you, or something?”

“You could say that,” he chuckles quietly, and indeed, when Iris turns back around, the agents who accompanied her in have disappeared completely. “Don’t worry,” he says. “They’ll give you your earrings back. Miss Ramon certainly is talented when it comes to those kinds of instruments.”

Iris looks up at him, jaw set. “What did you want to see me about?”

“All in due time. Walk with me, Miss West. I’d like to show you something.”

They walk through winding corridors, seeing agents as they pass, all of whom nod respectfully to him and ignore her completely. Olivia told her, when she found out about the Allen-Thawne feud, that it’s because the agents don’t want to memorise the faces of anyone with a superhero alias, since someone could torture the information out of them and put entire cities in danger. Not that she particularly wants to talk to them anyway. They are of varying ranks, judging by the different die on their lapels – though none of them have the six die that are on Waller’s. In fact, the most she can see is four.

“I have to say I was…surprised when I received the call from Agent Thawne that Miss Miracle would soon be joining us with a man named Killer Frost and the missing people from the Calamity case,” he muses. “Given, of course, that he was supposed to be in Fiji.”

“Is that so?”

“He disobeyed a direct order.”

“He was doing what he thought was right.”

“He was trying to save his sister, even after we explicitly gave the order that she be let go because that investigation was closed.”

Iris merely shrugs, because if she says anything, it’ll probably be things that will get her thrown in their bunker. He glances at her sidelong. “Of course, all of this would have come as a shock to me if I hadn’t known where he was from the beginning.”

He laughs at Iris’ shocked look. “Miss West, Agent Thawne might have been raised by a man who goes by the name Eobard Thawne, but he is still Henry Allen. There was no way he was going to give up his sister without a fight.”

Iris swallows. “What are you going to do to him?”

“That is between me and our discipline tribunal. In any case, I’m sure we’ll come to a punishment suitable to the magnitude of the crime. Ah, here we are.”

They’re in an upstairs gallery with nothing but a glass panel looking down into another room. Iris’ eyes widen when she recognises the figure lying on the bed, his hands behind his head. Despite his still form, she knows he isn’t sleeping. “Colin,” she whispers.

“He’s been cooperative,” he muses, and Iris turns to him.

“Don’t trust him. Do not – he’s a complete sociopath, he’s probably planning-”

“Relax, Miss West, I have dealt with dangerous criminals before. I did assist Batgirl with the capture of the Joker, after all.”

Iris tentatively presses her hand on the glass. “Does he say anything?”

“Apart from insulting the guards who bring him food? Not much.” He hesitates. “He wanted to know whether Ronnie’s parents know she’s dead. But he expressed disinterest when we told him that they do.”

Iris raises an eyebrow. “And what else?”

“How do you know there’s something else?”

“I don’t have to be able to read minds to be able to read your voice.”

Waller turns back to the glass, watching him. “He asked that we look after you while you are conducting your…activities.” She raises an eyebrow.

“Why is that?”

“Apparently, he still very much would like to kill you, and he can’t do that if you’re already dead.”

Iris blinks against the pounding in her head. “That sounds like him,” she says evenly. He shrugs.

“I would pay him no attention, Miss West. Dr. Snow will meet death many years before you. I merely brought you here to inform you he will be staying here indefinitely, and only the most trained experts are allowed to interact with him.”

“Make sure you keep it that way.” She squares her shoulders. “Anyway, what was it that you wanted? I have work and a life to get back to, Mr. Waller.”

He nods. “You know we have an agreement with Superwoman?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Is it like the one you have with Liv, where you threaten her with whatever the hell happened in Bratva until she does what you say?”

He gives her a small, tight smile. “Not quite. Superwoman operates in Metropolis, as you know, and mostly deals with her aliens herself. However, she keeps us abreast of the larger threats that she has to deal with, and lets us know when there might be villains that threaten the security of the nation.”

“Like who?”

“Like Alexis Luthor, for example.”

“Alexis Luthor is dangerous?” Iris demands, but he shakes his head.

“Maybe, maybe not. Superwoman has uncovered information that suggests this might be the case, and since she can’t very well go after the woman without proof, she told us about it.”

Iris frowns. “You want me to be a spy for you?”

“Not a spy; we have our own. This will be more of a…partnership.”

“And why would I want to be partners with someone whose organisation almost got me and the people that I love killed?”

“Because, Iris, I get the feeling that, being who you are, you know what it means to have to do things that might not necessarily make you the best kind of person.”

She looks up at him in surprise. There’s no way in hell that he can know about the metahumans from other earths, that she’s been using mind-control on them to make them forget that they ever came here. Not to mention the fact that she was perfectly willing to murder Colin if it meant that all of her friends would be safe. He clears his throat.

“In any case, you may think about it. I know with recent events, you will be quite preoccupied. But there is something else I asked you here for today.”

Without a word, he walks off through a door, not even waiting to see that she’s followed him. She bites back the retort that’s making its way up her throat and follows him. She starts to grow impatient when she feels something tugging at the edges of her memory, and her heart starts to speed up. “Where are we going?”

“You have done this organisation a great service, Miss West. I think it only prudent that we do something for you as well.”

Iris recognises the cell a split second before they get there, and can hardly breathe when he opens the double doors. “Dr. Wells? You have a visitor.”

Dr. Wells is staring at them in shock when he opens the door, rising slowly from the bed. “Iris?”

“It appears, Dr. Wells,” Waller continues in the same calm voice, “that we have found the true culprit behind the crimes to which you confessed. Barring any attachment you have developed to myself, this building, or the oatmeal we serve for breakfast, you are free to go.”

She just stares at them both, her mouth working in shock. “I-Iris?” she manages. Her eyes flicker between them and she swallows. “Did you…”

“We got him,” Iris replies, crying as well, but still smiling. “We got him, Helena, you’re free.”

Iris sees the moment the words register, the shock stealing across her face, and then the wondrous, disbelieving joy. It doesn’t wear off when they leave the cell, or when Iris is signing for her release, or when they’re being driven back to Central City. In the front seat, Iris dials a number and holds the phone to her ear. It’s picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Barry?”

“Iris?” he demands immediately, hearing the tears in her voice. “Why are you crying? Are you hurt?”

“No,” she shakes her head, “I’m fine, really. But I need you, Chesca and Jesse to meet me at STAR Labs as soon as possible.”

It takes another thirty seconds to get him off the phone without knowing what she’s talking about or why she’s crying, but he does it. When the agent stops in the parking lot of STAR Labs, she can already see them standing by the entrance, their impatience tangible in the air. She turns back to Dr. Wells. “Are you ready?”

“No,” she says quietly, but she’s smiling. “Do it.”

Iris takes a deep breath and climbs out of the car, before opening the rear door as well. Then everything happens in slow motion – her climbing out of the car and blinking in the January sun, the looks on everyone’s faces as they realise that she’s here, and then…Jesse and Chesca are racing across the parking lot. Chesca just hugs her, shoulders shaking with relief, but then lets her go just as quickly so Jesse can hug her too. But he doesn’t, not at first. That’s alright, though, because Dr. Wells is staring at him, drinking him in as if he’ll disappear from sight. “You’re so big,” she tells him quietly, smiling, and that does it. His face crumples and he wraps his arms around her, and Chesca does as well, and they are all three of them crying and hugging and apologising, and Iris walks over to Barry, who’s watching them with a smile. “Who knew?”

Iris just nods, smiling, and then realises, with her mother coming home and her being brought back to life and her rescuing all those people, that the Mindscape was right. She is perfectly fine, and this is exactly how it was supposed to be. “Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“This is my favourite kind of miracle.”

He puts a hand on her shoulder and she rests her head on his. “Mine too, sunshine,” he replies. “Mine too.”

***

Back in the present, Iris shakes her head. “ _Working_ with Waller. I mean, seriously, after everything guy put us through? And Eddie – do we know what Waller’s going to do to him yet?”

Barry shrugs. “Even if Eddie knew, he wouldn’t say. He doesn’t want to worry us.”

“And by that, he means he doesn’t want to worry Chesca.”

“I thought that part was obvious.”

Since Eddie has officially been rescued by Miss Miracle, he’s allowed to travel around in public again. Everyone’s amused to find out that it just means he hangs out at STAR Labs asking Chesca questions. Who’s only happy to oblige, even though she has a ton of work to do. “Well, they’re cute,” she shrugs. “And I don’t know what’s funnier, trolling her about Eddie, or watching Jesse do it. Even though he keeps having to put dollars in the jar.”

“Like he cares. We bought dinner with the last jar, and he just filled it right back up again.”

“Asshole,” she mutters fondly. “You know he has a bet on how long it’s going to take them together?”

“Of course I know, I have twenty on them getting together within the next two weeks.”

“Barry Allen!”

“What? It’s easy money; have you seen them together?”

She throws a piece of muffin at him. “You don’t need money, you got that promotion at work last week.”

He shrugs. “Opportunity calls and you answer.”

“Honestly. What do you think they’re waiting for? It’s obvious they like each other.”

Barry hesitates as he watches Iris polish off the last of their biscotti. “Well, it’s – maybe they’re waiting for things to feel right. That kind of stuff can be scary.”

“She’s _Vibe_ ,” Iris points out. “If anyone should be an expert on how things feel, it’s her.” She shrugs. “But yeah, that’s a good bet. I’ll take twenty against Jesse, no problem.”

He grins at her. “Point to Allen. And you’re right, that promotion is awesome.”

“What happened there, again?”

Barry counts out a couple of bills for the tip jar. “A couple of our senior staff left, so I got promoted to junior features editor, and we’re hiring another one. You heading home?”

“Your mom’s place, actually, I need to drop off a report for her. So, competition for Allen,” she replies, raising her eyebrows. She grabs her bag and her jacket, and she and Barry walk towards the door. “Sure you can handle that?”

He shrugs. “Eh, it’s not like I’m suddenly going to be obsolete. I have a superhero on speed dial, you know. Besides, I’m focusing more on the fact that I get a fancy new office and a raise. Which is going a long way to getting a new apartment.”

“Right, how is that going? And how the hell did you tell Nora?”

Barry smiles wryly, holding the door open for her. “You mean the part where I outlined this whole speech about how I didn’t want to leave her alone but that I needed to have my own space but that I’ll still be around to help her with stuff and I promise I won’t got far…and she said she thought I’d never leave?”

Iris giggles as they walk outside and the January wind hits her in the face. It still snows on some days, though today sees the city coated in a thin layer of frost. “Well, at least you don’t have to feel guilty. Found anywhere good yet?”

“Eh,” he hedges. “It’s hard when there are so many options. Do I want a fireplace? High-ceilings? I think Betty is starting to get sick of my face.”

“See, this is why you need me – you want all of that stuff.” Iris adjusts her glasses as they walk. “And Betty’s a realtor, I’m sure she’s used to it. The main thing is whether you can afford it, and you can see yourself living there long-term. At this point you’re probably going to want something more permanent, right? So a place that’s a little bigger, maybe with a study or something.”

Barry glances at her. “Oh, so – so you think all that stuff is important?”

“Yes,” she nods. “You want to be able to know that, barring something happening, it’s a good thing for you to have in five years or whatever. That you’re still going to want it.”

He makes a face at her. “A fireplace, though? That seems kinda fancy for me. And what’s so good about high ceilings?”

“More light, more space, and they look prettier,” she answers simply. “Plus, you can get a really tall Christmas tree and some killer light fixtures. And,” she adds, laughing, “I don’t know if you noticed, Dr. Barry Allen, ace reporter and premier metahuman expert of the west coast, but you’re pretty damn fancy yourself.”

“What? I’m not fancy.”

“Dude, you write with a fountain pen and you have a custom-made watch.”

“That you gave me for Christmas!” he points out, and she laughs again.

“Exactly,” she tells him, “so I’m perfectly placed to tell you how fancy you are. And you’ve reminded me – I need to start looking for a place too. My lease is up in a few months, and I don’t know whether I’m going to stay there, or find a new place, or what.”

He frowns. “Really? I thought you liked that place.”

“I mean, I do, but I kind of want to try something different, you know? As much as it sucked being struck by lightning for the second time in as many years, the Mindscape actually taught me some things.”

He tips his head to the side, watching as she wraps her scarf tighter around herself. “Like what?”

She shrugs. “That I don’t want to live life stuck in the past anymore. I’ve spent so long worrying about what my life is supposed to be like, and what I should have had, but I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to move forward, not go backwards,”

“You could move in with – someone,” he suggests, catching himself at the last minute. “Like a friend or something.” She wrinkles her nose.

“Yeah, I thought about living with Chesca, but we’re really close, and we do Miss Miracle stuff all the time. Sometimes you don’t want to take all the things that make you think of work home with you, and I don’t want her to get sick of me, you know?”

“Well, I don’t know that anyone could ever get sick of you,” Barry replies, “but I get what you mean about work. Sometimes you just want to get away from it all.”

“Yeah, and home is a big part of that. You have to feel good when you’re home.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, looking at her. “Home.” He’s glad, at least, that he caught himself before he suggested _they_ live together. He’s always been aware that Iris might want her own space – and after her confession, he definitely understood where it came from – but as her best friend, it had been instinct to offer to help her out. Then, of course, he realised that he’s trying to figure out how he feels about her, and having her around him all the time (not to mention the chance that he could walk in on her naked, which would make it infinitely harder to look her in the eye, let alone figure out whether he’s in love with her) wouldn’t help that in the slightest.

Iris, for her part, hasn’t noticed what he’s thinking. “But I’m probably going to stay there,” she continues. “I can use my new mantra on life on something else. Like that whole Justice League thing.”

“That would be cool,” he admits as they come up to the house. “But still, you have a few months, maybe see how you feel then?”

Iris nods, and once they’re inside Iris makes a beeline for the kitchen. When Iris heads to the pantry, Barry watches in disbelief as Iris rummages through the cupboards. “Iris, don’t tell me you’re hungry again.”

“Fine, I won’t tell you I’m hungry again.” She gets a bag of chips and goes to the fridge, and he stares after her. “We just had a whole plate of biscotti.”

“We did,” she agrees, dipping the chips in the dip she just retrieved.

“And by that, I mean I had a couple and you had the rest. And a muffin.”

She swallows. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

Barry walks over and snatches the chips off the counter. “And its Monday, so I know you’re having dinner with your mom.”

“Give those back.”

“No way. I’m not letting you ruin your mom’s dinner with potato chips.”

Iris glares at him, hopping down from the counter. “Give them back.”

“Or what?” he asks innocently.

“Or you’ll be sorry.”

“Well, in that case I – _ow_!”

The bag of chips jump out of his hand, thwack him on the back of the head, and then land in Iris’ waiting hands. She grins at him as he rubs the back of his head. “Point to West,” she croons triumphantly, and he raises an eyebrow at her.

“Oh, we’re keeping score now?” he asks, walking towards her.

“Hey, you’re the one who – Shit, okay, Barry, I was kidding!” She steps back at the look on his face, arms out. “I take it back! Don’t – _don’t_ -”

Iris collapses into helpless laughter as he tickles her, giggling and snorting and crying behind her glasses. “I hate – _you’re a jackass_!” she manages to get out between giggles. And Barry is laughing too, and he’s kind of out of breath and his heart is going at a mile a minute, because Iris’ skin is warm under his fingers and her hair keeps getting in his nose, filling it with the scent of coconut oil. And he has no idea what he’s going to say next, with Iris’ hair in his nose and her pushing at his shoulders to get away from him, still laughing, but then a voice interrupts them.

“Um…hi.”

Barry looks away from Iris and then smiles. “Malina! What are you doing here?”

“Your mom said I could come over for dinner,” she explains. She eyes Iris, who by this time has detached herself from Barry and is cleaning her glasses. “Dad and Eddie are coming too.”

“Really?” Barry asks. “Awesome.” They have never done that before, their whole bizarre family all at once. But Malina is still focused on Iris, her blue eyes apprehensive.

“Yeah, your mom is getting all the dinner stuff from the car. So…you must be Iris.”

Iris holds her hand out, smiling her sunshine smile at her. “It’s great to meet you, Malina. Barry and Eddie have told me a lot about you.”

“They told me a lot about you too. And I saw you on the news. And I read about you in the papers.”

Iris laughs. “Yeah, well, you run around in gold leather moving things with your mind, and people want to know what’s up. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet you at work today, I was helping the Arrow with something and then she wanted to grab lunch afterwards.”

Malina stares at her. “You and the Green Arrow just…get lunch together? You guys are friends?”

“Well, I don’t think she herself would ever admit that, but we’re pretty close. Not as close as I and your jackass of a brother over here,” she adds, shoving Barry, “but close. But I thought you guys were all up in the superhero secret identity business?”

“Yeah, but I don’t _know_ those people!” she explains, excited. “So do you know Firestorm?”

Iris laughs again. “I do, actually. All three of them.”

“Hawkgirl and Hawkman?”

“Barry found those two.”

“That was fun,” Barry mutters, remembering all the nonsense with Vandal Savage. Jax had called them when they got back from Earth-52, explaining that they were in Ancient Egypt. They had looked at each other for exactly three seconds before deciding not to ask. “They’re on a…we’ll call it a trip.”

“So if I wanted to talk to the Black Canary or Arsenal or The Atom, you could just call them? You could tell me who they are?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” Iris answers. “But I doubt you’d believe me if I told you.”

Malina stares at her, open-mouthed. “We’ve been looking for those people for years! That’s incredible.”

Iris shrugs modestly. “Perks of the job, I guess. Who knows, that might be you one day.”

She pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. “Oh, you know about that?”

“Yeah, I do. How are you doing with your powers?”

She bites her lip, sitting on one of the stools by the counter. “I don’t know. Like, I don’t think my powers are…steady, yet? They come and go really frequently.”

“That’s normal,” Iris assures her. “Don’t worry about it for now. Does Waller know about them? Is he doing anything to help?”

“I mean, he gave me some stuff on Jay Garrick, but they found her when she was already heading for retirement, so there’s not much to learn from her.”

“Well, if you ever need someone to help you with this stuff, I’m right here,” Iris tells her. “You shouldn’t be going through this by yourself, and it’s always good to have someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Malina opens her mouth to reply, but then a wry voice sounds through the kitchen. “It’s funny how I have two full-grown adults who I used to feed, clothe and house,” Nora says, “and yet, none of them want to help with groceries.”

“Sorry,” Barry and Iris say together. Barry grabs a few from her, put Iris flicks her wrist and after a couple of seconds everything has floated out of the bags and into place. He sniffs. “Show-off.”

Iris sticks his tongue out at him and he jabs her in the ribs. “I take it back,” his mother sighs. “I don’t have two full-grown adults; I have two very tall toddlers. Malina, don’t pay any attention to them.”

She giggles and Barry’s mother turns to Iris. “What brings you by this neck of the woods, Iris?”

Iris fishes the report out of her bag and hands it to her. “Thanks, I was looking for this. Can you stay for dinner? We’re having spaghetti carbonara.”

“No, I have-”

A shrill beeping interrupts them all and Iris lifts her watch. Gideon pops out of it, his normally cheerful voice urgent. “Iris, there is a disturbance by the old ironworks. People are reporting some sort of bomb going off.”

“A bomb?” Nora repeats.

“They’re saying the ground is shaking. It – Malina Belle Thawne, previously Allen, twenty-two, five foot six, allergic to strawberries,” he interrupts himself suddenly, and Iris lets out a groan of frustration. Malina blinks in surprise.

“How does he know me?”

“He does automatic scans of people he’s never met whenever we walk in,” Iris explains tersely, “even though _I told him not to do those anymore_.”

“My apologies, Iris, but this was not a body scan. Her information was already in my data bank.”

“How?”

“Erm…spoiler.”

Iris rolls her eyes to the ceiling, putting her bag back on. “I have to go, Nora, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Do you need me?” Barry asks, but Iris shakes her head.

“Chesca and Jesse are on duty tonight, but I might you to contact the bomb squad if it is an actual bomb.”

“Okay. Iris?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“Always,” she says easily, and then blinks out of existence. Barry and his mother move around normally, while Malina just looks around. “Whoa, that – does she do that all the time?”

“We make her take at least one day off a week,” Barry says, “but yeah, all the time.”

“No, I mean the teleporting in and out of the room all the time.”

“Yes, and it’s annoying,” Nora says. “She does it just to get away from me, half the time. Barry, could you start dinner? I have to read this report.”

“Sure,” he replies, and she walks off into the lounge. Barry gathers everything on the counter and starts to prepare the food before he looks at Malina, who is glancing around the kitchen looking spare. “You wanna help? You can grate the cheese.”

“Oh. Um, okay.”

“You’d be much better help than Iris – she usually just eats the cheese. And the bacon. And the dinner rolls.”

She grabs the cheese grater and the block of cheese he points out to her. “Iris is nice. I can’t believe she does so much in one day.”

“She is incredible,” he agrees. “She’s used to it by now.”

“She’s in almost all of the pictures here.”

“Mom liked taking them,” he explains. “Iris didn’t really feel like part of the family when she got here, so mom always wanted to make sure that she felt welcome. Plus she really liked taking pictures.”

Malina nods. “I saw one that was you guys in Rome – what was that like?”

“It was cool. Their ice-cream was just kind of okay, though. What about you?”

“I’ve bever been to Rome before. Oh! Dad took us Moscow once. We had a really nice _dacha_.”

“That’s like a Russian vacation home, right?” Barry asks. “Cool, what did you guys do there?”

“We were trying to make sure that the Riddler wasn’t trying to assassinate the president by choking her to death with laughing gas.”

Barry blinks. “And…was she?”

Malina throws a handful of parmesan into her mouth. “No, she was trying to assassinate the prime minister with poisoned sugar cookies. God, that was fun vacation. I got a really cool snow globe. You should go, you know.”

“I’ll make sure to put tracking the Riddler on my list of vacation activities,” he laughs. They continue cooking, chatting amiably until Henry and Eddie arrive, the latter with a cherry pie. Malina grins and runs up to hug them both, the only reminder that she has been away from her family for so long. Nora comes out to greet them, and even gives Henry a hug as well. “How as the precinct, Mal?” Eddie asks.

“It was cool. You never told me all the detectives were so cute. Especially that Julio Mendez guy.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Mal, I was a spy there, remember? Besides, even if he worked there while I was there, which he didn’t, I didn’t think telling you about Iris’ boyfriend was relevant.”

“That’s Iris’ boyfriend?” Malina demands, looking at Barry strangely. He blushes, for some reason. He actually prefers to pretend that Julio doesn’t exist, which is a lot easier considering that Iris doesn’t bring him up much except to say that she’s going to meet him. Except with everything that’s been happening since she got back, she hasn’t done that much.

“I wouldn’t say ‘boyfriend’,” he says, remembering what she said to him when he asked that question. “They’ve been on a few dates, but they’re not official.”

“Oh,” she shrugs. “Cool. Is that cherry pie for me?”

“It’s for everyone, Mal,” Henry laughs, and she rolls her eyes.

“Well, I hope you brought another one for everyone else. You know cherry pie is my favourite.”

“I did,” Eddie admits, “but I picked it because you like it so much. What are brothers for?”

Barry looks at the floor, his jaw clenched. There’s a beat of silence, and both Henry and his mother look at him. Too late, Eddie seems to realise what he’s said. “Barry-”

“I should go check the sauce,” he says quickly. “You guys should, uh, go ahead and sit down. It’ll be ready in a sec.”

***

It’s one thing to have Dr. Wells back.

It’s quite another to have the woman walking around on legs that don’t need a wheelchair.

The first few times Iris came to STAR Labs after everything was over, and saw her standing talking to Jesse or fixing something with Chesca, she thought she’d been transported to another earth. She’s used to it, somewhat, but that doesn’t mean it’s not shocking. There are certain things, however, that never change.

“That is a terrible idea,” Jesse says dismissively, not looking away from his equations. Chesca, sat cross-legged on her workbench, scowls at his back.

“It’s a great idea.”

“Uh, guys?” Iris works her way into her suit as the two bicker. “What’s a great idea?” Iris wants to know, crossing to the alcove to get her suit. It’s Dr. Wells herself who answers, taking off her glasses and giving her a wry smile.

“We were talking about how to further Chesca’s powers. Chesca seems to think that building gadgets that help her focus her powers will bring her to the next stage. Jesse, however, thinks that it would be best to simply throw her into combat situations and hope that her powers react.”

“In other words, he wants to hide behind things and then jump out and scare me,” Chesca mutters. She throws a screwed-up piece of paper at him. “I think we should stop letting you have ideas.”

“Complain all you want, but it’s a good idea,” he counters. “And Eddie thinks so too.”

Iris smirks when Chesca’s mouth pops open. “I – he does not.”

“Does too. He says that the best way to learn for him was always right in the thick of things. He’s very concerned with your safety, though, so I wouldn’t worry about being in danger. I’m sure he’ll ride in on his white horse to save you.”

“Will you stop trolling her?” Iris demands, but he shakes his head.

“I’m not trolling her, I’m being serious. Eddie won’t let any harm come to her, and neither will the rest of us. You’re capable of doing amazing things, Chesca, so I don’t know why you’re so reluctant to try.”

Chesca avoids his eyes. “Yeah, well, we can worry about that later. Bambi Eyes, we got reports of some sort bomb going off near the Ironworks, but then the signal cut out. We think it might have cut off a telephone pole.”

Iris switches her glasses for her mask, leaving them on the side, and concentrates on the image of the street that Dr. Wells has brought up. “Make sure we have Barry on standby in case we need to make a statement,” she says, and Dr. Wells nods.

“Ready when you are, Iris.”

Iris closes her eyes and is outside the old ironworks in minutes. They are abandoned – the ironworks now take place on the east side – but the building still stands tall, ghostly silent. She looks around at the street lit up by the lamps, and puts a hand to her ear. “Guys, where did the call come from? I’m not seeing anything here to-”

But before she even finishes her sentence, she hears a cry of help. Faint, at first, and then she calls back. “Hello?”

“HELP!” someone shouts. “HELP US!”

“Iris, they’re on the other side,” Chesca says quickly. “By the street!”

Iris hears them before she opens her eyes, and then she sees the problem – there’s a large crack in the middle of street, and where it ends, she can see an overturned school bus full of people shouting. The telephone pole has snapped, and a wire sparking with electricity whips around it, dangerously close to a puddle. “Help!” one of the adults shouts, joined by a chorus of children. “Miss Miracle, help us!”

“Oh, shit,” Iris breathes. As she watches, the cable snaps closer to the puddle again, and some of the children scream in terror. “Chesca, send the coordinates of this location to the Central City Fire Department and then tell Central City Medical Dispatch to send at least half a dozen ambulances, there’s a flipped school bus and – It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here,” she tells them calmly, though she feels anything but. “I’m going to get you all out. Just be brave for me, okay?”

Iris spends the next five minutes teleporting in and out of the bus, depositing them all on the side of the road. The ambulances and fire department arrive along with some crowds who have heard the commotion, mostly to back her up, and she feels beads of sweat form on her every time she sees that damn cable flying around. She sets on of the teachers and the driver down and looks around. “Is that everyone?” one of the paramedics

But the driver shakes his head. “Sally, she was in the passenger seat when the bus flipped – she’s trapped under there and she can’t move her leg!”

“Is it broken?” Iris demands, voice distorted. He looks between them.

“I don’t – I don’t know, probably.”

“If it’s broken, you can’t move her,” the paramedic says firmly. “You’ll do too much damage to her leg, possibly permanently.”

“Can’t the fire department cut her out?” Iris asks.

“Yes, but with that wire…” she doesn’t need to finish her sentence. Iris looks at it, still jumping around in a deadly dance. It’s no use just stopping it with her mind, because then the sparks could still hit the puddle and blow them all up. She makes a decision and throws her shoulders back. “Tell the fire department to get ready, and tell all of these people to get back.”

“Iris?” Jesse asks, a warning in his voice. “What are you doing?”

“Improvising.”

“That – that is _precisely_ why we have a team! We don’t improvise! Chesca, tell her!”

“Dude, we improvise all the time,” Chesca counters. “Look, Iris, just tell us what you’re going to do, it’s probably fine.”

“I’m going to grab the wire to make sure it doesn’t hit anyone so the fire department have a clear shot at getting her out.”

A tiny pause and then, “Have you lost your mind? That’s how you died the last time! Tell her, Dr. Wells!”

“Actually,” she points out, though there is still a note of worry in her voice, “what killed Iris on both occasions was the chemicals combined with the lightning.”

“Exactly,” she says. “I basically, _am_ lightning, given what I can do with my powers. I…I hope.” She looks around at the crowd, wide-eyed as they watch her approach the flickering wire. “Stay back.” It’s a slow walk, like she’s stalking something – but then she supposes she is. It dances and flickers to and fro, and Iris times it perfectly so that she catches the wire in her hands. At once, a buzzing feeling erupts in her, starting in her fingers and whistling through her whole body. “Iris?” Jesse asks. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, um…yeah, I’m fine. Nothing’s happening, really, I just feel kind of – tickly.” She looks up at everyone. “Go. Do it now.”

The minutes tick by as they carefully cut Sally out of the car and lift her onto a stretcher. When the fire chief gives her a thumbs up, she lets go. Strangely enough, when she lets go, the electricity seems to have disappeared altogether. Everyone bursts into raucous applause, and she hears Chesca breathe a sigh of relief. “You know, now I know why Barry worries about you so much, if you go around doing things like this all the time.”

“Well done, Iris,” Dr. Wells says warmly. “But I do think it’s time Miss Miracle made her exit now.”

She nods, a hand to her ear, and waves goodbye to the crowd, who roar back at her. They pounce on her when she gets back to STAR Labs, but she waves them off. “You guys, I’m fine,” she tells them. “I’m not sure why, but I am.”

“The Mindscape,” Chesca nods. “That’s what it is. That place hit you with some serious mojo, you know.”

“Yes, it would appear that coming back from the dead a second time worked even better than the first,” Dr. Wells smiles. “As long as you’re sure you’re alright?”

That’s another thing she’s not used to – Dr. Wells being supportive without Iris thinking that she was using her for whatever reason. Because now she knows that was Colin, and that the woman is almost as much a victim as she is. Maybe more.

“I’m fine,” she assures her. “But I never got to find out what caused the truck to flip over – I couldn’t exactly canvas the place while they were all standing there.”

“I think this is a job for Iris West, then.”

And so it’s Iris West that makes her way to the scene of the crime the next day, noticeably different in the light of day and with everyone gone. She marks up and takes pictures of the scene, blocking out the sounds of everyone talking as she tries to figure it out. Nora comes down and crouches next to her as she studies the crack in the road. “So this is why you missed Barry’s carbonara?”

“Believe me, I would have rather been stuffing my face with spaghetti, cheese and pancetta,” she replies. “What happened on your end?”

“The people in the bus were saying that it was an earthquake, and that’s what it looks like.”

“That’s true,” Iris nods, taking off her gloves. “And that would be a perfectly good explanation, except that I checked the weather reports – no news of an earthquake. Plus, we don’t get earthquakes in this city; they’re more native to Coast City.” She leads Nora a little away from everyone. “And then I saw this.” They make their way over to the end of the crack that’s like a jagged scar etched into the ground, and Nora’s eyes widen. “That’s…not what an earthquake does.”

“No, it isn’t,” Iris says grimly. At the apex of the crack, there’s a crater about the size of someone’s foot. “Earthquake’s are caused by tectonic plates shifting underneath the ground because of built up pressure. This crater implies that someone hit the ground with enough force to cause a crack like this.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not kidding. Now, Clark Kent has reported that when Superwoman fought General Zod, both women managed to hit the ground with enough force to cause craters like this one all over Metropolis.” Nora winces.

“Iris, please don’t tell me aliens are a thing we have to deal with.”

“Nope, just metahumans,” Iris tells her, rolling her sleeves back down. “I think. They thought it was a bomb because of how sudden it was, and it looks like an earthquake because of the crack.”

“But really, it’s just a metahuman that can make earthquakes,” Nora sighs. “Because an earthquake would be too easy.”

They make their way back to the precinct, since no one remembers anything more or saw who could have done it. “I’m having Chesca and Jesse look into CCTV, or try to find any signs of any weird activity around the place. Oh, how was dinner, by the way?”

Nora tips her head to the side as they step out of the elevator. “It was good, I think. You know, I think being a part of the Miracle Workers is more interesting to them than the fact that they’re all spies.”

Iris nudges her. “And how’s Malina?”

Iris can tell that Nora is trying not to cry right here at work, judging by the look in her eyes. She grins at her. “Must be cool, finally having a daughter.”

“I already have one,” she reminds her, squeezing her shoulder. Iris shrugs.

“Still. How’s Barry? He was really looking forward to it.”

Nora purses her lips together. “Well, he-”

But then someone calls Nora’s name for another case, and she sighs. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Keep me posted.”

“Sure thing,” Iris says, and as she watches Nora walk off to deal with something, she spots Julio across the precinct talking to Captain Singh. Her stomach twists into a knot. They decided at the beginning that they weren’t exclusive, and their dates were strictly casual until Christmas, when she got the feeling that he wanted to ask her to take things to the next level. Only, he had to cancel because of family, and then she had to cancel because she was severely jetlagged from going to two different earths in two days. Then he got really busy since Christmas and the New Year meant a lot of people had been burgled. Not to mention the fact that before Christmas, Linda and Chesca had both pointed out that she only used to call him when she didn’t want to deal with Miss Miracle stuff.

And there’s something else too. Being struck by lightning again (really? She hadn’t expected to become two for two in that regard) had made her realise that her life could end at any moment, and that she shouldn’t waste it on things that can’t make her happy, or dwelling on things she may never have. And stringing a guy like Julio along isn’t something she wants to do. The thing is, she has no idea how to tell him. Or catch him, for that matter, since they’re going through such a busy spell. Even as she speaks, he grabs his coat and leaves out of a different entrance. She sighs and heads back up to her lab.

“So the big news,” her mother says from her desk, “is that there’s some sort of earthquake epidemic in this place!”

“Mom!” she says happily. Her mother hugs her, laughing into her hair.

“You forgot that we were supposed to have lunch today, didn’t you?”

“No,” she counters, still hugging her. “I can’t get happy when I see my mommy?”

“Well, I’m never going to complain about that.” Her mother lets her go and gets out all the food she brought. “So, tell me about what happened today.”

Iris takes the lid off the noodle pot. “Well, this is an ongoing investigation, so…”

“I solemnly swear not to tell the students at Central City Community College anything,” her mother says in a mock-serious tone. Iris grins.

“Well, last night I was hanging out with Barry and I get this call that there’s a bomb – which of course, it isn’t. So I get there and there’s this huge crack in the middle of the ground, and right at the end of it is an overturned school bus, and this electric cable jumping all around it.”

“Take a breath,” her mother laughs. “Have some noodles.”

She eats some noodles and chicken. “Thanks. So, um…where was I?”

“School bus, electric cable.”

“Right. So I have to get everyone out and I called the fire department, but there’s this girl trapped in there with a broken leg, only the fire department can’t cut her out because of the wire. So I grabbed it, and-”

“Wait,” her mother interrupts, frowning. “You _grabbed a live wire_? With electricity?”

Iris swallows her noodles, realising what she said. “Um. Y-Yeah? But, really, I’m fine, mom.”

Her mother rubs her eyes. “Iris, I only have one daughter. Please be careful.”

“I am! I promise. Everyone’s fine, but we don’t know who it could be. But don’t worry, we’ll find them. Team Miracle is on it as we speak.”

Her mother gives her a smile. “What?” Iris asks.

“Nothing. I was just thinking of how proud your dad would be of you, baby.”

Usually, that would make Iris’ smile widen at the bittersweet nature of the memory, but now, at this time of year, it just makes her think of the night he died. And the days leading up to it, as well. Now, when she looks back at them, she can see the looming tragedy inching closer and closer. She remembers her dad was going to take her and Barry to go see _Stuart Little_ , and both of them were excited. She still can’t think about that movie without thinking that something creeping up behind her.

“We could go together,” her mother says softly, her tone understanding. “You wouldn’t have to go by yourself.”

But Iris looks at the table, her glasses already misting from the tears about to form in her eyes. She can’t do it. She’s never been able to do it, and even know, even after seeing the Mindscape version of him, she can’t do it. Just the thought of it takes her back to that night, of the cold, and not being able to move. It’s a few days away, that anniversary, and she has tried to distract herself with work and superheroics, but it hasn’t been working So she shakes her head. “I don’t think I can do it, mom,” she says quietly. “It’s too – hard.”

Other mothers, she knows, would push her, guilt her into it, convince her to go even though she clearly doesn’t want to. But her mother understands how it is for her, that their position is unique, and it’s not like all the other dead fathers. So her mother just smiles and nods. “Of course. Maybe next year?”

“Maybe.”

They keep eating their lunch, her mother telling them about some award that the college paper won, and how they’re going to get to go to some big journalist conference later in the year. They’re just clearing up when there’s a knock on her door. “Iris? I – Oh.”

“Barry,” she greets him. “What are you doing here?”

He enters, his bag hanging from his shoulder and holding some papers. “I was looking for you. Hi, Francine.”

“Hi, Barry,” her mother says, kindly. “How’s work?”

“Fine. City never sleeps, so neither do journalists.” He pauses, clearing his throat. “I can come back, if-”

“No, Bar, it’s fine,” Iris says, beckoning him over. “Let me just – oh, crap.”

“What is it?”

She eyes her phone. “Jewel heist, uptown,” she sighs. “I’m sorry, guys, I have to go.”

“It’s okay,” her mother says. “Duty calls.”

“I will be right back…” Iris looks around to make sure no one’s looking, and then blinks away. Barry gives Francine a rueful smile and she laughs. “I guess this is what it’s like to have to share her. What is that, work?” she asks, gesturing to the papers.

“What? Oh, no. The realtor gave me these, I’m supposed to tell her which ones I want to look at.”

“Right, Nora told me you were looking for an apartment. God, I still remember when you used to fall out of the tree in our backyard, and now you’re all grown up and looking for an apartment.”

“Believe me, I’d give anything to go back to being a kid again,” he admits. “Things were much easier.”

She eyes him. “Barry, is everything alright?”

Barry hesitates. He’s been thinking about it since dinner and that awkward moment at the beginning all day. The rest of dinner went fine, and they learned a lot about each other, but he couldn’t help but be disheartened by the whole thing. He bites his lip. “It’s kind of complicated.”

“One thing you learn in prison, Barry, is how to be a good listener. You’re welcome to tell me. It can just be between us, if you want.”

He pauses again, before sitting down at Iris’ desk. She hands him a takeout box. “Have you eaten?”

“No, but-”

“Eat, Barry. Problems always seem more solvable on a full stomach.”

He grins, taking the box. “Good mantra. So, uh, I guess Iris has told you about my sister?”

“She has,” Francine smiles. “I was glad to hear that something good came out of all of that earth-hopping you kids did.”

“Right. And she came over for dinner last night, and it was great, but…” he looks down at his hands. “I kind of feel like she doesn’t…need me. Like, there’s not much point in having an extra brother when she already has Eddie. She’s never had a mom, so that’s cool – hell, with her powers, she probably needs Iris more than she needs me-”

“Your sister has powers like Iris?” Francine interrupts.

“Yeah, it’s a little complicated.”

“Do they grow on _trees_?”

Barry gives her a small smile before sighing. “I don’t know, I kind of just feel like I missed out on a lot, and I’ll never be able to catch up. I’ll never get to be a…real brother for her.”

Francine thinks for a moment, studying him. “You know what my greatest fear was, coming out into the world again?”

He shakes his head. “What?”

“That I’d missed too much. That life had gone on too far without me. And that Iris wouldn’t need me anymore.”

“No, Francine, Iris – she wouldn’t be half the person she is today without you.”

She nods. “And I know that – in here,” she adds, tapping her temple. Then she holds a hand over her heart. “But in here? I look around and she has a best friend who adores her and a job where she’s appreciated and the whole city talking about how much they need her. And she had a mom – she had Nora. She taught her how to do makeup, and how to drive, and helped her with her college applications. And it was…hard.” Her voice cracks a little, and he sees it, the scars of being away from her child for so long, despite how content Francine always seems. “But, Barry, that doesn’t mean she needs me any less. I’m her mother – she’ll always need me.”

“But she grew up with you,” he points out quietly. “She knew you.”

“And Malina will know you. This is all new ground for all of you, so it’s okay to feel like you’re a little shaky. You’ll get there eventually.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. And if you ask me, this all happened this way for a reason.”

“You do?”

“Mm,” she nods. “There will be things that you’ll be able to do for her that no one else can, because you’re unique. There will be things that she needs _you_ for. You never know what you need until the universe puts it in front of you, and that’s when you realise you can’t live without it.”

Before he gets a chance to reply, there’s a flash of green and Iris pops back into the room, blinking. Then she takes her glasses out of her pocket and slips them back on. “Okay, I’m back!”

“That was fast,” Barry remarks, and she shrugs, grabbing a spring roll.

“Experience. Oh, I caught the Twilight Robbers, by the way. You’ll probably hear all about it when you get back to CCPN.”

“Iris, we’ve been tracking them for weeks – they’ve hit a dozen jewellery stores all over the West Coast!”

She pauses, chewing. “Well, it’s a good thing I caught them, then. Hey, why were you looking for me before? Did you want to talk?”

Barry glances at Francine. “No, I think I’m good, actually. Unless you have an opinion on whether I should have skylights or not.”

“You should,” she says immediately, picking up one of the apartment listings. She wrinkles her nose. “Ew, not this one.”

“Why not?”

“It’s way too close to the Westfall Sewers – it’ll smell. Plus, there’s no balcony.”

Barry blinks. “I need a balcony?”

“Balconies are pretty,” she says. “Especially the ones with French windows.” Then they hear somebody shout ‘WEST’ and Iris winces. “And that’s my lunch break. You guys should probably go. Mom, I’ll see you for dinner?”

“Bye, baby,” her mother says, kissing her on the cheek.

“I’m on duty tonight,” Barry tells her, “so I’ll see you at STAR Labs.”

“Yeah, we have a team meeting tonight, actually.”

“Please tell me you’re all going to decide that Iris shouldn’t be grabbing live wire cables,” her mother says, and Barry whips around to look at her.

“Iris, you – you grabbed a live wire cable?”

Iris throws her hands up in the air. “I really think you’re all making this a bigger deal than it actually is.”

“West, how many times do – Oh. Barry, Mrs. West,” Captain Singh says, her voice changing. Francine clears her throat.

“Iris is all yours, Captain, Barry and I were just leaving.”

“Always good to see you both,” she says pleasantly as they leave. Then she turns back to Iris, who regrets for the millionth time that for whatever reason, she can’t read her boss’ mind. “Any leads on that earthquake, West?”

“Well, Captain, we don’t actually think it was an earthquake,” she tells her. “But I’m looking into it. I’ll have an answer for you in the next few days, hopefully.”

“See that you do,” she says curtly, disappearing back down the stairs. Iris gets on with her day, counting down the hours until she has to leave, because she has to talk to her team – the _whole_ team, not just her, Barry, Dr. Wells, Jesse and Chesca. As she’s walking out of the lab at the end of the day, she spots Julio talking with one of the other cops, and she takes a deep breath. “Detective Mendez?”

“Iris,” he says, as the officer walks away. “Hi.”

“Hi. Are you busy?”

“I am, actually,” he sighs, looking to where the cop is beckoning him to the door. “We’re ordering extra patrols because of the whole earthquake thing, and we’re following up on some leads about it as well.”

“Right,” she replies. “No, I get it. I just – I really think we should talk.”

“Me too,” he says. “I will – I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure,” Iris agrees. “Have a good one.”

She sighs as she watches him leave. Putting it off certainly isn’t going to help things, but there’s nothing she can do about that if he has to be somewhere. She looks at her watch – she’s supposed to be on duty for several hours tonight, along with Barry, Wally and Linda, but she called everyone so they could have a meeting to discuss certain things. When she gets there, Eddie and Linda are helping Chesca with some new equipment, while Dr. Wells work on something and Wally, Barry and Jesse watch from the terminals. Iris comes to stand next to them. “What’s going on?”

“Lin designed some gauntlets to go with her glasses,” Wally explains. “They’re thinking of adding sonic blasts.”

“I think she can probably do those by herself,” Jesse points out, “eventually, if she works on them. But she doesn’t want to.”

“Well, maybe she’s not ready for that yet,” Barry says. They watch Linda instruct Eddie on how to put the gauntlets on Chesca, while explaining what they do. “Eddie’s being helpful. Does Chesca ever let anyone else play with those?”

“Nope,” Iris, Wally and Jesse say.

“Me neither.”

“Well, Barry,” Jesse laughs. “You don’t look like Eddie.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Wally says. “I have thirty on them getting together in the next month.”

“Pleasure doing business with-”

As they speak, however, a blast of sound erupts from Chesca’s right wrist and heads towards one of the light fixtures, snapping it free. Iris catches it with her mind before it drops on them all, moving it away to the other side of the room. Chesca gulps and Linda clears her throat. “So maybe this is a work in progress.”

“Nuh-uh,” Chesca decides, “I do not need to take anyone out of the game like this.”

“Chess-” Eddie begins, but she shakes her head.

“We can try them later. Ahem. Team meeting?”

Iris perks up as Dr. Wells comes down to join them. “I just have to wait for Nora.”

“She’s having dinner with Malina,” Barry tells her. “But I can tell her anything we decide.”

“Right.” Iris adjusts her glasses. “Well, you all know that Waller asked me whether I would want to have a partnership with him, similar to the one that he has with Superwoman, apparently.”

Everyone nods, looking a little more guarded. Anything that reminds them all of the craziness with Patty and her mother doesn’t exactly have the team ecstatic. She does notice, though, that Barry doesn’t really react all that much, the way he used to when Waller was brought up. “And I just wanted to know everyone’s thoughts on it, and whether you think we should do it or not.”

“He wants our opinion?” Linda asks.

“No, _I_ do,” Iris tells her. “It’s not just me on the team, it’s all of you as well. I want to know whether that’s something you could get on board with.”

“What would that entail?” Wally asks. Iris frowns briefly.

“I’m not sure about the specifics, but I think it would essentially boil down me telling him about threats that I couldn’t deal with by myself. Like if Simone Stagg was at the heart of a criminal organisation that endangered the entire country.”

Barry stares at her. “Wait, who could threaten the safety of the country?”

“Can’t say.” _I’ll tell you later_. “But if we agree to this, everyone has to be okay with the fact that me talking to Waller about certain things on this team is a thing that’s going to happen.”

Linda shrugs. “I think we’d be more okay with that if we knew exactly what he wanted from us. Eddie – you work with him. What are deals like that like?”

He shrugs. “You guys know I’m not at liberty to talk about things like that, even if I knew it’s nature. But look at Superwoman – she seems to have total freedom over what she does.”

Jesse snorts. “Do you not think that might have something to do with the fact that Superwoman is an alien who can shoot lasers out of her eyes, and Iris-”

“Yes?” Iris asks, lightning sparking around her fingers, and Dr. Wells clears her throat.

“I think what my nephew means to say is that Superwoman has been operating much longer than Miss Miracle has. Though I do have to say that I have dealt with M.A.I.M.E.D. before, and their work is often seamless and relentless in their pursuit of good.”

“You mean the twenty-year schism that almost got everyone killed aside?” Wally asks, and everyone laughs. Dr. Wells smiles.

“Yes. But, Iris, as you said yourself, Amadeus asked you. You are the one out there, you’re the one where the decision lies.”

“Yeah, and I don’t see any of us not getting behind any decision you make,” Barry tells her. “We all know you’re going to think about it.”

“Ball’s in your court, Bambi Eyes,” Chesca adds, and Iris rubs her face.

“Right. Well, thanks. And I promise I won’t just let him into our lives if it could be dangerous. Eddie, has he said anything about what he’s going to do to you yet?”

He shakes his head, shrugging. “Waller’s always liked suspense.”

Chesca gives him an encouraging look and Jesse sniffs. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If he does something we don’t like, we can just get Iris to mind control him away to an island or something.”

“That’s always an option,” Linda grins. “Somewhere warm, though.”

“Haha,” Iris laughs, shaking her head. “Funny, guys. Look, I know you guys have work, so if you’re not on duty, scram.”

Barry watches as Wally and Linda get themselves settled in for the next few hours, and Iris get into her suit. Jesse and Dr. Wells leave to get dinner, Eddie going to have dinner with Henry, and Barry takes the opportunity to talk to Chesca as she disappears into her workroom. “Chess?”

“Hm? Oh. Hey, beanpole, what’s up?”

“Nothing. I just…wanted to see how you were doing with everything.”

She gives him a curious look. “What do you mean?”

“With your powers. I saw you out there, and I just wanted to know why you seemed so…apprehensive.”

She folds her arms, worrying her lip. “Not everyone can do the hero thing like Iris can, Barry.”

“Chesca, come on, you know that’s not true-”

“But it is. We go to Earth-2 and Iris’ doppelganger is even nerdier than she is, but she’s still got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. On Earth-52, she’s the badass reporter. But on Earth-2, I’m a criminal mastermind who makes guns for Captain Cold and Heatwave,” she mutters. She looks down at her hands. “What if I let my powers develop, grow stronger, and I turn out just like them?”

Barry shakes his head. “You won’t. Do you know why?”

“If you say it’s because I have better hair than she does-”

“No,” he laughs. “I have a theory, actually, about the Particle Accelerator. I think it just makes you more of what you are. Toni Woodward, who was a bully, just turned into a stronger one. Iris does have a big heart, you’re right, so she became a superhero. So I don’t have any doubt that you’ll become one too, because you were one before you got powers.”

“What do you mean?”

“You saved my best friend’s life,” he says simply. “Seems pretty heroic to me. Just…don’t be too hard on yourself, you know? And don’t rush. When the time comes for you to be a hero, I’m sure Vibe will rise to the occasion.”

“Right,” she nods. “Thanks. How’s things with Malina, by the way? She sounds like a badass, coming out of all that and barely needing rehab.”

“They’re cool. Still early, but we’re getting along.”

Chesca nods. “And is she handling her powers okay?”

He shrugs. “They’re kind of spotty right now, but okay. I think she’s wary of using them before she really knows how they work.”

“That’s cool, but this is what I was telling Eddie – you guys have to be there for her. These powers aren’t easy at all, and she’s going to need you. All of you.”

Barry nods. “I’ll remember that.”

“Good. See you tomorrow, beanpole.”

Barry grins and makes his way back to the Cortex, where Wally and Linda are watching Iris run around patrolling the city on monitors. Linda looks at him as he comes to sit next to her. “How is she?”

“I think she’ll be okay,” he answers. “We all need a little encouragement, I guess. How’s things at the hospital, Wally?”

“Okay. My interns are driving me up a wall, though. It’s actually nice to come here and do this for a little while.” He pauses. “That’s something, about Waller. I can’t believe he wants to work with Iris.”

“Well, she did find the real villain behind Calamity,” Barry points out. “And she’s the closest thing this city has to Superwoman or Batgirl or the Green Arrow. I mean, she’s better than all of them, but still.”

“That she is,” Linda smirks knowingly. “So he’s still there? Waller still has Colin?”

“Yep. In some underground bunker thing, though, so don’t worry.”

Linda sighs. “I know. I just thought of what I would have said to him if I had been there, you know? I mean, that guy took over my life, made me a supervillain, kidnapped by boyfriend…What did you say to him?”

“Me?” he shrugs. “I didn’t go down there. I didn’t want to.”

She gives him a curious look. “Why not?”

Barry thinks of the moment they all told him that Iris was dead, and clenches his jaw. “Because,” he says simply, “I would have killed him.”

Before Linda can reply, a shrill beeping noise emanates from the control panels. “Guys?” she asks. “What is that?”

Wally taps on the screens. “Someone is causing earthquakes again.”

***

Iris is downtown by the docks when she gets the call, intending to do the loop of the city again. She stops dead. “What? Where?”

“By the plaza,” Linda answers. “I’m sending you video now…”

Iris frowns as an image shows up behind her lenses. There’s a woman in goggles and a black costume standing in the middle of the town square, cracks bursting around her as everyone flees the scene. Iris teleports there in a moment, her ears filling with the sound of people screaming. The woman grins when she sees her. “Central City’s Golden Grace,” she says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“The name’s Geomancer, sweetheart.”

“Geomancer? Nice. Are you done?”

“Not even a little.” She takes a step forward. “What is they say in wrestling? Oh, that’s right – let’s get ready to _rumble_!”

She slams both her fists into the ground, and Iris manages to rise off the floor before the crack gets to her. Others aren’t so lucky, though – the earthquake makes several buildings shake and she sees a piece of concrete speed towards a little boy on the sidewalk. Without a word, Iris flicks her wrist at it, sending it careening into a wall, and then flies to get the boy out of the way. “Guys, call the police, the fire department, and some ambulances,” she pants. “Looks like we’re going to have a repeat of the last time.”

Then she’s seeing stars when another quake hits her and she slams into a wall, managing to get out of the way before a street lamp falls on her. Iris springs up, intending to fight her again, but then another building starts to crumble, and Iris can hear people inside of it. She speeds into it getting them all away from the area, relieved that most people have taken the hint to get clear. By the time she gets back to facing this new metahuman, however, she’s gone.

She gets back to STAR Labs when everyone is safe and the police have arrived, and the first thing Wally does is make her sit in the medbay. She’s bleeding from her head and, when Wally peels off the jacket of her suit, several places on her arms. “I’m fine,” she says at Barry and Linda’s worried looks. “I’ve had – _ah_ – worse.”

“You have a broken rib,” Wally informs her. “And you might have a head injury. The rib is already healing, but I’ll need to do an X-Ray before you leave to make sure it set properly.”

He starts working on some of her cuts, and Linda looks at her. “What the hell was that, Iris? Was that an alien?”

“No, metahuman. She called herself Geomancer, and she can cause earthquakes with her hands and feet,” Iris explains. She thinks back to the woman’s powers. “Not every time she walks, obviously, but…It’s going to be really hard to defeat her.”

“Why do you say that?” Barry asks.

“Because she knew that I wasn’t going to risk innocent people dying just to go after her,” she points out. She hisses when Wally pulls some glass out of her skin. “Her powers are so fast, someone could be dead in the few seconds it takes me to concentrate on her. Besides, she was doing the whole ‘Miss Miracle, I have come to defeat you’ gloaty-gloat thing that all the metas we fight seem to have down.”

Barry thinks for a moment. “The Boot.”

“The what?” Iris frowns.

“The Boot.”

“You want to go shoe shopping?”

“No,” Barry laughs. He goes to the terminals and types for a few seconds. A diagram of a gun comes up on the larger screens. “This is the Boot, remember? We used it on Atom Smasher, but she broke it. Chesca built a new one for the Metahuman Task Force, but we haven’t tried it out yet, so it hasn’t been cleared for use by CCPD yet.”

They all look at each other. “So I guess we’re testing it out,” Linda says. She narrows her eyes at it. “I might have to make some adjustments, but I think this thing could be ready to go by tomorrow.”

Iris regards it, putting her glasses back on, and Wally looks around. “Hm. Okay, so what, we keep an eye out for Geomancer and then Iris hits her with the Boot?”

“No, we can’t do that,” she says. “I need to be the one saving people, because that’s how she makes herself known, remember? So we have someone on patrol in the van, and me on patrol normally. When we find her, I save the people, they hit her with the Boot.”

“Yeah, but who?” Linda asks. “Like you said, it hasn’t been safety-checked, and as much of a badass as Nora is, I don’t really want to send her out with a gun like this.”

“Eddie,” Iris decides. “He’s a spy – it’s not like he hasn’t fired a gun before. Chesca can drive the van, and whoever’s around tomorrow can help.”

Wally snickers. “What?” Linda asks.

“It’s a good plan. But you’ve basically given those two the space to make eyes at each other in the STAR Labs van.”

***

“…which is right in your price range, Dr. Allen, and comes with a parking space,” his realtor finishes cheerfully. “And it comes with a study and the walk-in wardrobes that you requested. Why don’t you take a look around, and I’ll be here to answer any questions you have?”

Barry smiles. “Great, thanks.” She nods and sits at the kitchen counter to make a call, while Barry walks around the apartment again. It’s more of a loft than an apartment, on the top floor of one of the new-ish developments that went up a few years ago. It _is_ nice, he’s realised, with a huge bedroom and new kitchen, and since it’s on the top floor he has access to the roof. He gets the feeling that Iris would love it if she saw it. She’d probably be with him right now, except she’s on patrol looking for Geomancer.

He hadn’t meant to start asking about things that Iris listed as important. It’s just that he mentioned the high ceilings and his realtor showed him one that happened to be really nice. And then the same thing happened with the fireplace, which really does make places look homier. He supposes it’s just because Iris has always had good taste. But it’s also because it kind of…feels right. When he was looking for apartments with Patty, it was the one thing he couldn’t ask her advice on, because she’d just told him she was in love with him. Doing something that big without her advice had felt bizarre, to say the least. They’d toured colleges with each other, he’d asked her opinion on whether he should bother with getting his Masters, and he’d actually helped her find her apartment. So now, when he’s finding a place for himself, it feels right that he has her input in this.

(He’s very studiously ignoring the voice in his head saying that if he and Iris eventually _do_ become a couple, she could wind up living here with him).

Barry stands on the balcony, looking down at the traffic below. Given that he’s been dealing with his family – and now they all have Geomancer to deal with – he hasn’t really sat down to evaluate where he stands on Iris. It kind of feels like they’re back to normal, the way it was before the lightning, with him tickling her and her throwing things at him, and them teasing each other. How it was before she became Miss Miracle and everything got complicated. Like they’re just Barry and Iris again, trying to figure out the world. Even the lightning rod thing isn’t an issue – Iris was adamant that he learn how to guard his thoughts like she taught Chesca to do, so now she only talk telepathically with him when she wants to. Not like she needs to often, since they know each other so well that communicating without saying anything is completely normal.

And he loves their normal.

Barry goes back inside, ready to tell Betty that he’s picking this one, when his phone starts to ring. “Hello?”

“Barry? Where are you?”

“Henry?” he frowns. He sounds completely panicked. “I’m at an apartment listing. What is it?”

“I – Malina,” he gets out. “There’s something wrong with her.”

***

Iris flies lazily over the city, trying to concentrate on where Geomancer could strike next. She intended to take this day to sit down and think about what partnering with Waller could mean for her and her friends, but this is a fun alternative. Or it would be, if she didn’t have to listen to Eddie and Chesca flirt shamelessly in the van as they drove.

“I can’t believe you just said that to me,” Chesca giggles, and Eddie laughs.

“You’re the one who made me watch those movies! The jokes just write themselves.”

“They do not!”

“Do to! Why did Anakin Skywalker cross the road?”

“Why?”

“To get to the Dark Side.”

“That is a firm four.”

“Alright.” Eddie pauses. “What website was Chewbacca arrested for creating?”

Iris can practically see Chesca blushing. “Which one?”

“Wookieleaks.”

Chesca snorts with laughter. “Uh, guys?” Iris asks. “I know this can be really boring, but we have to concentrate.”

“Sorry,” they say together, and Iris smiles, doing another sweep of the street. Geomancer has never attacked in daylight before, but Iris has never liked leaving these kinds of things to chance. Every time she let her guard down last year, she usually ended up hit in the head, or attacked by jellyfish, or dead.

“We’re not seeing anything on the radar,” Chesca tells her.

“Yes, Iris, it would appear that Miss Fells does like to operate at night,” Dr. Wells adds.

“Miss Fells?”

“I used facial recognition software and the feed from Iris’ lenses,” she explains. “Adrienne Wells was hit by the Particle Accelerator while working in the Central City Institute for Earthquake Engineering.”

“And nine months later she has a wonderful reminder of it,” Iris mutters. “Okay, well, send that over to Nora so they can put an APB on her civilian identity. I’ll keep a lookout.”

It’s not long, however, before they start again. “Just one more,” Eddie says. “Which program do Jedis use to open PDF files?”

“Eddie, seriously.”

“A-”

A blaring alarm sounds in Iris’ head, coupled with the one that comes from the comms, and Dr. Wells interrupts them. “She’s by the children’s hospital.”

“A _children’s_ hospital?” Iris demands, irate. “Are you kidding?”

“Now, Iris, remember the plan,” Dr. Wells tells her. “You focus on rescuing the people – Eddie and Chesca will deal with Geomancer.”

Iris nods and flies towards the location, where she can already see Geomancer disrupting traffic with her power, smashing her fists into the ground so that fault lines appear in the road. To her horror, the cracks have already reached the hospital.

And it’s already crumbling.

“Dr. Wells, tell everyone in the hospital and in the surrounding areas to get clear, _now_!”

“Iris, you won’t be able to get everyone out of there fast enough!”

“I know.” She feels electricity buzzing in her veins. “So I’m not going to try.”

“What are you going to do?” Eddie asks.

“I’m Miss Miracle,” she says with much more confidence than she feels. “I’ve got this.”

Iris hovers in mid air, watching the hospital. Her powers have always fascinated her, the fact that she can grab things with her mind. Big things, small things, living things. And sometimes, lots of things at once. Like now, when she is about to grip this entire ten-storey building to prevent it from toppling over. Her muscles lock up as she immediately feels the weight of it settling on her, and beads of sweat form on her forehead.

“ _Jesu Christi_ , Iris,” Chesca breathes, looking up at her.

“Yeah,” Iris grinds out, her limbs shaking. “Yeah, I’m great. Could we speed this up?”

“Go, Eddie,” she tells him, and he nods, grabbing the gun. Geomancer is in the middle of the road.

“Miss Miracle?” she calls. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Eddie slips behind a car, trying to get into position. More and more people file out of the hospital and out of range, but he’s still not close enough. He moves forward again, but the movement alerts Geomancer, and she smacks the floor again, sending a crack towards him. He staggers and falls, hitting his head on a car. “ _Eddie_!” Chesca shouts, leaping out of the van. Then something strange happens: a weird feeling surges through her, making her skin buzz, and when she throws her arms out, a weird pulse ripples out of them and hits Geomancer, sending her careening to the other side of the street. Chesca stares after her for a minute, before sitting down to crouch next to Eddie.

Meanwhile, Dr. Wells calls Iris on the comms. “Iris, everyone’s out. You can…let go.”

It happens slowly, so slowly that it could be slow motion in a movie. The rubble crumbles around the building, inwards so that no one is hurt by it, and Iris practically collapses from exhaustion. “Eddie?” Chesca says desperately through the comms. “Eddie, wake up!”

Iris flashes down to see Chesca frantically tapping Eddie’s face. “Adobe Wan Kenobi,” he mumbles.

“Huh?”

“That’s what Jedis use to open PDF files,” he explains, his eyes still closed. He smiles. “That’s my favourite.”

Chesca laughs and then, to Iris’ everlasting amusement, Chesca leans down and kisses him, right in the middle of the street. She raises her eyebrows as Eddie reaches up to touch her face as she kisses him. “Okay,” Iris says to no one in particular. “I guess I’ll take care of the…unconscious…metahuman. Sure. Posse out.”

***

Barry gets to the nurses office at Central City School of Law to find Malina rocking back and forth on a stool with her hands on her head, surrounded by nurses and a frantic-looking Henry. “I’m here,” he declares. “I’m here, what’s wrong with her?”

“It’s too _loud_ …” she whispers, pained, and Henry turned to him.

“She keeps saying that. She had a panic attack in the quad, but now she keeps saying it’s too loud, but no one’s saying anything.”

Barry looks around – there are five nurses, two doctors, and a security guard standing around. “Get them to leave,” he tells Henry.

“What?”

“Henry,” he says quietly, “Malina is psychic. She didn’t have a panic attack – her powers are becoming more concrete. When she says it’s too loud, she means that there are too many people around, their thoughts are crowding her brain, and that she has a headache. Get rid of them.”

He bends down to face Malina, who still has her hands shoved over her ears. “Hey, Malina? Can you hear me?”

“Barry, it’s too loud,” she says again as he hears everyone leave. He nods.

“I know it is,” he says quietly. “But my voice is the loudest, right?”

“R-Right.”

“Right. So concentrate on my voice, and try to ignore the others. Hey, what’s your favourite song?

“Um,” she frowns. “I like ‘Poker Face’.”

“I love that song! Look, let’s sing it, and you can concentrate on my voice.” He pauses. “ _Can’t read my, can’t read my, no he can’t read my, poker face_ …”

Malina swallows. “ _She’s got me like nobody_.”

“Good!” he grins. “ _Can’t read my, can’t read my, no he can’t read my, poker face_. _She’s got me like nobody_.”

Malina joins in concentrating on his face, and eventually her hands slip down from her head and her breathing calms. “Better?” he asks gently. She nods.

“Is that…normal?”

“Totally normal,” he assures her. “Iris told me she got them when she first got her powers, and she still gets them now. I’ll get her to talk to you.”

She wipes her eyes. “Wow. I thought having powers would be a lot less complicated than that.”

“It gets easier. Look, do you want me to take you home? I get the feeling that you won’t want to go back to classes after this.”

“And have dad fussing over me?” she wrinkles her nose.

“You can come hang out at the house,” he suggests. “I won’t fuss over you. Much.”

She smiles. “Yeah, okay. Just let me get my stuff.”

Henry goes out to get Malina stuff to make her feel better, so she and Barry just hang out at the house. “Sorry I interrupted your day,” she says. “Um, what were you doing?”

“I was just with my realtor,” he shrugs. “It’s cool. Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah. I guess Iris makes it look easy.”

“Iris has had practice,” he points out. She sighs.

“But I read all that stuff that Waller gave me…”

Barry shakes his head. “Malina, you can’t expect that to prepare you for this. Iris had me, and my mom, her mom, and our friends, and she’s still figuring this stuff out.  You have to give yourself time for that.”

“Right,” she nods. “Guess I have a ways to go before I become the next Miss Miracle.”

“Sorry!” a voice calls from the door. “I’m sorry, we just had Geomancer to deal with.” Iris appears in the living room, her scarf wrapped around her against the cold. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Malina answers. “Thanks. Barry talked me through it.”

Iris smiles at him. “I guess that’s what big brothers are for, right?”

“Guess it is,” he says. “You caught Geomancer?”

“Yep. All locked up in Iron Heights. Oh!” she says suddenly. “Jesse owes us money.”

“Really?” Barry grins, interested. “That’s something.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Who’s Jesse and why does he owe you money?” Malina asks, and they share a look.

“Nothing,” they say together. “In-joke,” Iris adds. “Malina, everything’s a little crazy right now, but as soon as it settles down, I can answer any questions you have about this whole thing.”

“Thanks,” she says again, and then she perks up when the door opens. Nora and Henry come through the door, both with identical worried looks on their faces. “I’m fine,” Malina says before either of them say anything. “Really. Barry talked me through it.”

“Are you sure?” Nora asks. “Because we can get Jesse to check on you.”

“Nora, she seems absolutely fine,” Iris assures her. “Believe me, I know what damage would look like.”

“If you’re sure. And what’s this I hear about you stopping a building from falling over?”

“What?” Barry asks, and Henry nods.

“Yes, I saw that on Twitter. The Children’s Hospital, right?”

He shows them the video and Barry gives her a proud look. “That’s my girl,” Nora says warmly, hugging her, and Iris shrugs, adjusting her glasses shyly .

“Yeah, well…it’s what I do.” Her phone beeps. “Okay, I have to go, but I’ll see you guys in a couple of days.”

Both Barry and Nora understand what she means without her having to say it. Barry hugs her goodbye and Nora kisses her on the cheek. Malina clenches her jaw. “You’ll call if you need anything?”

“I will,” she promises. “Get some rest, Malina.”

“Sure,” she replies. Iris leaves and Malina goes for the bag that Henry’s holding.

“Mal,” he sighs when she brings something out. “You’ve had a long day…”

“Come on, dad, this is fun!”

“What is she talking about?” Nora asks. She’s opening a can of something.

“Some trick she learned as a kid.”

Barry’s eyes widen when he sees it’s a can of cashew nuts. She takes one out, throws it in the air, and catches it with her mouth. “Look!” she says proudly, swallowing. “No chewing.”

Nora snorts first, quietly, and then erupting in full-blown laughter. Henry and Malina both look confused. “What?” she asks.

“Nothing,” Barry smiles. “You just really are my sister.”

***

Apparently, it’s Iris’ destiny to break up with people in Jitters, because that’s where Julio agreed to meet her. He looks a little apprehensive when he sits down, and she thinks that he must already know what’s coming. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies. She takes a deep breath. “Look, Julio, I think I should apologise-”

“You should apologise?” He frowns. “Why? I’m the one who keeps cancelling on you.”

“Yeah, but…I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve had a really weird year. What with getting shot, and Calamity, and my mom getting out of prison, and all this stuff that happened with my family, and everything. And I kind of realised that I was probably dating you to get away from dealing with all that, which is a terrible reason to date someone.”

He regards her. “I see. But I’m apologising because I don’t think I should be dating anyone right now, either. I mean, I just became a detective, and when you’re Nora Allen’s partner you have to step it up, so I have to keep cancelling to keep up with her.”

“Believe me, I get that,” she laughs. “I practically grew up with the force, I know what it’s like.” She sighs ruefully. “Wow, I guess this wasn’t meant to be, huh?”

“It could have been worse,” he points out. “At least we’re not lying to each other.”

“Good point. And I hope we can stay friends, if not just for the reason that having the senior CSI on the force mad at you can never be good.” He laughs.

“Of course.” He gets up and hugs her. “See you at work.”

Iris watches him leave and stays for exactly fifteen minutes before someone taps her on the shoulder. “Miss West?”

“Hey,” she greets the agent. “Taking me for a ride, slick?”

He doesn’t reply and Iris shrugs, following him out to the car. Waller works fast, so she wasn’t surprised that when she called him, he arranged to have a car sent to her immediately. She’s shown to his office as soon as she gets there, and wastes no time in telling him what she wants. “I’ll do it.”

“You will?”

“Yes. But I have conditions.”

“I see.”

“I’m training Malina Thawne myself. She needs someone who knows what they’re doing, because super secret spies raised around deception isn’t going to help. She needs help. Support. Love.”

He regards her. “Anything else?”

“You don’t interfere unless I ask or we’re in danger, and you stay out of our lives. Have people looking after us if you want, but I don’t want to see them.”

Waller nods. “All reasonable. Coincidentally, we’ve decided what to do with Eddie.”

“What?”

“He’s being relocated to Central City permanently. He will be the liaison between your team and this organisation, and he will also report on Miss Thawne’s progress. Just because she is now a metahuman, doesn’t mean she isn’t an agent.”

Iris stares at him. “You knew I would agree.”

“I knew you would do what’s best for the people around you,” he counters. “Your first instinct was to protect Miss Thawne. You and I are not dissimilar, Iris. We just have different methods.”

“Have you told him?”

“No, I thought I would give you that pleasure. His cover will be an insurance salesman. His father can help with that.” He pauses. “You don’t need to do anything else, but I do have some things to inform you. Technically, everyone there is now an employee of this organisation. You will have certain levels of security clearance allowing access to certain safe houses and databanks. Any outstanding debts or other monetary agreements are henceforth our responsibility. This will all be in writing, of course, and there’s more, but that’s the gist of it.”

Iris nods. “Thank you, Amadeus.”

She thinks she sees the ghost of a smile on his face. “You’re welcome, Iris.”

Chesca is surprisingly okay with the news, though Iris thinks that's more to do with Eddie than anything else. But she's more interested in the news about Julio. "Are you okay?" she asks, sitting on her workbench.

"I've been better. But I'm okay."

"Cool. So when are you and Barry getting together?"

Iris gives her a sad smile. "I don't think that's happening, Chess."

"What?" her friend demands. "But you're...you're Barry and Iris! You belong together!"

"Maybe," she admits. "Maybe not."

"Girl. WHAT are you talking about?"

Iris sighs. "Barry loves me," she says simply. "As much as he can, as much as he is able given what happened to us. But I can't keep expecting him to wake up and have feelings that he may never have, because it's not fair to him. Hell, it's not fair to me. But he's my best friend, and I have him, and I wouldn't trade him for the world."

Chesca bites her lip. "This is your weekly reminder," she says, "that I really,  _really_ hate what Patty did to you guys."

"And that is well within your rights." She makes to leave, and then turns back. "And don't for one second think we're not talking about those new powers of yours, Vibe. Or your boyfriend."

As hard as those things were, though, the last thing Iris does is the hardest. No one calls her and she booked the day off weeks ago. Nobody at work expects her anyway. She spends the day in her apartment, trying to think of what to say, how to apologise. She knows her mother will go early, and Wally told her he goes with his mother and sister Dani in the afternoon, so evening seems better anyway. She takes the old vinyl of _My Girl_ that she bought a few years ago – she has Barry’s copy that he gave to her at Christmas now, and that means more to her than anything she bought one lazy Sunday. She gets to the flower store as it’s closing and buys a huge bunch of camellias, before making her way down to the cemetery.

There are flowers there already, so she knows everyone has already been. Heart beating in her chest, she kneels before the gravestone. Lays down the flowers and the records. Finally, she doesn’t allow herself to think. Only speak.

“Hi, daddy,” she says quietly. “It’s me. It’s Iris. I’m sorry I’ve never visited, but…but I’m here now. I hope you know I always wanted to – it was just hard because…God, where do I start? But it’s not hard anymore, I promise. I’m better. I’m whole. I have people. Mom’s doing amazing, of course, and Nora has always been there for me, and Barry – well, you always loved Barry. But Chesca and Jesse, you would love them, dad, really. They’re incredible.”

She takes a steadying breath. “I’m sorry if I made it seem like what happened to you broke me. I don’t know where you are, but I hope you don’t feel bad. Because I’m a superhero now, daddy, and you’re one of the reasons I do it so well. So you just – you be good, okay? Because I’m fine. I make miracles.”

Iris wipes her eyes. “So I guess I should start with college, huh, since we have a lot of ground to cover? I got into Notre Dame, and Indiana’s really cute…”

She talks for hours, and when she goes home, she wraps her arms around her mother and cries, because she’s happy and sad, because her father is dead but he never really left her, and because Joe West has justice at last.

***

“…so Eddie has to sell insurance?” Nora repeats. Malina frowns, putting down her fork.

“Have you ever done that before?”

“I don’t think so,” he replies. “Took out an assassin masquerading as an insurance salesman, but never been one.”

Nora and Barry share a look. “O…kay,” Barry says. “But at least you guys are staying, right? So Iris can train you.”

“It’ll be fun seeing Team Miracle with two of you around,” Henry says, and Nora laughs.

“Be careful, though. Iris can throw lightning – you have a lot to catch up to.”

Malina seems very interested in her dessert. “Yeah, well, like you said, it’ll be fun, right?”

Barry looks at his watch again. “What’s up, honey?” his mother asks.

“I have to go pick up the keys for the loft,” he says, standing up. “I’ll see you guys later.”

Barry’s by the door when he realised that Henry’s followed him. “Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“I just wanted to thank you for being there a few days ago,” he says sincerely.

“Hey, anything to help.”

“And I wanted to say…your watch.” He hesitates. “I hope you’re not wearing it just because I gave it to you, because-”

“Don’t worry about it,” he shrugs. “This is a replica that Iris had made for me two years ago.” Henry nods.

“Ah,” he says, smiling. “I see. Well, have a good night, Barry.”

Barry isn’t expecting to see Iris at Jitters this late in the evening after he’s got the keys, so he’s surprised to see her nursing a Miss Miracle order, looking down about something. He gets a very strong urge to go and hug her, or tickle her until she smiles. “Iris?”

“Hm? Oh, hey, Bar.”

“What’s up, sunshine?” he asks, sliding into the chair across from her. “Are you okay?”

Iris nods slowly. “Yeah. I – I think? You know what yesterday was, right?”

“Yeah,” he says softly. Joe died sixteen years ago. He messaged her to let her know that he was here, always here for her, but she usually just likes to be left alone.

“Well, I went to go see him. My dad, I mean.”

“Wow.” She’s never done that before. “Are you okay?”

“Actually, I am,” she replies. “It’s weird, but I can say it. My dad is dead. He’s not coming back. It hurts, but not as much.”

He squeezes her hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “I’m really glad.”

“Me too. And I saw Waller, and he sent over all this paperwork for me to sign and – I’m the sole owner of STAR Labs now, by the way.”

“Really? What about Chesca?”

“She said that she doesn’t really want to run the place, just build things.” She shrugs. “I’d just end up running the place myself anyway. And Dr. Wells doesn’t want it, and neither does Jesse, so…there it is. Although I don’t think Chesca really cares, since everyone on Team Miracle gets their student loans erased by virtue of us technically working for Waller.”

“Believe me, I did a dance when I heard that,” he mutters.

“Me too. And Chesca kept wondering why Waller didn’t lead with the fact that he could get Sallie Mae off our backs.” She sips her coffee. “Oh, and I broke up with Julio.”

 _That_ throws him for a loop. “You did? Why?”

She shakes her head. “Didn’t feel right. I felt like I was…settling. The hunt for Prince Charming continues, I guess,” she jokes lightly. He laughs with her, glancing down at his hands.

“Well, I get the feeling you won’t be looking for very long,” he says quietly. “Hey, want a distraction?”

“Please.”

“Come on, I have to show you something.”

She gives him a suspicious look. “What?”

He grins. “It’s a surprise.”

Iris isn’t impressed when they get to the street and he makes her close her eyes as they go up the elevator. He even puts his hand over them to make sure she isn’t peeking, much to her annoyance. “Where are we going?”

“I told you, it’s a surprise. Careful, we’re coming through a door.”

“What kind of surprise?”

“You’re going to ruin it! Just a sec…”

“Bartholomew Henry Allen, I swear to God, if this is like the time you tricked me into watching that stupid movie about zombie pirates-”

Barry grins at the annoyance in her tone. “It’s not.” He removes his hand from her face. “Okay, open your eyes…now.”

Iris opens them and looks around, her anticipation turning to confusion. “Okay…not getting it. Where are we?”

“Home,” he smiles, looking around. She blinks.

“What?”

“Wait, I’m sorry, that was misleading. I meant _my_ home.”

She gasps. “This is your apartment? Barry, it’s beautiful!”

“You think so?”

“ _Yes_! You have a balcony, and a fireplace, and – is that the study?”

“Yeah,” he nods proudly. “I can even get up to the roof from here. And you have good taste, so I thought it would be cool to listen.”

Iris walks around the space admiring everything. “Gotta say, though, I’m a little jealous.”

“You don’t need to be jealous – you’re can hang out here as much as you want. Because, uh,” he adds when she gives him a curious look, “I hung out in your apartment all the time, I figured I’d return the favour.”

“True. I can definitely see myself dumping my jacket on the coffee table that’ll go _here_ , and eating out of _this_ fridge, and walking around barefoot on _this_ rug.”

“I am not getting a rug, Iris.”

“Did we not just say how awesome my taste is?”

“I said ‘good’,” he points out. “Don’t push it." He pauses, rubbing the back of his head. "So, um, do you - like it, or..."

Iris gives him a surprised look. "I - well, it's great, Barry. I mean, it's beautiful. But it's your apartment, you're the one who should like it, not me."

"Right. Duh, of course I like it. Just...like I said, good taste."

She smiles, shaking her head. “Look at you, Barry Allen with the grown-up apartment.” She hugs him. “I’m so proud of you!”

Barry wraps his arms around her and breathes in the coconut smell of her hair, but then Iris steps back to peer at him. Without a word she grabs his chin and looks at him. “Barry, are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” he says. She lets go. “I’m fine. Why?”

“Your heart was beating really fast just now.”

“Oh,” he says, his face heating. “I must just be excited about the apartment, I guess. You wanna order pizza and hang out at your place? I can talk about how I’m going to decorate, and then you can ignore me and tell me how to do it.”

“Music to my ears,” she says easily. Iris regards him as he shows her the rest of the apartment, because…Well, when she hugged him, it had kind of seemed like he was blushing. And he looked kind of nervous. But she dismisses the thought. Barry has known her for her whole life. He’s wrapped her hair, for God’s sake. And there’s no way that boy was _blushing_ at her, either.

No way at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author apologises for how terribly she treated Julio.  
> Pay no attention to Iris being sensible abou Barry ;)


	31. (I Know Now) I’ve Never Been in Love Before You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry Allen doesn't have a eureka moment (except it kind of is). With special appearance from Superboy and a very oblivious Iris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is too long, and I am a terrible person.  
> Title taken from 'Never Been in Love' by Cobra Starship.  
> Please read the author's note.

“You’re going to look after her, right?”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll be there if anything goes wrong?”

“I won’t leave her for a minute.”

“Because it could be dangerous-”

“Okay!” Iris turns away from the computer screens and faces all the people badgering her. “Henry, Nora, Eddie. You need to relax. All we’re doing today is testing how far Malina’s powers have developed, and how long they last with her using them continuously. I’m not sending her out into the field, I’m not leaving her to figure anything out by herself, and I’m not giving her anything dangerous. Think of it as going for a bike ride with the training wheels.” She turns to the trailer inside of the hangar. “And you’re not scared, are you, Malina?”

Malina jumps out of the van, grinning. She’s clad in one of the earlier versions of Iris’ suit – dark red instead of gold – that Chesca has tailored so it fits her. Unlike Iris, who is wearing her civilian clothes, Malina also has a mask that covers her head, which have wireless electrodes in them connected to Chesca’s computer.

“Nope,” she says. “This is gonna be fun! And afterwards I can go around with you, right? We’re going to fight crime and stuff?”

“Slow down, little miss,” Henry says. “We’re just seeing what you can do first, so no rushing off all excited. Okay?”

“Okay,” Malina agrees reluctantly. Iris nods.

“Good. Everyone follow me.” She leads them outside, to where what looks like a bizarre obstacle course is set up. A series of objects are lined up in front of the hangar, while Chesca, Jesse and Dr. Wells are set up with their equipment underneath a metal tent. The early morning winter sun breaks thinly through the clouds. “Malina?” Iris calls, and laughs a little when Barry’s sister flashes in front of her. “The first thing we’re going to test is your mental strength. You have to lift all of these things and hold them for seven seconds – don’t strain yourself,” Iris adds quickly, “because you’ll give yourself a migraine.”

“We’ve got all your readings right here,” Chesca adds helpfully from the computer. “So we know exactly what’s going on with you.”

Iris leads Malina to the first object, far from the others, with is a large desk. “Block everyone out,” Iris tells her. “Think of your powers as an invisible limb – it’ll be hard, at first, because your mind will want to range out in all directions, but concentrate.”

Malina nods silently and frowns. As Iris watches, the desk shakes and shudders – and then rises off the ground. Iris hears Nora gasp, and she nods. “Good girl. Try a little higher…that’s it. Now hold…”

Malina holds the desk up for the required seven seconds and then Iris waves a hand, floating it easily back to the ground, and leads her to the next object. “Don’t want you to get too tired out,” she says. The next object is a small car, and Iris looks at her. “Think you can handle that?”

“Dude, I’m a spy,” Malina grins. “ _And_ I have superpowers. This will be cake.”

“Alright,” Iris says, smiling. “Have at it.”

As the morning wears on, they watch as Malina tests the limits of her powers. Eventually, Iris makes Henry, Nora and Eddie spread themselves out on the tarmac so that they can test how far her mind-reading powers range. As they’re doing that, Iris walks back over to the tent, where Chesca and Dr. Wells are monitoring her progress. Jesse has an eye on her vital signs, twirling a pen between his fingers. “How’s she doing?” Iris asks.

“Phenomenal,” Dr. Wells says. “Her telekinesis is off the charts, her ability to read minds seems to have no limit…”

“Iris, I hate to say it, but she’s even more powerful than you were when you first started,” Chesca admits. “I mean, she lifted that truck like it was _nothing_.”

Iris regards her now, teleporting between checkpoints that they’ve set out for her at breakneck speed. “Good,” she says, nodding. “That’s all good, that means she’ll be great in the field. What are her vital signs looking like, Jesse?”

“She’s getting to her limit,” he admits, and Iris looks over to see that the bars on the computer are all starting to turn red. When she looks back at the tarmac, she sees that Malina has several things in the air all at once. “I think you’d better tell her to calm down; she could hurt herself.”

“Malina!” Iris calls into the microphone, but she either doesn’t hear her or doesn’t listen. She frowns, walking forward. _Malina_ , she says into her mind, but the objects remain in the air. Sighing, Iris teleports behind her and raises her fist in the air. Immediately, all of them come to a stop and float gently to the ground. Malina turns on her, her smile falling. “What? What did I do?”

“Malina, when I tell you to stop, you need to stop,” Iris says firmly. “These powers are new to you, so I need you to listen to me so you don’t hurt yourself. Okay?”

“Okay,” Malina says. Then she perks up as Eddie, Henry and Nora walk over. “So, how did I do?” Iris grins at her.

“Why don’t you come over and see for yourself?”

She whoops in excitement when she reads her results, asking everyone to explain what it means to her. “It means, new girl,” Chesca says, “that you are well on your way to becoming Central City’s newest miracle.”

“Plus, you’re much better than Bambi Eyes was when she first got her powers,” Jesse adds idly, studying the reports, and Malina gives her a smug look.

“Looks like Miss Miracle has a little competition.”

Iris merely shrugs. “A little competition never hurt anyone. But are you sure you’re alright?”

“Please, I’m fine. Now, when can I go out with you? You do patrols, right? And I want to know how your thing with the Green Arrow and the Black Canary works, do you-”

“Just a minute,” Iris interrupts. “What, did you think this was it? I need to study your powers for myself, and so does Dr. Wells. I also need to look at a training plan for you, and you need to study everything that we’ve done so far…”

Henry laughs at Malina’s pouty expression, which is so like Barry’s that Iris fights the urge to grin. “One step at a time, little miss. You’ll get there.”

“Besides, we have work,” Nora adds, looking at Iris. “And you have classes, Malina.”

“I’m on duty tonight, but you guys all have the night off,” Iris continues. “You should take some of the time to think about what we did today, and you can read all the case files so you can see what kind of enemies we’re facing.”

“Okay, cool,” she replies, perking up. As everyone starts packing their stuff away, Malina finds Nora when she’s talking to Iris, who’s studying some of the paperwork to do with STAR Labs. “Is it still alright if I make tomorrow tonight? It’s your house, so…”

“It’s fine,” Nora says kindly. “What were you thinking of making? I could help.”

“Barry was showing me the recipes that Great-Uncle Rudy has been making,” she says. “I was thinking of making the noodles. That’s his favourite, right?”

“Barry hates the noodles; he likes the chicken,” Iris says absently, marking down things she has to sign for the bank. When she looks up, Malina is frowning slightly at her. “But, you know, I’m sure he’ll like whatever you make.”

“No, if he hates the noodles, he hates the noodles,” she shrugs, though Iris suspects she isn’t taking it that lightly. “Is tonight okay?”

“Barry’s working late tonight,” Iris replies. “He always does on Wednesdays. But, I mean, I’m sure tomorrow w-will work instead.”

“Right,” Malina says tightly, and Iris swallows. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so harsh with the training. “So, do I get to keep the suit?”

“I think we should make a few changes,” Iris admits. “Make it fit you a little better, and some modifications to do with your powers. But if you like it, I don’t see why not.”

Nora’s phone beeps and she looks at it, her eyebrows raised. “Apparently all the departments are supposed to getting a presentation from our Metahuman Specialist today?”

Iris groans. “Crap, I hate those things. Any chance I could mind control Singh into forgetting?”

Nora puts an arm around her shoulder. “Come on,” she laughs, hugging her close. “You wanted the raise, now you gotta put in the work.”

“Whatever,” Iris mutters good-naturedly. She notices that Malina is giving her an odd look – one that she’s been giving her for the past few weeks, actually – and turns to her. “Malina, do you want Jesse to print out copies of your results? That way you can study them in your free time or whatever.”

She nods and walks off towards Jesse, and Nora bites her lip. “Is it bad that I’m worried already?”

“No, it just makes you a mom.”

“I know she just got here, but…” she sighs. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to handle _two_ of my kids running off into danger.”

Iris puts a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nora. I’ve got her back. And I’m not letting her out into the field until I’m sure she’s ready. Now, what, exactly, is this presentation supposed to entail?”

The rest of her day passes with ease, once she gets past the presentation part of it. Her mother is in Metropolis with her journalist students from the college and she has the day off tomorrow, so she’s pulling an all-nighter as Miss Miracle tonight. She does them sometimes, just to make sure that people know she’s still around. Even though she’s back to normal now, when she got back from all the earth-hopping, her body had taken a long time to recover, and it meant some of the crime in the city went up. She gets to STAR Labs just as Chesca and Eddie are leaving it, very unsubtly springing apart when she sees them approaching. “Hey, guys,” she says cheerfully. “Where are you going?”

“We’re just, um, going…” Eddie stammers.

“Well, Eddie said – he wanted to-” Chesca splutters, “because he was-”

“Relax, guys, I’m messing with you,” she laughs, waving a hand. “Go on your date.”

“How do you know we’re dating?”

“Because you both talk really loud, you spent our last mission making out in the middle of the Uptown Causeway, and I have eyes. Oh, Eddie?” she adds. He looks at her.

“Yeah?”

She fixes him with a stare. “If you hurt her, she will hurt you. But if you hurt her, _I_ will kill you. Are we clear?”

Eddie blinks and Iris laughs. “Dude, relax, I’m kidding. Mostly. Have fun!”

Dr. Wells is the only person in the Cortex when she walks in, tinkering with something at her workbench, and gives her a look. “Okay, that was bad, and I am a bad person for doing it.”

But older woman just laughs. “I think everyone on the team knows and appreciates how protective you are of their wellbeing, Iris.”

“Well, it’s what I do,” she shrugs. She flashes into her suit, twirling her mask between her fingers. “What are you working on?”

“Nothing, I was just looking at the Breach Blaster, as you and Chesca so aptly named it.”

She adjusts her glasses, laughing. “Yeah, I think we got a little carried away.”

Iris told Barry she’s been working on a way to close the vast majority of the breaches, given that they’re causing everyone so much trouble, and it’s been a process. She and the others designed something to cancel out the tidal gravitations forces that are making the pockets of time and space fold in on themselves, thereby closing them. The only problem is that they have to make several prototypes, and not all of them have worked.

“What do you think?” she continues. Dr. Wells nods, impressed.

“I think we won’t have to worry about interdimensional visitors for a while. Well, apart from the ones we invite. I am quite intrigued about this Music Meister person.”

“Believe me, you’ll get sick of her eventually,” she mutters. “But you are a genius, Dr. Wells. It’s your creation, you should be proud.”

She laughs and Iris frowns. “What? What’s funny?”

“This isn’t my creation, Iris. Yes, I started you, Chesca and Jesse on the right path,” she admits. “But Iris, you didn’t really need anyone else apart from to answer questions. Do you realise that you’ve spent most of it working by yourself?”

Iris considers this. Okay, she’s been working hard, but she thought that was just because she felt like she was solving a really fun puzzle. But then she realises that for a lot of the past few weeks, it’s just been her. “Oh.”

Dr. Wells laughs, not unkindly. “Oh, Iris. Don’t fear, I always knew this would happen.”

“You did?”

“Of course. You were an intelligent young woman hell-bent on helping people before you got superpowers, so I am not surprised these are the things you are achieving. The idea to identify and stabilise the breaches was yours. The plans to rescue people from the other earths were yours. Yes, you needed myself and the others when you were new and floundering, but the time will come when you will no longer have need of this team.”

“But I like the team,” she says in a small voice. “They’re – they’re like family.”

“I know that,” she says gently. “And I guarantee you, your family will not be going anywhere any time soon. But we all outgrow things. Besides,” she continues cheerfully, “you have Malina now, and I think it would be fun having a Miracle Worker who is part of your actually family. Not to mention who has your own powers.”

Iris bites her lip. She gets the feeling that Malina doesn’t really feel the same way, judging by the tension that tends to spring up when they’re around each other. It’s odd, because they seemed cool in the beginning, but now it seems like Malina is always mad at her about something, and she has no idea what. She shakes her head. Maybe it’s just growing pains. “But what about you?” Iris asks. She hesitates, because they’ve never really broached this subject before. “Are you…You’re sure your powers aren’t coming back?”

She gives her a rueful smile. “I got greedy, Iris, when I got my powers. I wanted more than I deserved. I am glad Colin is defeated, but I think I deserve to have my powers taken from me. Besides, without a lightning rod, I don’t know how my powers would manifest.”

That is true. Even though she is trying to come to terms with the fact that she and Barry may never happen, the fact that he’s here, always encouraging and always steady, makes her powers better. She can honestly feel it, so she doesn’t know what would happen if he weren’t around.

“Anyway,” she continues, “there are worse things. I have my health and my work, and I have all of you. I feel incredibly lucky sometimes.”

Iris hasn’t told anyone about what the Mindscape told her, exactly, so Dr. Wells doesn’t know that they were always supposed to be enemies. And she’s infinitely glad that this is the future she got instead. “So do I, Dr. Wells.”

***

“…and could you get me the files on last year’s education budget for the city?” Barry asks. Charlie, the newest, incredibly eager intern, nods.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and Barry laughs.

“Barry is fine, Charlie.”

He nods eagerly again and races out of his office. Since the big reshuffle that got Barry his promotion – not to mention this office – work has been a little hectic. Charlie couldn’t have come to work here at a worse time, since everything was being rearranged until they could find another junior editor. Who is supposed to be arriving today, if he remembers correctly. He peers through the glass of his office, hoping that at least Charlie has gotten to the copier before Missy sends him out on another bakery run – really, that woman needs to be stopped – but then sees Scott leading someone towards his office. “Barry?” he calls through the open door. “You busy?”

“No, not at all. Who’s this?”

Scott turns to the woman next to him, who’s very pretty with coppery red hair, hazel eyes, and a light dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. “Barry, this is Wendy Margolin, she’s the new junior editor. Wendy, this is-”

“Barry Allen,” she finishes, shaking his hand. She smiles at him, showing off her straight teeth. “Crime, human interest, and…Miss Miracle.”

“Metahumans and superheroes in general,” he laughs, letting go of her hand. “But yeah, Miss Miracle and I are kind of tight. What can I say? The people in the masks, they love me.”

Wendy makes a face and Scott laughs. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, it’s just that Wendy is from Gotham,” he explains, and she shrugs.

“I’m not the biggest fan of people wearing masks,” she tells him. “Given that there was the Joker, and the Riddler, and the Ventriloquist…”

Barry’s eyes flicker briefly to the Miss Miracle plushie toy that Chesca got for everyone. It’s sitting next to a picture of him and Iris. “Yeah, I can understand how that would colour your perception a little bit. But you’ve seen Miss Miracle – she’s the closest thing this city has to…well, an actual miracle, haha. You’ll love her, I promise.”

Wendy doesn’t look too convinced by this, but she smiles affably anyway. “We’ll see. It was nice meeting you, Barry.”

“You too. What are you working in?”

“Politics and crime, mostly,” she tells him. “I helped with the big expose on the Scarecrow back when I worked for the Gotham Gazette.”

“Right, I read about that. Harley Dent used your stuff in the prosecution, right? That was pretty cool.”

“I thought so too,” she laughs. “Anyway, I should leave you to keep working. I still have to meet Missy.”

Barry grimaces. “Okay, firm handshake, speak clearly, and don’t look her in the eye.”

Wendy gives Scott a worried look. “He’s kidding, right?”

“Not even a little.”

The day passes in a blur of deadlines and leads and interviews, and Barry finally gets back to his apartment in time to grab dinner before bed. He’s getting used to the loft, and it’s nice that he has his own space, to be honest. He had a roommate in college and then moved back home before living with Patty, so this is the first time it’s just been him. Thankfully he has the day off the next day, given that he’s been working late, so he doesn’t bother to set his alarm. He does, however, get up in the middle of night in search of a drink of water, wanders into his living room, and notices that there’s someone in his apartment.

Specifically, asleep on his couch, her gloves and mask on his coffee table, jacket hanging over a chair.

Barry can’t help the fond smile that turns up his lips. He knows that Iris is pulling an all-nighter tonight, and that she often stops at people’s houses to grab some things to refuel, usually her own, Chesca’s, his, or her mother’s. Nothing major – just some water, bandages, a banana maybe. And a few minutes of sleep if she’s lagging. The only reason he truly notices it now is because he lives alone; it wasn’t uncommon for him to wander down the stairs in his mother’s house to find her in the middle of a power nap at two in the morning.

Now Iris is curled up on his couch, her chest rising and falling as she sleeps peacefully. Her glasses are gone and it makes her look younger, more vulnerable. She looks so still in sleep, and he briefly wonders what the city would say if they saw Miss Miracle like this, soft and small and harmless, her face half covered by the pillows on his couch (which she persuaded him to get, he might add), fingers curled slightly under her cheek. Miss Miracle levels buildings and reads minds, but Iris West plays Assassin’s Creed in sweats on a Sunday and burrows herself in about a million blankets to sleep. He feels a sudden rush of protectiveness towards her, because the city gets Miss Miracle all the time. It’s Iris that needs to refuel. He often worries that people forget that, that there is a person underneath the costume that has to heal and strain, and balance her life with the city’s safety.

Iris furrows her brow briefly, mumbling something, but then her skin smooths as whatever she’s thinking about passes. When they were kids and Barry used to sing her to sleep, often with her head on his chest and her arm thrown across his middle, he used to be alert for any sign that she was having a nightmare, since she was so prone to them. She still has them, though like he told E52 Iris, she thinks that she’s gotten better at hiding them. A part of him wants to do that again, wants her to sleep in his arms again, because he knows that it always works; he'll know she's alright and not having nightmares. Barry reaches out to stroke her cheek, body reacting before mind, and then thinks better of it, instead shaking her shoulder. “Iris?” he says gently. “Iris, wake up.”

She snuffles into the pillow and then opens her eyes. “Wha – Barry?” she frowns, peering at him. “What happened?”

“You were power-napping, I think,” he laughs softly. She blinks blearily at him and he hands her the mask so she can see properly. “What time is it?”

“Three fifteen.”

“Damn it,” she sighs, sitting up. “I was only supposed to nap for twenty minutes and I napped for an hour. I’m sorry, Barry-”

“It’s okay,” he shrugs. “I don’t mind, really. You’re the superhero.”

She rubs the back of her neck and he regards her. “Look, Iris, this is the third night in a row and you’re going to get a crick in your neck if you keep sleeping like this – if you’re tired, you can take the bed-”

“I am not going to kick you out of your own bed, Barry,” she says firmly. He has no idea what she’s talking about, but then realises that of course that would be the case. The logical part of his mind thought it would just be like when they had sleepovers as kids – they shared a bed like that all the time. But they’re much older now and he’d probably end up spooning her, given the fact that he sleeps like a starfish. He tries to ignore the fact that he assumed that Iris would be open to the idea of essentially cuddling with him in his bed all night.

“Besides,” she continues, “I should probably go home and sleep. I’ll just keep the alarm on in case something happens. And I’m sorry, again – your apartment was just the closest one.”

“Iris, come on,” he says. He glances briefly at his hands. “You – you’re welcome to my apartment any time you want. It’s not like I didn’t do the same to you.”

“Good point, Allen,” she yawns. “Usually I crash at Chesca’s when I’m on this side of town, but she was on a date with Eddie.”

“So why are you avoiding her apartment?”

“In case the date went well.”

It takes him half a second to realise and then he smiles. “Well, alright then. Go Chesca.”

“Go Chesca,” she agrees. She gets up, grabbing her gloves and jacket. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? If I screw up my sleep cycle work will be hell this week.”

Barry wishes her goodbye and she blinks away, and he goes to get his water. The whole ‘figuring out how he feels about Iris’ thing would be a lot less complicated if their lives weren’t so tangled up together. It’s not just that they’re best friends, he’s a part of her family and a part of Team Miracle. A lot of those feelings have been there for years, so which ones are the romantic ones? And soon she’s probably going to realise that, more often than not, he’s starting to act like a perfect idiot around her. _You can take the bed_ , honestly. “Smooth, Allen,” he mutters to himself. “Real smooth.”

***

Given how tired she was the night before, Barry’s surprised when he hears the doorbell ring the next morning and Iris is on the other side of it. She’s smiling cheerfully at him, holding two coffees in her hand, as well as a paper bag, and offers the cupholder to him. “One medium cappuccino with two sugars,” she greets him, and he raises his eyebrows.

“The last time you looked like that, you were trying to get me to go to the Particle Accelerator with you,” he says dryly. “And two for two is all I’m letting you have when it comes to being hit by lightning.”

“Ha ha,” she says as he shuts the door behind her. “Well, I woke up and I remembered that in addition to me having a day off, my best friend _also_ has a day off. So, I figured if you weren’t busy, you would accept my exclusive best friends only offer of hanging out and doing absolutely nothing all day, and _these_ …” she adds, giving him the bag, “as an apology for eating all your bagels last night.”

Barry frowns. “You ate all my bagels?”

Iris clears her throat. “Let me start again: Barry, I ate all your bagels…”

But he just laughs, taking the bagels from her. Iris looks up at him, giving him her best hopeful look. They used to do this all the time before the lightning hit, and she’s trying her best to show him that they can be normal again. After the married doppelgangers clearly freaked him out, not to mention the ‘hey we’re soulmates except not really’ lightning rod situation, she doesn’t want to make things even weirder. It doesn’t help that he’s clearly just come out of the shower and his hair isn’t styled yet, so it’s all sexily rumpled and has water droplets in it, and she can smell his aftershave. “Sure, sunshine,” he says easily. “That sounds like fun. I don’t have that much work to do anyway.”

“Great! I just have to go to the bank, and then I am all yours.” Barry blinks at her and she backtracks. “You know, to hang out with.”

“R-Right,” he says quickly. “Of course. You want some breakfast?”

“I already ate,” she shrugs, throwing her jacket onto the couch and sitting at the breakfast bar, “but sure, I can do a second breakfast.” Barry eyes her jacket and Iris giggles.

“See? Not so fun when it’s your apartment. And at least I don’t put my feet on your coffee table.”

“No,” he says, breaking eggs into a bowl, “you just sleep on my couch and eat all my bagels.”

Iris throws a cushion at him.

***

“So you have to throw a football-shaped miniature computer into a breach to get it to close?” Barry clarifies. Iris, hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, nods as she pushes her glasses up her nose. They’re strolling across town, thankfully having avoided the morning rush, wrapped up in their conversation with each other.

“We’re calling it the Breach Blaster,” she says, “but basically. Dr. Wells approved the design and we finished building it, so we’re going to start testing them out soon.”

“Don’t you mean _you_ finished building it? Jesse told me that you didn’t even need anyone else to build it – you just asked a few questions and did it yourself.”

“He’s just mad because it meant he had to watch Eddie and Chesca make eyes at each other,” she says dismissively. Barry shakes his head, smiling.

“He called it one of the most ingenious ideas he’s ever heard. And you know he was including himself in that.”

“He did?” Iris asks quietly in disbelief. “He said that about me?”

“You’re surprised?”

“You’re not? It’s _Jesse_. He has a hard time telling people good morning. Are you sure he didn’t say ‘it’s ingenious that she managed not to electrocute herself’?”

Barry laughs, his eyes crinkling. “Yeah, I’m sure. Besides, you’ve always been incredible at this kind of stuff, so even a hard-headed asshat like Jesse was bound to say something about it eventually.”

Iris blushes a little, colour coming high on her cheeks, and he smiles. “So, tell me how this works again? I find it kind of hard to believe how a football computer is going to close the breaches.”

Barry watches as Iris excitedly launches into an explanation about how what she designed would counteract the energies that come out of the breach, closing it. He openly admits that half the time he’s not really interested in what she’s talking about – physical sciences is more her thing than his – he just likes to hear her talk. All the science stuff was often the only thing that cheered her up when she first came to live with them, the only thing she ever felt confident in. So he lets her explain and babble and make dumb science jokes (he says they’re dumb, and they are, but they’re also unbelievably adorable), because it makes her happy.

“…so I have to run around and do this maybe forty times,” she says. “Not to mention the fact that I have to teleport to all the breaches. Plus, I need to figure out how I’m going to train Malina between all of this.” Barry perks up.

“How is that going, by the way? How was her training session?”

“It was good,” she replies, adjusting her glasses. “Um, Malina’s incredible, really powerful.”

He grins. “A little birdie says she’s better than you when you first started.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “Call me when she can throw lightning, okay, Allen?”

“Relax, you know you’re still my favourite. So, everything’s going well? You guys are working together okay?”

“Well, we haven’t really _worked_ together yet. But, um, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Eventually.” Then she suddenly snaps her fingers. “Oh, by the way, my mom called and yes, Clark Kent’s hair really does do that in real life.”

Barry grins sheepishly. Iris’ mother took her students to a journalism conference across the country, and when they found out they were going to be at a conference where he was giving a talk, Barry asked her to get his autograph for him. “I kind of think this is what I would be like if I met Superwoman,” Iris says, amused. “Why don’t you just tweet him? You follow each other, right?” Barry looks scandalised.

“Iris, I can’t just _tweet_ Clark Kent!”

“Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He could respond!”

“That’s how conversations usually start on this planet, Barry.”

“Iris, this is Clark Kent. _Clark Kent_. He’s won two Pulitzer’s and is gunning for a third, he’s the only person people will trust to write about Superwoman-”

“Plus, he’s, like, just the _dreamiest_ guy in school,” she interrupts slyly, grinning.

“Hey, I can say that Clark Kent is a fine specimen; I am not ashamed.”

“You know he has a girlfriend, right? And maybe she is the dorky farm-girl type, but I don’t think Lois Lane is going to take kindly to you trying to steal her _specimen_.”

Barry bursts into laughter and she joins him, both of them making far too much noise, before he quiets and just – sort of – lingers on her. Iris really is unfairly pretty. She frowns slightly, still smiling. “What?”

“Nothing. So, why are we going to the bank again?”

At this, Iris lets out an irritated snort that would have her mother berating her for being unladylike. “I have to go and sort something out with the STAR Labs business account, and I have to get some statements for the tax return. I swear, I think Chesca signed the whole thing over to me because she doesn’t want to do our expenses at the end of every month for this stupid thing. Have I mentioned that I hate the IRS?”

“Iris, everyone hates the IRS.”

“Mine is a special kind of hate,” she says darkly as they enter the bank, and he chuckles. It’s nearing the middle of the day so it is fairly crowded. Iris looks at her watch as they walk through the crowd. “I have an appointment with the accountant, but I should be done in about thirty. You okay to hang out here?”

He nods easily. “See you soon, sunshine.”

She walks off towards the offices and Barry settles into a chair to send some emails. Barry might have been bending the truth a little when he said he didn’t have that much work to do, but he knew that if he said that, Iris would leave him alone to do it all. And he doesn’t want that, does he? He has to make sure he’s available for a radio interview where he’s the subject, submit a draft of a feature on the changing nature of crime-fighting in the wake of vigilantism, and submit an evaluation for the new intern. It’s as he’s sending these emails that his phone rings. “Barry Allen?” he answers.

“Allen,” Erica, his boss, says. “How are you?”

“Good, thanks. Is that about to change?”

“No, I know it’s your day off,” she laughs. “I just wanted to run something by you, if you don’t mind?”

“Sure.”

“Wendy – the new junior editor – had an interesting idea on an article about Miss Miracle. I know that’s usually your home turf,” she adds quickly, sensing that he might be about to reply, “but she pitched it to me, and I think she could consult with you if we agree to go forward with it.”

Barry pauses. He’s always been kind of proud of the fact that he’s the only one who writes about Miss Miracle all the time. Not that he just wanted to be her PR flunkie – though sometimes, that’s exactly what Iris calls him – but he feels a certain kind of protectiveness towards it. Not everyone can write about her with the same care that he does, taking into account everything she goes through to help the city. Besides – “Miss Miracle has always made it clear that I’m the one who writes about her.”

Erica pauses. “This isn’t the kind of article you usually write, Barry. It’s a slightly different angle. You think you could be up for that?”

“Sure,” he shrugs. “Let’s see what the new girl’s got.”

He finishes the conversation with Erica just as Iris slips out of an office, and he gets up to join her. Honestly, he’s not holding out much hope for whatever it is that Wendy wants to write about. He’s already got superheroes pretty much covered on the west coast, and he doesn’t know what else she would want to write about. But then, he supposes that’s the whole point of being a journalist – finding new angles for stuff. Maybe she just saw something new.

“Uh-oh,” he says playfully, seeing Iris’ expression. “I know that face.”

“Why in the name of Batgirl’s left asscheek,” Iris mutters darkly, stuffing papers into her bag, “do they need so many forms? I thought they were going to ask for a blood sample next. Or an actual dragon egg.”

“But you’re done now, right? You don’t need anything else?”

“Just one of those pamphlets about accounting,” she replies, slipping past him. “Hey, what do you think of lunch and a movie?”

“Great, as long as we don’t see that _Gods of Egypt_ crap.”

“Dude, no way. We’re seeing _Zootopia_. Talking animals beats whitewashing and bad CGI any day of the week.”

Barry opens his mouth to reply, but then he spots someone in the far corner pull something out of his jacket and point it at the ceiling. He realises it’s a gun a second before he starts firing it.

“Everyone get on the ground, _now_!”

The crowd gasps and screams in shock and Barry automatically pulls Iris behind him just as someone bursts out of the crowd and starts herding everyone into groups. Two more of them stand at the doors, barring any escape, and he sees another start yelling at the cashier to put money in duffel bags. Barry feels something pushing at his mind, a light pressure at his temple – and lets Iris into his thoughts.

 _Can you_ \- he begins.

 _No, not while they’re looking at me_. Iris bites her lip. _Hug me_.

_What?_

_Hug me, Barry_ -

One of them advances on them, snarling, “I said, _get on the ground_!”, and Iris wraps her arms around him and buries her head in his chest, whimpering. Barry instinctively puts his hands on her back, even though he knows she’s pretending. “Alright – look, we’re going, alright?” He keeps his arms around her as they’re made to sit down with the others, and Iris doesn’t make any move to leave his arms. _Um. Iris? What are you doing?_

_I’m trying to save these people. What’s going on?_

Barry looks up, careful not to give anything away. _They’re telling the cashiers to put the money in bags._

_Is anyone hurt?_

_No, not that I can see._

“No talking!” one of them snaps at an elderly couple, and Barry holds her a little tighter. When Iris told him that he was her lightning rod, she went to great pains to teach him how to shield his mind from her, and therefore any mind-reader. She explained that it was essentially keeping a cage around your thoughts, and not letting anyone in. They had to practice, with Iris trying to read his mind and him attempting to keep up a mental block, until he’s at the state he’s at now, where his default state is now making sure he doesn’t accidentally let Iris into his thoughts and vice-verse. Now the conversation is open between them, but when they’re done he has no doubt that the walls will go back up. _What are you going to do? Are you going to let them leave?_

_No, but I can’t do anything until they have all the money._

_Why not?_

_One of the cashiers triggered the silent alarm, but it’ll take another five minutes for them to get here. I have to keep them there until they arrive, and make sure they don’t hurt anyone._

_How are you going to do that?_

_Watch and learn._

Iris’ shifts a little so that she’s leaning against his chest, facing the doors, and Barry feels one of the hands that’s around his back curl into a fist. She breathes, slow and steady, and he realises that she’s using her powers for something. Just as he’s about to ask what she’s doing, one of the robber barrels towards the doors – and slams against it. “What the – what happened to the doors?”

The fist around his back tightens. _Are you-_

 _Yes_ , Iris answers as they bang the doors in frustration. Then suddenly, the leader whips round to glare at the security guard. “Open the doors!”

“They’re not locked!”

“Open the _fucking_ doors!”

_Iris-_

_I’ve got it_.

Everyone gasps as he aims the gun at the security guard’s foot and pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. The gun clicks uselessly, the robber glaring around in confusion. “What the-”

“ _CCPD, freeze_!”

They swarm out of the back, and a few seconds after Iris uncurls her fist they come through the front doors, surrounding the robbers with their guns pointed at them. One tries to run, but then an officer shoots him in the leg and he falls. “It’s alright, everyone,” the officer calls, and Barry sees that it’s Rose from the precinct. “The ambulances are on their way.”

Iris lets out a deep breath and pushes slightly at Barry’s arms, who lets go after a confused second, and climbs out of his embrace, straightening her hair and glasses. “Come on,” she says, helping him up, “we’re probably going to have to give a statement, and-”

“Iris! _Barry_!”

His mother pushes through the crowd, taking off her bullet-proof vest. “How in the world,” she demands, “did you two end up in the middle of this? What are you doing here?”

“We were just going to the bank, mom,” Barry tells her as she hugs them both. “This isn’t our fault!”

“Yeah, who knew getting forms for the tax return would be so dangerous?” Iris adds wryly. As they watch, the robbers are cuffed and led away, apart from the one on the ground, who is cuffed and has to wait for the ambulance to come and treat his leg. Nora pinches the bridge of her nose.

“I have never been able to leave the two of you alone for a second; are you okay?”

They both nod and she glances around. “Why weren’t they shooting anyone? Not that I’m complaining, since I don’t particularly enjoy that aspect of my job, but they were all shooting blanks. And why couldn’t they open the door?”

Barry grins at Iris. “I don’t think you should be asking me, mom.”

Nora stares at her. “What did you do? You didn’t reveal your powers, did you?”

“Of course not,” Iris replies, waving a hand. “Jesse makes me do all these simulations and practice runs in case I ever get into a situation where I have to help people and I can’t use my powers openly. Just don’t tell that jackass he was right about something, because I will _never_ live it down.”

“Nora?” Julio calls. He walks over with an iPad and gives Iris a small smile. “They’ve got the surveillance tapes. I mean, they were all wearing masks, but still. And Iris, the captain wants to talk to you.”

“Hey, it is my day off,” Iris says immediately. “She can’t bully me today.”

“Relax, West,” he laughs. “I think she just wants you to give an opinion on the new CSI applicants.”

“Okay, but if she wants me to analyse this scene, I’m calling my union rep. I’ll be back in a minute.” She puts her hand on Barry’s arm. “You okay?”

Barry’s brain goes blank for a minute, because her hand on his arm is reminding him of how she’d jumped into his arms a few minutes ago, the feeling of her hair brushing softly against the skin of his neck, and her head pressed to his chest. And not just that, but the way she felt in his arms – like she fit, like she should be there all the time.

“Barry?” she repeats, and he shakes his head slightly.

“Sure. Little freaked, but yeah, I’m fine.”

Iris smiles at them and walks off. His mother, meanwhile, is trying to look at the surveillance footage. “You didn’t happen to see their faces, did you?”

“No, we didn’t. They just came in and started shooting, telling us all to get on the floor.” His mother sighs.

“Well, hopefully it’s just your standard botched robbery. Oh, careful,” she adds quickly, moving him out of the way as the stretcher with the robber who was shot wheels past them, already handcuffed to the bed. His trouser leg is rolled up so they can bandage it and, as Barry’s gaze flickers past, he spots an odd-looking tattoo on his ankle. It’s an upside-down crown, and it looks strangely familiar.

“Barry?” his mother asks. “Go over to Julio to give a statement, and then you guys can get out of here, okay? I’ll see you tonight for dinner.”

“Malina’s cooking, right?”

“One of Great-Uncle Rudy’s recipes, I believe.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I hope it’s not is rum-glazed ribs, because sometimes I think I get more rum than rib.”

“He likes good food!”

“He’s an alcoholic, mom.”

Nora shoves him lightly, shaking her head as she turns back to the surveillance footage. Then she tips her head to one side. “Barry.”

“Yeah?”

She sighs. “Look, I know I’ve always told you and Iris to protect each other, and I know we’re all part of this crime-fighting team, and I still mean it, but please be careful.”

Barry frowns. “What do you mean?”

She shows him the footage and cues it up to when the people started shooting. Iris has her back to the door, and he can tell it was when they were talking about Iris filing tax returns. As soon as they start shooting, he watches himself pull Iris behind him. “Oh.”

“Just don’t forget that she can protect herself, okay?” she says. “If I had one of you in front of a bullet, I’d really rather it was the one who can stop them with her mind.”

“Right,” he nods. “Of course, I was just – you know, it’s Iris.”

His mother gives him an odd little smile. “I know, Barry.”

Before he can ask what she’s smiling about, someone calls her away from him, so he gives Julio his statement and then goes outside to wait for Iris. Who walks out of the bank looking a little afraid. “Come on, let’s move,” she says quickly. She herds him away, still glancing over her shoulder.

“Why are we rushing?”

“Because the captain has that look in her eye. The ‘make West do something she doesn’t want to’ look. I hate that look. Okay,” she says, once they’re a few blocks away. “We’re good. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Iris. I think we’ve both been through worse.”

“I know, but the _bank_? If it weren’t for how frequently we all get kidnapped, I’d say it would be safer to just stay at home.” She pauses. “I hope that wasn’t – weird. The hugging thing.”

“Weird? No, it’s – we hug all the time, right?”

“Right,” she says, relieved. “I know it was kind of sudden, but I had to act fast. Everyone would assume I’d be terrified, seeing as I’ve been shot before. And at least this way no one thinks that tiny, bespectacled Iris West is the Golden Grace.”

“Good point,” he replies evenly, trying not to think of Iris’ breath ghosting the skin of his neck. “So, the Playhouse? I know it’s a little farther than AMC, but their popcorn is way better.”

“Right? And their prices aren’t as extortionate – crap,” she says as her phone starts to ring. “Hold on…Hello? I – _Kaden_? How…what the hell is going on? How are you phoning this – Gideon, of course. Kaden, what is it?” She pauses and her curiosity turns to dread. “The…Dominators. Why doesn’t that sound like an eighties pop group? Because they’re aliens. Of – of course they are…” She glances at Barry. “Look, Kaden, honey, is there any chance at all that your cousin – is in space. Of course she is. I will – I’ll be there as soon as I can. Uh-huh. I’ll see you.” She hangs up and Barry beats her to the punch.

“It’s okay, Iris,” he tells her, trying to hide his disappointment. But she’s shaking her head.

“No, it isn’t, Barry, I am so sorry,” she says ruefully, her brows knitted together. “I have to get to STAR Labs…If it were anything else-”

“Really, it’s fine. What are Dominators?”

“Sentient life forms with the otherworldly strength, laser eyes and the power to control several dozen minds at once.”

Barry blinks. “Okay, so not like your friendly neighbourhood Kryptonian.”

“Believe me, I’d rather meet Superwoman than do this.” She puts her hand on his arm again. “Are you mad? It’s okay if you are.”

“I’m not mad,” he promises. “Iris, you’re a superhero. This is what you have to do – I get that.”

“I’ll be as fast as I can,” she promises. “You and I will be watching talking animals in no time.”

“I don’t think you should be rushing getting rid of aliens, sunshine,” he laughs. “Come on, lets go to STAR Labs. I’ll see you off. Where’s Superboy, again?”

Iris pulls him into an alleyway, making sure no one is watching them. “Earth-3.” She grabs his hands he closes his eyes automatically – when he opens them they’re in STAR Labs, Chesca tapping away at the terminals with a headset on. “Did you hear about-”

“Yes,” Iris answers, crossing to the alcove to get her suit. Chesca looks up.

“And the part with the alien-”

“Yes.”

“And the part where they kidnapped the President?”

“Ye – _what_?” Iris demands. She shares a look with Barry as she zips up her suit. “They kidnapped the President? When did that happen?”

Chesca tips her head to one side, listening. “According to Kaden, about thirty seconds ago.”

“Great,” Iris sighs. “Where’s the breach to Earth-3?”

“On the roof. You need any help?”

“No, I’m good,” she replies, backing away upstairs. She throws Barry another apologetic look. “Sorry! I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Barry watches her leave. “She’s being careful, isn’t she?” Barry asks. Chesca snorts.

“Barry, the most miraculous thing about that woman is the fact that she hasn’t died yet. Grabbing live wire cables and jumping into singularities and dying. Iris is always really careful until she turns into Leeroy Jenkins.”

“Well, that sounds like her,” he laughs. He sits down, grinning. “So, how was the date?”

Chesca’s answer is a blush colouring her olive skin. “Good. Ah – Eddie’s nice.”

“I’ll bet. Hey, how are your powers going? I heard you’ve been making progress.”

Chesca flexes her fingers. “A little. We’re trying to figure out the whole sonic blast thing, how I can control them better. Last time I kind of…hit Jesse with them.”

“Chesca.”

“Not on purpose!” She pauses. “Alright, a little. That’s why he’s out sick today – earache. But yeah, it’s good.”

“And maybe you’ll be out there with Iris soon,” he says encouragingly, and she smiles. “Listen, do we still have those files that Freddie and those guys sent over? I want to check something.” He thinks he recognised that tattoo from something, but he wants to be sure.

“Yeah, right over there. You need to know about Liv and her long list of enemies?”

“Maybe. You mind if I hang out here for a little while? I think it’ll take me a while to sort through all this stuff.”

“Sure,” she says easily. “You want some lunch? We can charge everything to STAR Labs as a business expense.”

Barry thinks of Iris dealing with the business account. “Don’t tell Iris about that, Chesca.”

A few hours later, Barry has found what he’s looking for. Several pictures of the tattoo were in a file marked ‘The Mayor’, but it’s so late in the day he can’t be bothered to sort through it. He leaves that task for tomorrow and wonders when Iris will be back. Even if they can’t hang out, he at least wants to make sure she’s okay. Which he believes, of course…until Superboy walks into the Cortex carrying her. Chesca leaps out of her seat. “Whoa – who in the name of Indiana Jones are you?”

Superboy blinks, Iris still in his arms, who has one arm draped around his shoulders and her legs dangling over his arms. He’s never met or seen Superboy before, since he doesn’t exist on their earth, but…well. He certainly _looks_ super. He’s about an inch shorter than Barry but wider in the shoulders, muscular arms bulging under the dark blue of his suit. A red ‘S’ (“It’s not an ‘S’,” Iris had once said, “on their world it’s ‘hope’”) is emblazoned over his chest, matching the cape that seems to billow even though there’s no breeze. Blond hair is styled in a way that’s eerily similar to Clark Kent sits comfortably on his head. He’s carrying Iris as though she weighs nothing at all, and Barry supposes it’s because of the fact that he’s Kryptonian and has super strength. Iris, however, looks extremely annoyed. “Kaden,” she says, trying to hang onto her patience. “This is why I said you should let me introduce you first. Guys, this is Kaden Danvers, also known as Superboy, and he is going to put me down, right now.”

“But you’re hurt, Iris,” he says, like he’s been having this argument for a while. Judging by Iris’ expression, he probably has. Barry then notices how carefully he’s holding her, close to his chest and with such care, and he clenches his jaw.

“How did she get hurt?” he wants to know. “What were you guys doing?”

“If you’re hurt,” Chesca says, “we should call Wally, he’s upstairs helping Linda-”

“I’m not hurt – Chess, stop. Kaden, put me _down_.”

“What happened, Iris?” Barry asks.

“An alien threw a bus at her,” Kaden answers, and Barry takes a step forward.

“What?”

“That’s not – Kaden, see? You’re worrying them. An alien did not throw a bus at me.”

Kaden raises an eyebrow, a half smile on his face. “Okay, Iris. What happened?”

Iris rolls her eyes. “The alien threw me at the bus, which-”

“Iris!” Barry and Chesca exclaim.

“That is a totally different situation!”

“You broke your ankle!” Kaden counters, while Chesca runs off to call Wally and Linda down. Barry stares at her.

“You broke-”

“It was a minor break,” Iris mutters. “Besides, I’m a metahuman, it healed in a few hours.”

But Kaden is shaking his head, holding Iris to him in a way that Barry is trying to ignore. “You still need medical attention.” He peers at Barry. “Are you her doctor?”

He frowns, irritated. “No, I’m her – I’m Barry.”

Weirdly, Kaden brightens. “You’re Barry? Wow, I’ve heard so much about you! The journalist, right?”

“I – uh, yeah.”

“My friend Jamie’s a journalist,” he continues cheerfully. “Iris showed us your article about metahumans as opposed to aliens, and she loved it! Do you-”

“Whoa, who is _that_?” Linda demands, running into the room, Wally behind her.

“Are you Superboy?”

“Yes,” he replies. “Kaden Danvers, nice to meet you. Which one of you is Wally?”

“I am,” he answers, frowning. “What is it? Iris, what happened?”

Iris looks like she’s about to murder someone. “Nothing _happened_ -”

“An alien threw her at a bus,” he explains. “So you need to put her on bedrest, preferably for-”

“Kaden Zor-El, if you do not put me down _this minute_ I swear to God, Kryptonite will be the least of your problems.”

Linda nods. “Dude, I know you’re new, but she is not kidding.”

Kaden looks hesitant, giving Iris a worried look. “Are you sure?” he asks quietly. “I mean – it was big bus.”

“Kaden, really, I’m fine. Just because we’re not made of steel, doesn’t mean we’re made of paper.”

“Plus, the sooner I can check on her, the sooner we can stop worrying,” Wally adds, and Kaden nods. “Where’s the medbay?”

“I’ll show you,” Barry says quickly, leading them to one. Kaden very gently lays Iris on the bed, careful not to jar her feet too much. “It was the right ankle, wasn’t it?”

“How did it happen?” Barry wants to know. “Is anything else broken?”

“And-”

“Okay!” Wally says. “Can the people without medical degrees step away from my patient, please?”

Iris smirks while Kaden and Barry step back from her. Wally pulls on some gloves. “You. Superboy.”

“Yes?” he replies, looking a little frightened.

“Are you alright?”

“He’s fine, Wally,” Iris replies, lying back. “I hit him for refusing to put me down and he thought I was tickling him.”

“I’m okay, thank you,” he says politely. “But I should get back. Thanks for all your help, Iris.”

“Any time,” she replies. “Well, actually I’d prefer if it _weren’t_ on my day off, but whatever.” She reaches up to hug him, rubbing his back, and lets go. Kaden then steps up to Barry, holding a hand out. “It was great to finally meet you, Barry.”

“You…too,” he says, wincing. Kaden’s grip is like a vice. His eyes widen.

“Oops. Ah. Sorry.”

“Every time,” Iris laughs softly. “Barry, could you get Chesca to take him up to the breach? He needs to get back and help rebuild stuff, and you know the temporal warping means he could spend way too much time away from home.”

“Sure,” he replies, though he’s kind of reluctant to leave. Chesca takes him back up to the roof and Linda looks after them as they leave, Kaden’s cape swishing as he walks. “Okay, so he was made in a _lab_ , right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Superboy! He looks like he walked off a runway!”

Barry shrugs. “I guess.”

Linda looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “What do you – okay, Chesca. Superboy is a total Adonis, right?” Chesca snorts.

“Are you kidding? The man looks like he was carved by angels. Talk about God being in a good mood.”

Barry makes a face. “Sure, I mean, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

Chesca raises an eyebrow, coming around to sit on the desk. “Oh, you mean the ‘face of a Greek god’ kind of thing?”

“Bartholomew Allen.” Linda grins playfully at him. “Are you jealous of Iris’ super-hot super-friend?”

He folds his arms. “No. Why would I be jealous?”

“Who’s jealous?” Iris enquires mildly, walking back into the room having changed back into her dress. Chesca is the one who answers.

“We are, of everyone on Earth-3, since they get to look at that all day. Seriously, where did you find him?”

“Oh, you mean Kaden.” Iris laughs, waving a hand. “Yeah, you get used to that eventually. The man is like a giant puppy. And, women who both have boyfriends, he’s taken.”

“He is?”

“Mm-hm. You know that Jamie he was talking about?” They nod. “That’s Earth-3 Jamie Olsen.”

“The one who took that picture of Superwoman?” Barry asks. “The one that won the Pulitzer?”

“Yeah, her. She works for CalCo over there. He met her when he started working there ten months ago, and he has been in love with her for nine months, thirty days, and about three hours.”

Linda sighs. “Guess he’ll just have to stay on my three list, then.”

Barry’s face heats when he remembers that he’d told Iris – before he found out her identity – that Miss Miracle was at the top of _his_ three list. And he’d called her hot. Which – well, when she’s walking around in the suit, with that sort of smug sexy smile on her face because she’s just done something cool, and the way she removes her mask to shake her hair out…it’s not like it’s not true. Thankfully, he’s saved by Wally walking back into the room and throwing his arm around Linda. “Damn right he is,” he grins. Then he points at Iris, who by this point has changed back into her civilian clothes. “ _You_ were very lucky, Bambi Eyes. Your ankle might twinge a little, but it’s fine. Just make sure you eat something tonight, otherwise your super healing won’t work as fast. And why in holy hell are you letting aliens throw you at buses? Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of superhero?”

“Whatever,” she laughs. “All of you, get out of my building.”

After everyone has said their goodbyes, Iris finds Barry again as she’s locking up the building. “Barry, I’m really sorry about all of this. I know we were supposed to hang out today, and I was looking forward to it.”

“Iris, would you stop apologising? It’s not your fault that aliens invaded Earth-3.”

“I know,” she sighs. “But still.”

“Hey, do you want to come over for dinner? Malina’s cooking and mom will be there, and Henry, and Eddie will tell us something really boring about insurance, I’ll bet.”

Iris hesitates, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure.” He tips his head at her apprehensive expression, curious. “What is it?”

“I just – I don’t want to impose on your family dinner.”

“You’re saying that like you’re not a part of my family,” he points out. Iris rubs her nose.

“You don’t think Malina will mind me showing up?”

“Nobody’s going to mind you showing up, Iris,” he says firmly. “Come on, please?”

Iris looks up at him and then sighs. “Sure, why not? Beats having to cook.”

“Exactly,” he says triumphantly. “Anyway, how’s your ankle?”

“My ankle is _fine_. I’ve done worse working in the Cortex. Kaden worries about us humans too much.”

“Uh-huh.” Barry puts his hands in his pockets as they take the path to his house. “He’s – nice.”

“Like I said,” she replies, “giant puppy.”

“So how does he stack up next to all the other super friends?”

“Well, he doesn’t shoot me, so there’s that, but…” She sighs.

“What’s up?”

“Look, I know that everyone thinks it’s so awesome that I know the Green Arrow and we found the Hawkmates and I have the Flash on speed dial, but sometimes you don’t want all of that, you know?”

They turn onto his mother’s street, which is illuminated by lamps. “What do you mean?”

“I mean – like everyone I met after the powers knows I’m Miss Miracle. So if something happens, everyone’s gonna expect me to get in the suit and go fix it. Every time I see them, it’s like I have to remember to be in battle mode, and it’s a little exhausting.” She shrugs. “Super friends are great, but I don’t want to be super all the time. Sometimes I like being regular, dorky Iris West.”

Barry smiles at her. “I like regular dorky Iris West.”

“You should, you would be lost without her,” she quips, and he laughs. They come up to the house and open the door to find Nora sitting on the couch while Eddie and Henry sit at the table playing chess. “Hey, you two,” Henry says fondly, as Iris bends to give Nora a hug. “Good day?”

“Aliens invaded Earth-3,” Iris replies absently, and everyone stares at her.

“I should really stop asking questions like this,” Henry sighs. “Were the aliens fun, at least?”

“On balance, I guess. I mean, one of them threw me at a bus, but I didn’t take that personally.”

Nora just laughs at the expression on Henry’s face and gets up. “Well, at least you’re alright. Are you guys here for dinner? Because Malina was very adamant that we all be seated at this table at seven thirty.”

“Yeah, is she around?” Barry asks. Iris sits, and he sits next to her across from Henry and Eddie. Eddie packs the chest set away.

“She is sequestered in that kitchen and told us to stay away until the food was ready. And she may be smaller than me, but she’s a little vicious when she’s irritated.”

“Has to be seen to be believed,” Henry adds. “So, for your own sake, believe it.”

“Mom, what’s the latest on the robbery?” Barry asks. His mother runs a hand through her hair.

“Well, it would help if they talked, but they’re acting like this is some sacred job. Usually they sing like canaries when we’re questioning them.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Nora,” Henry reassures her. “You were always good at that kind of thing.”

“Okay, five plates of Great-Uncle Rudy’s famous – oh.” Malina pauses when she sees Iris sitting next to Barry. “Iris, I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Yeah, Barry invited her,” Nora says. Barry frowns, suddenly very aware that Iris looks strangely nervous, but his mother hasn’t noticed. “That’s okay, right?”

“Well, it’s just that I only made enough for five,” she explains. “If I’d known before…”

“I’m sorry, Malina, it’s my fault,” Barry says, somewhat guiltily. “Iris didn’t want to interrupt, and I should have checked.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence, and then Iris clears her throat. “You know what?” she says, standing up. “It’s fine. It’s – I’ll go, you guys enjoy your dinner.”

“Wait, Iris-”

“It’s cool, Barry,” she shrugs, smiling. “I have work I should be doing anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Henry asks. “I’m sure there’ll be enough for everyone.”

“That is very nice of you, Henry, but I eat like a horse now,” she laughs lightly. “Believe me, there’s a reason no one leaves food around me. I’ll see you all later.”

Barry knits his eyebrows together. “Do you want to hang out afterwards?”

She shrugs helplessly. “I have an early day tomorrow. I’ll see you when you’re on duty at STAR Labs.”

Barry tries to hide his disappointment as Iris grabs her stuff. She squeezes Henry’s shoulder and fist-bumps Eddie, before wrapping her arms around Barry in a quick hug. Then she gives Nora a kiss on the cheek goodbye (and a not so small part of him kind of wants one too), before she smiles her goodbye at Malina. “See you later.”

“Yeah. Sorry, again,” she says quietly.

“Forget about it. Make sure you’re reading those medical reports, little miss.”

“Uh-huh,” she promises. After Iris leaves, Nora gives Malina an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, Malina. Next time we can all have dinner together.”

“And Iris would eat everything you made for dinner and still have room for leftovers,” Eddie adds. “Remind me to show you the food bill for STAR Labs.”

Malina serves the food – chipotle chicken fajitas – and Barry learns about what they’ve been doing all week. If you’d told him a year ago that he’d be having dinner with his mother, his long-lost sister, _her_ adopted brother, and his super spy dad, he would have probably called someone to commit you. But then, his ex-girlfriend had tried to kill him, so this is at least an upgrade. “So, wait,” Barry says. “You mean that the two of you have a whole fake office and fake business cards and file fake tax returns-”

“Barry, we do not file fake tax returns,” Henry corrects him, and Eddie shudders.

“Number one rule of M.A.I.M.E.D.: do not piss off the IRS.”

Malina levitates a fork in the air. “Really? I thought the number one rule was never trust the waiter.”

“Why don’t you trust the waiter?” Barry asks.

“Duh, Barry, the waiter’s the one who put the arsenic in the bread.”

Henry plucks the fork out of the air. “Malina, be nice to your brother. What was your question, Barry?”

“You guys do all of that…so you can dress up and _not_ sell insurance?”

“Well, I’m a travelling salesman,” Eddie points out. “So it’s door to door. But it’s a cover, you know that. I need it in case someone suspects what I’m doing.”

“And what are you doing?”

“That’s classified.”

Barry rolls his eyes and Malina perks up. “Anyone wanna know what I’m doing?”

“As long as it’s not robbing banks, I’m good,” Nora says, and Malina grins.

“Well, I found a case to look at, right here in the city. Thought I’d do something in between law classes and becoming the next miracle.”

“Oh, yeah?” Eddie asks. “What is it? Because I still have to approve those, you know.”

“Relax, Agent Pretty Boy,” she replies, waving a hand. “Nothing major. I just got word that someone is doing some shady business down by the scrapyard downtown.”

“The place with all the drag-racing?”

“Yeah. Ooh, drag-racing sounds like-”

“No,” Henry, Nora and Eddie say. Malina pouts.

“Alright, geez. Anyway, I’m going to see what I can find out about it. Should be fun, right?”

Barry chuckles to himself. Between his mother, Iris, and now Malina, it it’s apparently his destiny to be surrounded by women who think that chasing things that can kill you is fun.

***

Two years ago, the most Iris West could count on at work was some blood spatter on some curtains, and spending all her time using a centrifuge to separate things.

So imagine her surprise when, on Monday morning, she’s faced with someone who’s been buried alive.

In _tar_.

“Ugh,” Iris groans. Nora, who’s talking to one of the mechanics, walks over to her, a coffee in her hand. “Don’t you just love Mondays?”

“They are my favourite,” Iris says dryly, studying the body. “Whose the victim?”

“Little lady by the name of Dani Birge. Not exactly an angel, but she did manage to buy this garage a couple of years ago. It looks like she was dipped in a volcano.”

“Yeah,” Iris agrees. The body is blackened, but there’s no soot. Also, she stinks. “The depth and uniformity of the burn look like she was covered in something like lava, but with a lower burn temp, and an added chemical characteristic. I would say tar – but is there any around here?”

“Not that I can see. And the fire department couldn’t find a secondary accelerant.”

“You wouldn’t,” Iris says, “with a meta. Okay, I’m gonna take this back to STAR Labs tonight and have Chesca run some tests on it.”

“Good idea.” Nora shuts her book. “I have to meet Malina and Barry for lunch anyway.”

“That sounds nice.”

Nora pauses. “He missed you at dinner last night.”

“Oh,” Iris says quietly. “Well, he had to switch shifts with Linda because the news about the new DA taking bribes broke, and I had to get mom from the airport, so… Besides, he’s bonding with his sister, he doesn’t need me.”

“Look, Iris, I know he likes to pretend like everything just rolls off his back and that nothing affects him, but this is still weird for him to navigate. He’s always going to need you.”

Iris laughs. “Are you always going to use Barry to guilt me into things?”

“Pretty much.”

“Whatever. We have a training session with Malina tonight, so that should be fun, at least. I’ll ask him how he’s doing then.”

“Good,” she says triumphantly. “I need to go find out more about our victim over here.”

Iris nods and she leaves, while she herself is left to grimace at the remains of Dani Birge. Really, her mom said she could have gotten a taxi back from the airport, and she could have swung by Barry’s loft to see him, but she doesn’t want it to be weird. Because his sister doesn’t seem to like her very much and it’s starting to get to her. Not because it’s hurting her feelings or anything like that, but because she knows how hurt Barry would be if he found out about it. Maybe Malina is just adjusting to things, and Iris is one of them. It can’t be easy having a new family, especially when there’s this new girl who isn’t Barry’s sister but is always around. Also, she thinks that the lightning rod thing freaked Barry out more than he says it did. She keeps catching him looking at her weirdly, and whenever she gets near him he looks like he’s been hit with an electric shock. He’s probably remembering all the awkwardness after she told him she was in love with him.

Iris sighs. She thought, that with the fact that Patty is gone and Colin is in prison and the breaches are on their way to being under control, her life would go back to something resembling normalcy. But apparently, things are just going to get more complicated.

“Ugh,” the mutters, scraping tar off the floor. “Seriously, this is disgusting.”

***

“Oh, yeah,” Barry declares to his empty office, “we are so, _so_ screwed.”

He studies the pictures spread out on his desk, hands on his hips. He usually likes being right, but when it involves gun-smuggling, drug-running, power-hungry gangsters, he’d much prefer to be wrong and move onto the next thing. What with the DA taking bribes’ news breaking over the weekend, everyone had to be at CCPN to report on the ongoing scandal and wait for new developments. It got so bad that he had to push all his other work to Monday, spent most of the weekend at the office, and missed his shift at STAR Labs altogether. In fact, he’s about to be late for the one he has now.

He packs up the pictures, noting that he has to show them to Iris when he gets there. When he finally got around to studying the pictures, he found that the tattoo that he spotted on that robber’s ankle in a file that Olivia had given them about the Mayor, who was way too much bad news for Central City. If she’s here and getting people to rob banks for her, there’s no telling what she’ll do next. He slings his bag over his shoulder and locks up his office, and is about to head out of the door when someone calls his name. “Barry?”

“Yeah? Oh, Wendy,” he greets her. “Working late?”

“Unfortunately. I wanted to ask you something about your blog.”

“The metahuman one? Shoot.”

“Were you the first one to start writing about Miss Miracle?”

“Yeah, way back when she was called Blink,” he nods, laughing. “She’s still mad at me about that, but hey, I was a rookie. Why? Working on that story you and Erica are so excited about?”

She nods, giving him a small smile. “I am, actually, and I’m really looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts about it.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get too excited. There’s a reason that I’m the one who writes about her.”

“We’ll see about that, Dr. Allen. Have a good night.”

Barry makes it to STAR Labs just in time to see Iris demonstrating something about the Breach Blaster to Chesca. It’s the first time he’s seen her since that dinner last week, and he kind of gets the feeling that she’s avoiding him. “Hey, guys,” he says, putting his bag down. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Hey, beanpole,” Chesca says cheerfully. “You’re good, we’re still waiting for Dr. Asshole to get back from his conference. You want some dinner?”

“That reminds me,” Iris interjects. “Chesca, I know we have a lot of money, but you have to stop ordering so much food and charging it to the business account. It looks like we’re feeding the homeless.”

“We’re not feeding the homeless; we’re feeding _you_ ,” Chesca quips. Iris raises her eyebrows.

“Oh, yeah? I’m the one who orders dozens of pizza pockets in ‘Vegetarian Sizzler’ flavour?”

“Those are Jesse’s…that I steal out of the mini-fridge in his office.”

“Look, I’m not saying don’t eat, you do work here, but the accountant looked like she was going to take the account away from me.”

“Noted, Bambi Eyes,” she says. Iris nods and turns to Barry, looking a little apprehensive.

“Have you seen your sister? We were supposed to have a training session today but she hasn’t called.”

“Maybe she’s with Eddie?” he suggests. “She mentioned meeting him to take him shopping for a tie at lunch.” Iris stares at them both.

“He’s pretending to be an insurance salesman, he should have a decent tie.”

“Actually, if he’s an insurance salesman, all his ties should be crap. Why does he need a new one, Chess?”

“Because he’s meeting my parents this week,” she explains, “and he wants to look nice. That reminds me, what’s the best way to introduce the person you’re dating to your parents? I’m so bad at this kind of thing.”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Barry says immediately. “I was in a secret relationship for months before my ex met my mom, and then she tried to kill me.”

“And I never really had that problem, since most people didn’t really want to meet my convict mom,” Iris adds somewhat dryly, taking off her glasses to clean them. “Jeez, that’ll be fun on a date. What kind of guy wants to hear ‘Yeah, my mom runs a college newspaper, but she used to be in prison for murder’?”

“The right guy’s not going to care about that, Iris,” Barry points out, firmer than he intended. “If he wanted to be with you, he wouldn’t let anything stop him. And besides, your mom is your family, and you should never do anything to compromise that.”

Iris gives him a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and Chesca tuts. “Maybe I should make him buy them Sangria.”

“Chesca, Eddie is a total boy scout, why are you so worried?”

“Because he carries a handgun, he has diplomatic immunity in fifteen countries, and according to another dozen, he doesn’t exist at all.”

Barry pauses. “Make sure it’s the good Sangria.”

Iris, meanwhile, looks at her watch and then switches her glasses out for her mask. “Okay, it’s seven. I am officially on-duty. So if I break my leg while Jesse is out-”

“No pizza pockets for him.”

“Francesca.”

“I’ll tell him,” Barry chuckles. “Don’t worry, sunshine.” Iris nods and blinks away to start her patrol, and Barry’s face twitches. “Chess?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know if…if Iris is mad at me?”

She peers up at him. “Why would she be mad at you?”

“With everything that’s been going on, I don’t think I’ve been spending as much time with her. Last week I invited her to dinner, but Malina hadn’t made enough so she had to leave. And then there was all that craziness with the DA’s office so I missed hanging out with her here, and then she didn’t come to Sunday dinner at all.” He twists his fingers. “I don’t know, I thought she would understand, but we’ve barely spoken in the past few days.”

Chesca looks as if she’s trying to decide something and Barry studies her. He’s much closer to Chesca than he ever thought he would be, even though he can’t read her as well as he can read Iris. Still, there is a closeness between them, borne of worrying about Iris and each other as they navigate the new things in their lives. Finally, she sits back. “Barry, Iris is my friend, and I know how tight you guys are, but even if I knew what she was upset about, if she’s upset at all, I’d prefer if she told you herself. But…” She sighs. “I noticed this myself, which is why I feel okay telling you about it. Malina doesn’t…like Iris very much.”

Barry stares at her. “What? Why wouldn’t she like Iris?”

Chesca shrugs. “I wouldn’t know. Like I said, I’ve been realising it myself over the past couple of weeks, which is why I’m telling you. But I’m guessing she doesn’t want to rock the boat with you guys by being around all the time when you want to spent time with your sister.”

Guilt ripples through him and he rubs his face. That, of course, makes perfect sense, and he can’t believe he hasn’t realised it before now. But then he supposes he’s been so excited with having his family back that he hasn’t really been paying attention. Malina and Iris had been cool before, when they were just getting to know each other, but maybe now that she’s seeing how close they all are she’s feeling a little intimidated. “Right. Thanks for telling me, Chesca.”

“You’re welcome. I mean, I could be wrong,” she stresses. “Iris gets mad at weird stuff sometimes. I remember once I said that I didn’t like Beauty and the Beast and she smacked me.”

“It’s her favourite Disney movie,” he explains. She sighs.

“That girl is lucky she has superpowers; I have no idea why I’m friends with her.”

Iris herself flashes back into the room in a blur of green and gold. “Okay, first section of patrol done,” she declares, taking her gloves off. “Do we have anything to eat?”

“There are those protein bars that I synthesised for you-”

“Chesca, those things raise my temperature, make my pupils dilate, and I think they gave me the shakes once.”

She pouts. “But they’re so _good_.”

“Iris?” Barry asks. “Can we talk? It’s important.”

“Right, your pictures,” she remembers, snapping her fingers. “That was cool that you recognised the tattoo from somewhere. Where are they?”

“I – Right,” he realises. Maybe he’ll bring it up later. He crosses to his messenger bag and pulls out the folder. Iris studies them. “I know these from somewhere…”

“Yeah, they’re from that story we worked on in Star City, when we were supposed to be having dinner with Team Arrow. They’re the tattoos that people who work for the Mayor have.”

Chesca squeaks. “The Mayor? The chick with the guns and the drugs and the really bad hair?”

“That’s her,” Iris confirms, her face grim. “And one of the guys at the bank robbery had this tattoo?”

“Yeah, on his ankle.”

“But we put him in jail,” Chesca points out. “I remember, I cheered when Detective Lance signed the paperwork.”

“Believe me, Dinah was cheering too,” Iris agrees. “And she was sentenced to twenty years, I think, but that doesn’t mean she can’t run her operation from prison.”

“Yeah, my guess is she’s using a senior associate of hers to keep things going until she gets her bail hearing, and operating in Central to avoid suspicion.” Barry surmises. “Which Laurent tried to avoid, but still. You think we should tell my mom?”

“Yeah, tell her that Team Miracle is taking this one, since an open investigation into the Mayor could be dangerous for everyone working for CCPD,” she tells him. “Because trying to find a gun-smuggler’s associates is exactly what I wanted this February.”

The visitor’s alarm goes off and Chesca nods at the computer. “Malina’s here, Iris. You still up for what we talked about earlier?”

“Definitely,” she replies, and Barry looks at her.

“What did you talk about?”

“Wait and see, Allen,” she says, and then they see Malina bouncing joyously into the room, a grin on her face. “Hey, guys! Ready to work?”

“Hey, you,” Barry smiles. “How was your mid-term?”

“Once you have a photographic memory, things like that get a little easier.”

“Good to hear,” Iris adds. Malina purses her lips but doesn’t say anything, and Barry wonders again how he didn’t see it sooner.

“So, what are we up to today, Miss Miracle? Are you finally letting me fight crime with you?”

“Not yet, unfortunately,” she answers. “But I do have a present for you. Chess?”

Chesca wheels a brand-new mannequin out, complete with a dark red suit with gold and black accents. “Mademoiselle Miracle, meet your suit.”

“Mademoiselle Miracle?” Malina asks. “That’s my new name?”

Chesca shrugs, taking the suit down from the mannequin. “I’m not married to it, to be honest. And it’s a little long. But this is all yours.”

“There are comms around your ears,” Iris explains, taking her around the suit. “And you don’t need lenses in your mask like I do, but there’s a little camera in it so we can see where you are. There are also ways we can keep track of your vitals, a tracker, and a defibrillator.”

“Which you won’t need,” Chesca adds, “once you learn how to throw lightning, like Bambi Eyes over here.”

“And there’ll be time for that later,” Iris says. “You’re with me tonight. Don’t get excited!” she adds quickly. “You’re there to observe and learn, understand? I see one miracle from you, and I’m sending you back-”

A blaring klaxon sounds and all Chesca swears. “Attack in progress,” she observes. “The tip from Barry’s blog says it’s on Spring Street and – whoa.”

“What?”

“Apparently someone is throwing fireballs.”

“Cool!” Malina grins.

“Not cool,” Iris says firmly. She pouts.

“But you said-”

“That was before there was someone fricasseeing pedestrians. Chess, get me a visual.”

In seconds, Iris has blinked away to the scene, where dozens of people are gathered around a woman covered in some sort of dark liquid as she advances on another woman. “Remember me, Clara?” she snarls.

“Josie?” she whispers in confusion. “We killed you…” The other woman laughs and Iris watches her raise her arm and hurl something black and burning at Clara. Without thinking, Iris flashes to her and throws her out of the way. “Okay,” she says. “I’m gonna need a little help with this.”

“What’s she throwing?” Malina asks. Iris frowns.

“It looks like…”

“Asphalt,” Chesca confirms. “And the viscosity of that lowers as it’s temperature lessens-”

“And it hardens,” Iris adds, looking around. “So I just have to find a way to…cool her down.” She blinks way to in front of a fire hydrant and faces Josie again. “Hey, barbecue? Hit me with your best shot!”

Iris flits away just before the ball of flaming asphalt hits her, striking the fire hydrant instead, and it explodes. She watches in morbid fascination as Josie literally melts into a puddle of tar while everyone cheers. And Instagrams the whole thing, of course. But then out of the corner of her eye she sees Clara trying to crawl away, and she locks her in a mental grip. “Not so fast, sweetheart,” Iris says, walking up to her. “Got some questions for you.”

***

“Well, that was eventful,” Chesca says dryly. “Anyone want a pizza pocket?”

“Chesca,” Barry laughs. “What did we _just_ say?”

“What? She can’t hear me.”

“Does that happen everyday?” Malina asks. “Like, that woman was throwing fireballs.”

“Remind me to introduce you to Firestorm.”

“For real?”

“Well,” Barry says, sitting down. “Maybe, if they ever make it back from…Rome?”

“What are they doing in Rome?”

Chesca puts a pizza pocket in the microwave oven. “Trying to prevent the assassination of Julius Caesar.”

Malina stares at how casually they’re talking about this. “But didn’t that…happen, already?”

“Well, Sam Lance slept with his wife, and-”

“We haven’t quite explained the Legends to you yet,” Barry says quickly. “But everything’s good. For now, at least. Are you looking forward to your training?”

She sits in a chair. “I’m sure it’ll be fun when Iris actually lets me do something. But anyway, I have stuff to keep me busy.”

“Right, your drag-racing thing. How’s that going?”

“Really well, actually. I found out some stuff about the woman that’s running them – Cleo Bronwen – and I’m thinking of going undercover there to see whether I can get her on anything incriminating.” Chesca and Barry share a look.

“Look at you, little miss super spy,” she croons, impressed. “James Bond who?”

“Thanks,” she grins. “I actually wanted to use your photocopier, if you didn’t mind. I ran out of printing credits at the library.”

“Oh, that’s the reason? Not because printing out CCTV photos of women who run illegal drag races isn’t the best thing to do?”

“That too!”

Barry chuckles and watches as she gets the photos out of her bag. There are quite a lot of them, photos of her meeting with people, a few with her just out to lunch…then Barry starts. “Wait, what was that one?” Malina looks where he’s pointing.

“Oh, that’s just one of her associates,” she answers. “Alexandra Reed. Also known as-”

“The Mayor,” Barry finishes. He flips through the photos some more and, yep, “Cleo Bronwen has the Mayor tattoo.”

“The what?”

“The tattoo that all her lackeys have. Malina, that is way too dangerous!”

“It is not, I-”

There’s a flash of green and gold and Iris appears in front of them, winded. “Sorry,” she breathes. “Carjacking on Fifth. What’d I miss?”

“Malina apparently knows about our good councilwoman,” Chesca answers. Iris removes her mask and puts on her glasses. “I – what?”

“I’m investigating Cleo Bronwen,” Malina explains, looking around at everyone in confusion. “And apparently, she works for someone called the Mayor?”

“The Mayor?” Iris repeats. “Are you serious? No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

“She means,” Barry interjects, “no way in hell, it’s too dangerous.”

Malina glares at them. “I am a spy, you guys. I do this for a living.”

Iris removes her gloves, not even flinching at the expression on Malina’s face. “I am aware of that, Malina. But the Mayor terrified even the Green Arrow-”

“But I’m not going after the Mayor, I’m going after her lackey.”

“Who she can control perfectly well from prison. Where she’s serving twenty years for gun-smuggling, murder, and a whole host of lovely things. Even if Bronwen has nothing to do with the Mayor this minute, the fact that they’re even affiliated means that you’re not going anywhere near this.”

Malina’s glare deepens. “Oh, and are you going to stop me, Miss Miracle? I was doing all of this long before you got powers.”

“Yeah, and you’re still a rookie, so you still have to get big missions like this approved, don’t you? By Eddie.”

“I – Eddie approved this already.”

“Because he doesn’t know that you’re going after someone who works for one of the most dangerous women on the West Coast!” Barry counters. “Malina, I’m sorry, but the answer is no.”

Malina looks around at them, even Chesca, who is hiding in her pizza pocket. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, we’re not.” Iris voice softens. “Look, we can still train, but there’s a lot for you to learn before you go after people like her.”

“You know what? Don’t bother. I might run into a field mouse and it could be ‘too dangerous’.” Spinning on her heel, she grabs her stuff and leaves without another word, and Barry and Iris sigh. “That could have gone better,” Barry admits. Chesca gestures with her dinner.

“Yeah, but think about it. You were trying to protect her from someone that had _Olivia_ shook, and that woman likes to jump out of buildings. Speaking as someone who’s been a little sister before, you have nothing to worry about beyond her maybe writing ‘I hate Barry’ over and over in her diary.”

Barry sighs. “Good to know. What happened out there, Iris?”

“Well, I found the woman who killed Dani Birge – Josie Monteleone, who disappeared on December 11th in 2013, which as you both know…”

“Is the day the Particle Accelerator exploded,” Chesca sighs. “Man, that thing keeps on giving, doesn’t it?”

“Right. And Josie and Dani were part of the same crowd as Clara Tanner, who Josie went after today. My guess is she was going after people for revenge.”

“Know what that’s like,” Barry mutters, thinking of Patty. “So this Josie Monteleone – she’s burning people to kill them?”

“Ah.” Iris crosses over to her bag, pulling out her report from earlier in the day. “Actually, the coroner’s report said that Dani died from suffocation, not burns.”

“So she’s literally burying people alive?”

“Yeah, like a walking-”

“Tar Pit,” Chesca puts in quickly, and then grins. “Too slow, Miss Miracle.”

Iris shoves her playfully and Barry looks at her. “What happened to her?”

“Well, she kind of…melted. I think the water took care of her.”

“And Clara?”

“Oh, I just took her to the station and she had to answer some questions. Apparently she has a couple priors, so she’s currently sitting in Central City jail. Win number one for the Miracle Workers and the patrol isn’t even halfway done yet.”

Barry nods, glancing around. “Hey, could I talk to you for a minute? It’s important.”

She looks at Chesca briefly. “Yeah, sure. Chess, find out where Dr. Asshole is, Tar Pit could have killed me and then he’d yell at me for having the audacity to get hurt.” Iris leads them both outside to the corridor. Barry keeps fiddling with his hands, which is how she can tell he’s worried about something. “Bar? What did you want to talk to me about?”

He sighs. “It’s about Malina.”

Instantly, Iris feels her own face fall. “I know, Barry, God – I’ll talk to her-”

“No, it’s – well, I’m not saying _don’t_ talk to her, but that isn’t it. You’ve been saying you’re really busy and stuff lately, and that’s why you couldn’t hang out or go to dinner, but is that true? Is it really the reason?”

Iris feels a pit forming in her stomach. Barry always complains about the doe-eyed thing that she does when she’s upset or wants something, but honestly, Barry’s is no better. He looks all crestfallen and he looks up at her from underneath his eyelashes, and it’s hard to deny him when he looks at her like that. “I – don’t…” She lets out a breath. “Look, Barry, she’s your sister, and I guess we’re not…clicking, right away, so I didn’t want to make things weird. And she’s supposed to be getting to know Nora and you, not me. I’d just be in the way.”

“You would not. And you’re my – you’re Iris,” he says. “It’s not like you’re going anywhere. Do you want me to talk to her?”

“No, that’s okay. Maybe when she comes back to train I can apologise and we can start again.” She rubs her eyes briefly, and then turns when she sees the elevator doors open. “Jesse, nice of you to join us.”

He scowls at her. “Yeah, well, there was traffic. And then Miss Miracle stopped a woman who throws exploding tennis balls at people, so they had to close down Spring Street.”

Iris makes a face at him and Barry chuckles at the irritated expression on Jesse’s face. “And Barry, could you maybe write something official on your blog? Because I think that’s literally the quote that people are sending in, and I’d hate for the headline to be ‘Miss Miracle Stops Pyromaniac Serena Williams Wannabe’.”

“On it.”

“Oh, and I ran into your sister on the way out. She seemed upset but I think I talked her down.”

“Oh, yeah? What did she say?”

“Well, she said that…” he sniffs the air suddenly and his face hardens. “That woman is eating my pizza pockets, isn’t she?”

“Um,” Iris says intelligently, and then watches as Jesse goes off to commit a murder over pizza. Barry grimaces.

“We should probably stop them.”

“Probably.”

“…we can give it a few minutes.”

***

The next day, Charlie sticks his head around Barry’s office door. “They need you for the meeting, Dr. Allen.”

Barry sighs inwardly. Well, that’s progress. Kind of. “Sure, Charlie. Come on, and bring your notepad.”

Everyone’s gathering around the raised table when he sits down, reaching for a donut and some coffee. He notices that Wendy keeps glancing at him, but he doesn’t find out why until the meeting is well underway.

“…and everyone congratulate Missy for making the Pulitzer shortlist again,” she continues, and Barry smirks as they all clap. She told him first, which he’s kind of surprised at, and he has a gift and some wine for her in his desk. Now she only shrugs modestly, though he knows she must be pleased because she’s been working on that piece for months. “Well someone has to entertain you all, right?”

“Yes, Missy, we all worship the ground you walk on,” Erica says dryly. She consults her notes. “Allen, you all done with that state senator story?”

“Yep, I’ll have it on your desk by lunch.”

“Great, because we got a tip about illegal activity down by the scrap yard.”

Barry’s heart starts to speed up. “Ahem, r-really?”

“Yeah,” she replies, scanning her notes. “Someone is running illegal drag races down there, and I want someone to see whether we can do some digging for it. You up for some investigating?”

“It – sure. No problem, boss, I’ll take care of it.” Because that won’t _totally_ complicate everything that’s happened already. When he called Eddie before coming to work this morning, he told him about everything that had happened with Malina. Once he found out that the Green Arrow had trouble apprehending her, he immediately had to tell Malina that she couldn’t do it. She’s mad, according to him, but…

“Better mad than dead, Barry,” Eddie had said. “Don’t worry, she’ll probably pick something else up in no time. And don’t forget, she’s training to become Central City’s newest miracle. She’ll be fine.”

Barry makes a note to send a text to Iris because of this latest development, and then sits back to listen while Erica hands out the rest of the assignments. “…progress report by the end of the week,” she finishes. “Oh! Wendy, you wanna tell everyone about your idea?”

“Sure,” she says easily. “Although I might need your help with it, Barry. I was thinking of running an editorial on Miss Miracle and her responsibility to the city.”

“Her responsibility to the city?” someone repeats. “I mean, she’s a superhero, she’s supposed to protect the city. Isn’t that reason enough?”

“It is,” she agrees. “But it’s our responsibility to report the truth, and that includes the truth about her.”

Barry gives a deep frown. “What are you talking about?”

“Barry, a couple of weeks ago Miss Miracle defeated Geomancer, right?”

“Right…”

“And where was she before that?”

“Before that?”

She consults her notes. “Well, according to your blog and the social media accounts you run for her, the last time she tackled a really big enemy was before Christmas, when she took out the Tricksters again.”

Barry regards her, careful not to give anything away. After coming back from all the earth-hopping, Jesse made it very clear that none of them were to do anything too taxing. Especially Iris, given that she had actually died during all their adventures. “That’s true,” he admits. “But nothing too bad struck the city during that time. Its not like she let the city get blown up while she took a vacation.”

“You’re right, she didn’t. That time.”

“Whats that supposed to mean?” Barry frowns, feeling himself getting defensive.

“What about that time she fought Calamity in the street, and then a black hole opened up in the sky? She closed it, I know,” she says quickly, seeing he’s about to say something, “but then she disappeared for months, only coming back sporadically.”

Barry bites back the reply that’s automatic on his tongue – of course Iris disappeared for months, her year had been absolute hell and if she continued much longer in that state of mind she wasn’t going to come back from it. “Right, but she _did_ come back. And like I said, nothing bad happened during that time.”

“And that’s what I’m talking about. This city loves Miss Miracle, but its entirely possible that its become too reliant on her. What if she _couldn’t_ stop the singularity? Or if she really did take an extended vacation? And what about the other times?”

“What other times?”

“Well, like that time she attacked you and your ex-girlfriend.”

He blinks, having to stop himself from saying that he’s over that mostly because his ex-girlfriend then tried to kill _him_. “But she apologised for that, and we found out that it was a metahuman that was doing that to her. Anyway, what are you trying to say? She’s much better than she was two years ago.”

Wendy pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. “Look, Barry, the last thing I’m saying about her is that we shouldn’t trust her or she would be afraid of her. But one of the things that is still destroying Gotham is that we fail to hold our heroes accountable. And the people of this city should know that Miss Miracle isn’t always going to be able to save them.”

“Alright,” Erica interjects. “Clearly we’re all passionate about this. Allen, Margolis, in my office. Everyone else, time to go on lunch.” They make their way into her office and she shuts the door behind them.

“Erica, there is no way that I’m authorising an article about Miss Miracle that tells everyone that she’s going to run off and leave them,” he says immediately. “Not only is it irresponsible, it’s just not true.”

“Barry, that’s not the angle we were going for,” she replies. Wendy nods.

“I’m not going to downplay what she’s done for everyone. But you’re who they go to when they want to feel like everything’s going to be okay. And that might not always be true.”

“And you want to print that at the expense of her relationship with this paper? With the city?”

“Giving a different perspective of Miss Miracle isn’t going to damage her relationship with us or this city.”

Barry raises an eyebrow. “How happy do you think she’s going to be protecting a city that thinks she’s unreliable?”

Wendy gives him a measured look. “Shouldn’t heroes want to protect people no matter what?”

Barry clenches his jaw and Erica raises her hands. “Alright. Now, Wendy has already started writing the article, and I’m sure it won’t be anything too damaging. Barry’s right, we don’t want to ruin our relationship with her. Wendy, you show it to Barry, and then he can judge whether or not it’s going to do any harm.”

Barry folds his arms but nods, raising an eyebrow. “This better be good, Margolis.”

She smiles. “It will be, Allen.”

***

Iris got Barry’s text about ten minutes before her lunch break, but he promised that he’s okay with her working through lunch. She’s not sure what could make him want to come and see her in the middle of the day, especially when he has so much work, but she’s not going to complain about it. He walks in carrying their sandwiches and coffees from Jitters. “Hey – okay,” she says before he can reply. “Who the hell pissed you off?”

“I – huh?”

“Barry, you look like you’re going to hit someone. What happened?”

He pauses, his face clearing as he puts down the food. “Ah, sorry, work stuff. There’s a story going around that we’re thinking of covering, and I don’t agree with the direction it’s taking, I guess.”

Iris tips her head to the side. “You want to talk about it?”

“No, I’m good. But thanks, I appreciate it.”

She shrugs. “Okay. Now, what was so urgent that you had to rush straight down here?”

“Well, I got a new assignment today,” he explains, handing her the brief. Iris’ eyes widen as she reads.

“They want you to look into the drag-racing thing? Why?”

“Erica’s really interested in what’s making the young people of the city go off the rails,” he tells her. “I think it was some new order from the mayor. But I’m guessing they don’t know that Bronwen works for…well The Mayor.”

“Great,” Iris mutters, rubbing her eyes. “Are you taking it?”

“That’s what I came to talk to you about. If I don’t, she’ll give it to someone else, but they won’t know what we know about her,” he points out. “It’s not like I can tell them, but I’m still not sending a fellow journalist into danger like that.”

Iris thinks for a moment. Barry has a point. Bronwen wasn’t an urgent problem, not when there are so many others like her and so many that are more dangerous, but this is different. If CCPN are looking into it, they’re in much more danger, especially since they are duty-bound to report the truth, no matter what is. “I’ll help,” she decides finally. “You can do your investigative thing and I can back you up. And you know what? Eddie’s helping too.”

Barry pauses with a spoon of yoghurt halfway to his mouth. “Eddie? Why him?”

“Because,” she says simply, grabbing her cell, “this is exactly the kind of thing I should be telling Waller about, and I can tell that Eddie’s bored.”

“Please, Eddie is not bored,” he disagrees. “Have you seen him? He says that pretending to be an insurance salesman is way more fun than pretending to be an ADA.”

“Because he’s not actually selling insurance,” she points out, the phone to her ear. “He’s telling us about the time he captured a Parademon and going on dates with Chesca.”

“Captain Singh thinks that he found yoga and that’s why he quit. He’s all Zen-Eddie now.”

Iris giggles, still waiting for the phone to be picked up. Someone finally picks it up on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

“ _Chesca_?”

“Hey, Iris,” she says sheepishly. “Um, how’s your day?”

“Not as good as yours, apparently,” she says dryly, taking note of Barry’s silent laughter. “Is Eddie there, by any chance?”

“Yeah, he just got out of the show – ahem, I mean, yeah, he is. Eddie?”

Iris mutters something about having too much information while Eddie takes the phone. “Iris?”

“Agent Thawne,” she says. “Enjoying your new position?”

“Ah,” he replies, “uh, well-”

“Relax, I’m kidding. Listen, what do you say to investigating a drag-racing ring?”

“Isn’t that Malina’s thing?”

“Not anymore. Barry’s been given it as an assignment at work, and since Cleo Bronwen works with Alexandra Reed slash The Mayor slash dangerous-and-maybe-homicidal-gun-smuggler, we don’t really want Barry to let it slide and give it to another journalist.”

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie agrees. “That sounds-” Then there’s a muffled squeak and scuffling.

“You’re going undercover at a drag-racing thing?” Chesca demands.

“That’s the plan…”

“When?”

“When? Um…” She looks at Barry, who shrugs and mouths ‘tonight’. “Tonight,” Iris answers firmly. Chesca lets out an excited squeal.

“Awesome! We can finally use the clothing and accessories budget that Waller gave us.”

“Chess, I have clothes already, and I have to do the taxes for…and she’s gone,” Iris sighs. “Well, it looks like us three are going to be styled by Chesca tonight.”

“Wait, I’m sorry,” Barry realises. “I never asked, don’t you have training with Malina tonight?”

“No, actually. She said she had something to do tonight, so we’re going for tomorrow. Oh! Before I forget…” She bends down and retrieves a package with her own name and address on it. “Courtesy of Mama Ida.”

Barry opens it and grins. “Oh, God. What now?”

“Well, she heard you on that podcast and she says you _still_ sound skinny and you could catch your death of cold in Central City, so in addition to the food, there’s a handmade sweater with your name on it.”

“What’d she send you?”

“Five dollars for the movies,” Iris laughs. “Seriously, it’s so _weird_.”

Barry shrugs. “Is it? I mean, Great-Uncle Rudy used to send us stuff.”

“You mean like that bottle of moonshine he sent us each for graduation?”

“Okay, maybe not _exactly_ the same, but still.”

Iris sits down, reaching for her sandwich. “I guess I’m not used to having a grandmother. She never called during the whole…when my mom was in prison, and now she calls every Sunday. Like, she wants to know about my day at work. She doesn’t even care if I tell her I spent the whole thing writing reports.”

“You’re right, your reports _do_ suck.”

“Shut up, Bartholomew.”

(He’s not going to tell her he thinks the way she says his full name is cute).

***

“Hold still.”

“Chess, I am perfectly capable of – _ow_!”

Chesca watches without sympathy as he rubs the spot she just hit with a ruler. “And stand up straight! I can’t see the effect if you’re slouching.”

Barry scowls and Eddie just shakes his head. “Just do what she says, it’ll be much better for you.”

“Oh, is that how it works between the two of you?”

“Hey!” Chesca says indignantly. “Who put me in charge of the clothing budget?”

“You did,” both men answer promptly, and she glares at them. As soon as Barry got to STAR Labs to get ready for their investigation, Chesca herded him and Eddie into a room to give them outfits that would make them ‘fit in’.

“You got your dress sense from Iris,” she’d told him, “and Eddie, you dress…well, like an insurance salesman.”

“Because I’m a spy!”

“Exactly, so help me help you.”

To be fair, they don’t look bad – they just dress younger and more casually than they usually do, with ripped jeans and T-shirts under black jackets. There had been talk of a bandanna, but Barry had drawn the line there. “I already did the lost white boy in a rap video thing, thanks.”

“Good,” she nods. “Now I have to go deal with that diva you call a best friend.”

“What’s with Iris?” Eddie asks.

“She won’t respect my authority as the clothing manager,” she mutters. “But don’t worry, I have a secret weapon.”

“What’s that?”

“Linda.”

And she walks off. “Well, that makes sense,” Barry says. “We’re all scared of Linda. Anyway, you wanna go through this before we go? Seems like we should.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, so The Mayor is like the top of her own personal empire, and even though Bronwen runs her own shit, she could be getting help from the Mayor to help keep her operation safe. Like men and supplies and stuff.”

“And in return, Bronwen gives her a cut of her profit,” Eddie says. “Clever. Cliché, but clever.”

“Right. So my job is to come up with enough evidence to incriminate her in illegal drag-racing, and then yours is to establish her link to the Mayor so Waller can put her in a bunker in the ground.”

“Barry, what is it that you think we do all day?”

“Eddie, Iris _literally_ told me that you’re keeping Colin in a bunker.”

Eddie frowns. “The two of you have to stop with this best friend nonsense if she’s going to give away state secrets. Anyway, where do I keep this?”

Barry eyes the gun Eddie is casually holding. “Why the hell are you bringing that?”

He looks at Barry like he’s stupid. “I’m a spy, Barry.”

“Yeah, but we’re taking Iris,” he points out. “Who has superpowers.”

Eddie snorts. “I’m not so sure about that. Iris doesn’t like the outfit that Chesca picked out for her to go undercover; they were arguing about it for twenty minutes before you got here.”

Barry frowns. His and Eddie’s outfits are fine, to his eye, even if it’s not what he usually wears. But then he supposes guys always look more casual than girls anyway. Eddie looks up when he hears voices. “Oh, here comes trouble.”

“…ridiculous, Chesca.”

“You are going undercover at a drag-racing match, Iris,” Chesca replies, her voice coming down the hall. Linda and Jesse make their way in first, the latter rubbing his temples. “Kill me,” he mutters. Barry raises an eyebrow.

“Linda, what happened?”

“Chesca got a little carried away with the clothing budget. I mean, I think she looks fine, but…”

“What was wrong with my clothes?” Iris demands. “Like, the ones I own?”

“Nothing. Iris, I love you, but you dress way too nicely to have the right kind of outfit for this event.” Chesca walks in first and spots them all. “See? The guys are dressed all wrong side of the tracks chic, you’ll be fine.”

Barry opens his mouth, ready with a reassurance – he’s sure she looks fine – but then Iris walks and he’s sure that a metahuman has sucked all the air out of the room.

There’s not really a good place to start. There’s a tight, red (because of course Iris is wearing his favourite colour, because the universe hates him), button-up blouse under a leather jacket that’s hanging open over her cleavage and he has to tear his eyes away from that because _Jesus Christ_. But then her legs are encased in these sheer tights that are topped off with these _amazing_ leather boots and he has never thought that anyone could ever look this damn good in a pair of shoes.

Finally his eyes move down to the ripped shorts and his brain just short-circuits, because he’s always known that his best friend is gorgeous but _God_ , these shorts, and – great, now he’s staring at her ass and he can’t seem to stop, so he goes back up to the top and he starts to sweat, but when he looks at her legs all he can think of is pulling her into his lap so he can run his hands up them, so he just looks at the floor and hopes that his face isn’t the colour of a tomato.

Iris, meanwhile, hasn’t seemed to notice that Barry is having a coronary event. “I look,” she snarls, flipping the dark hair that has purple clip-on highlights in it, “like Foxy Brown’s little sister.”

“Which is the point!” Chesca says, and Eddie nods.

“Iris, I cased that place before I got here,” he says, “you’ll fit right in.”

Iris puts her hands on her hips, which only highlights how amazing she looks, and Barry swallows painfully. Why the hell is so hot in here?

“Why are we even debating this?” Jesse groans tiredly. “We have a mission to complete.”

“Right,” Chesca nods. “And – look, Barry thinks you look nice. Don’t you, Barry?”

Barry doesn’t want to be brought into this, given that he’s finding it hard to breathe and all he’s thinking is that Iris needs to wear this all the time. Everywhere. Especially the boots. But Chesca is giving him a look that says the only option is telling Iris how nice she looks. And Iris is glaring at him with a look that says if he says anything like that, she’ll kill him.

(It makes her look even sexier and he hates the entire world).

Besides, ‘nice’ would be an outright lie. ‘Unfair’ is a gross understatement.  ‘Completely and totally and _painfully_ illegal’ is more like it. “Um,” he says finally, his mouth dry. “It – uh. You – you look really nice. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Chesca doesn’t look convinced. Iris still looks annoyed. Linda, however, smirks behind her hand and texts her boyfriend. _I told you he’s into her. You owe me forty dollars_.

“Now that this is over,” Jesse deadpans. “Can we get back to the mission? Because this was supposed to be my day off.”

“My God, you’re a baby,” Chesca mutters. “Anyway, it’s pretty simple. Barry’s going after Bronwen, Eddie’s finding stuff about the links to the Mayor, and Iris is going as back-up.”

“I cannot believe you’re making me-”

“Stop or I’ll make you try the fishnets again.”

Iris gives Chesca a look. “Fine,” she growls. “I will be going as back-up. Do you have Barry and Eddie’s comms?”

“Always,” she says cheerfully, handing them to both the guys. “Everything you hear or say will be recorded on these things, but each of us is controlling a direct line, so we’ll be able to tell you whether you’re in danger or not. Okay?”

“Great,” Eddie says confidently. “Come on, we should get going. We want to be able to make everyone think we’re _watching_ the races.”

They head out to the car back, but Iris calls Barry back as they get to the elevators. “We’ll meet you downstairs, Eddie.”

He nods and goes down in the elevator, and Iris turns to Barry, hands on hips. The room starts to get hot again. Iris isn’t wearing her glasses, but her lips are painted cherry red and her eyes are all dark and smoky. “You,” she says, pointing at him, “do it. Right now. You know you want to.”

“Huh?” he squeaks. “Want to what? I don’t want to do anything.”

“Quit it, Barry. Come on, hurry up. I don’t know you how haven’t done it already.”

Barry really hopes she hasn’t read his mind, because that would be embarrassing as hell. “Done what?”

Iris sighs. “Look, you laughed at me when I kept wearing body glitter to parties, and you laughed at me when I wore that weird dress with the suspenders. We both know I look ridiculous, so get it out of your system now so we can do this like professionals. Laugh.”

“Ha ha,” he offers feebly. Iris isn’t amused.

“Oh, you want to wait till later? Whatever, just don’t break character during this.”

“Look, Iris, I don’t know why you _want_ me to laugh at you,” he says. “But I’m not going to. I don’t think you look ridiculous at all. I – I think you look great. Um. So.”

Iris looks at him for exactly two seconds before she rolls her eyes. “Sure, okay, Barry.”

“I do!”

“You are such a liar. Come on, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can these damn things out of my hair.” She walks off towards the elevators, muttering about how Chesca is lucky she’s a metahuman because there’s no way she would be able to survive the cold in this outfit if she wasn’t. Barry watches her leave, unable to tear his eyes away from her hips and he is so, _so_ screwed.

***

Iris doesn’t usually frequent this part of town unless there’s crime happening there, and now she can see why. The scrapyard is piled high with abandoned cars arranged in lines, until you get closer to the middle and there’s a kind of circle. The racetrack – if that’s what you want to call it, it just looks like an unbroken line of tarmac marked by flags – is in the middle, with people milling around it as they watch the races. She strides forward as quickly as she can, cursing the fact that Barry and Eddie both have such stupidly long legs, especially Barry. And this whole drag-racing nonsense. And especially Chesca, for making her wear this.

If she’s honest, the clothes aren’t bad, and she looks good _in_ them. She’d wear each thing she’s wearing right now again – just not altogether in a way that makes her look like she had raided Pam Grier’s closet and then gotten dressed while high. When she walked in, Eddie and Linda smirked, and Barry looked so dumbfounded he couldn’t even laugh, so she knows she must look ludicrous. But she knows he’s going to, eventually. It’s just that every time he looks over at her the expression on her face must be so irritated that he thinks better of it, because he just faces forward again.

Also, she misses her glasses.

“So far so good,” Eddie mutters as they make their way over to the main group as they watch a race ending. “Barry, have you found Bronwen’s yet?”

“Her office is right over there,” Barry says, pointing to a small building a little way away. “Well, I say ‘office’, it looks like it’s about to fall over.”

“Thankfully, your best friend is a metahuman,” she replies. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on you. When the coast is clear you can go in there and get what you need.”

“What is that, again?” Eddie wants to know.

“Well, first I need proof that she’s running the races, which is what my camera is for. Then I need what she’s charging, where she’s getting the cars, and some sort of record of where she’s keeping her accounts.”

“Is that all?”

“Hey, it’s hardly sociopathic cold villains; this will be cake,” Iris answers. “Besides, Agent Pretty Boy, aren’t you working too?”

“Right, but I’m just doing recon work. Barry could get hurt.”

“Would you stop?” she tells him. “Honestly, you worry almost as much as he does. Now, according to everyone’s thoughts, once this race is done, there’s the finale race, which Cleo likes to see up close. You’ll get your chance then.”

“And I’m going to go talk to some of these people,” Eddie says, and Barry tips his head to the side. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever really seen Agent Thawne in action.”

“Today is not your day, Allen,” Iris laughs. She nods to the office to see a medium-sized woman exit it. “Bronwen’s out early.” Barry nods.

“Cover me?”

“Duh,” she replies, flipping her hair out of her face. Barry blinks at her and she frowns.

“Dude, what’s with you?”

“Nothing. I’ll be back.”

Iris watches as he leaves. The good thing about Barry being her lightning rod is that she can generally tell where he is. Even as he’s walking away from her, a small part of her is very aware of his presence in that little outbuilding, like he’s part of her peripheral consciousness, if such a thing exists. She follows Eddie, answering questions from all the other people at the race, but her mind is on autopilot as she watches for Barry to come out again. He slips out a few minutes later, looking around as he makes his way back to the group. Now, Barry looks great, since Chesca picked an outfit that highlights his frame without making him look too skinny. And the fact that he goes to the gym a couple of times a week. Not that Barry ever looks bad – even wandering out of his room to find her on his couch in the middle of the night the other, she kind of wanted to go back to bed with him.

But they’re friends now, and the Mindscape said she has to accept things for what they are. Or something.

“Get what you need?” she asks, and he nods.

“You’d be surprised with how much people leave around on their desks for nosy reporters to find with the doors unlocked.”

“I’d be surprised?” she repeats. “You know you’re talking to Miss Miracle, right? I was there at the beginning of your career as ‘Barry Allen, Nosy Reporter’.”

“Please, you loved every minute of it.”

“I liked the free coffee, jackass.”

He grins at her. “Nerd. Where’s the choirboy?”

She waves a hand. “Over there, playing beer pong. You know, he’s actually very good at this. Who knew he could pull off wrong side of the tracks?”

Barry chuckles and Iris is thrown, as she always is, by his smile. She’s allowed to have that, at least. “You know, I’m still surprised that you haven’t laughed yet,” she tells him. “You can go ahead, I won’t be mad. Much.”

“I told you, I don’t think you look bad at all. I think you’re, um. You’re pulling it off pretty well. Chesca has good taste,” he adds.

“THANK YOU!” Chesca says over Iris’ comms, and she sighs.

“Don’t think this is going to be a regular occurrence, Vibe.”

“Look, it only takes – oh, crap.”

“What? What ‘oh, crap’?”

“Iris, I thought you said we took care of Tar Pit!”

Iris glances at Barry’s alarmed face. “We did! She melted!”

“Well, apparently not, because she’s attacking a prison van down by the interstate.”

“Go,” Barry says immediately. “Eddie can cover me, and we’re almost done here anyway.”

Iris nods and, looking around to make sure no one is watching her, slips away behind a car. Barry watches her go a little wistfully, since this despite the fact that they’re currently doing it in a scrapyard, it’s the most time they’ve spent together in the past week, and he really does miss his best friend. Eddie makes his way back over to him at that moment, looking around. “Where’s Iris?”

“Tar Pit attacked again,” he explains. “She went off to take care of it. You done?”

“Yes and no,” he admits. “They don’t know as much about the Mayor; I may need to come back. But I guess we can watch the race and go so we don’t arouse suspicion.”

They settle back against one of the cars. “There’s a new driver that they’re all excited about,” Eddie tells him. “Apparently, she killed her audition run.”

“She had to do an audition run?”

“Yeah, she had to hot-wire a car and then tackle their obstacle course. You know, baby stuff.”

“Baby stuff?” Barry repeats, laughing. “Are you for real?”

Eddie gives a modest sort of shrug that isn’t really modest at all. “I had to do one of those when I was a teenager. Kind of aced it.”

“And yet, you _suck_ at Boggle.”

They laugh and turn back to the race, which has already started. Barry’s not a sports kind of guy, but even if he was, he’s not sure he’d pick racing. It’s exciting, sure, but he can’t see most of it and it’s not like anyone’s winning anything substantial apart from a car. “Didn’t they have a nickname for the new girl already?” he asks.

“Yeah, ‘Taillights’.” He yawns. “At least it’s almost over, and then I can go back to worrying about meeting Chesca’s parents.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ve met them; they’re nice.”

“Yeah, but you’re not the guy dating their daughter.”

“Look, if you’re about to ask me about what it was like meeting Patty’s mom, save it. Of course she was nice to me, she wanted me dead. I’m surprised she didn’t try to stick me with the steak knife.”

Eddie smirks a little. “Okay, fine. Hey, Iris’ mom likes you, right?”

Barry flexes his fingers. “Yeah. But Iris and I aren’t dating.”

“Uh-huh.”

Before Barry can ask what that’s supposed to mean, a loud whoop goes up from the crowd and they realise they race is done. Cleo Bronwen breaks off from the crowd, clapping. “Everyone, give it up for Taillights!” she says as the girl in question gets out of the car, grinning at everyone. And then he recognises the swish of blonde hair, the bright blue eyes, his mother’s eyes. “Malina?”

***

“Shit,” Iris mutters. “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

She races towards the interstate, Chesca’s instructions ringing in her ears and a makeshift water gun in her hands. How in the world Tar Pit survived the attack before, she has no idea, but the report said that a prison transfer vehicle was in danger of swerving off the interstate. “Guys…” Iris says. “I can’t see them!”

“You’re almost there, Iris,” Linda says, and just as she’s saying that Iris spots them – Tar Pit is making the asphalt twist and shudder, and the vehicle is hanging over the edge of the bridge. Without thinking, Iris shoots the water gun – courtesy of Chesca and her very quick hands – at Tar Pit until she melts again. Not content to wait, she shoots over to the car and steadies it, slowly bringing it back to the road. “Is everyone okay in there?”

She hears several calls in the affirmative and, when she looks around, isn’t surprised to find that Tar Pit has already escaped. She opens the door and looks at the prison guard. “Is there a Clara Tanner in there?”

“Yes,” he replies, surprised. “How did you know that?”

“Call it a hunch,” she replies grimly. Josie apparently really wants all of these women dead. “Do not transfer her; keep her in solitary confinement. The metahuman that attacked tonight is after her, and she’s not going to stop until she’s dead.”

The guard nods and Iris calls an ambulance. “Someone needs to call Nora,” she says into her headset. “And tell her to meet me at STAR Labs. Are Barry and Eddie okay?”

“Um,” Chesca says. Iris frowns.

“Chess?”

“I think you should get back here, Iris.”

When Iris makes it to the Cortex, she’s surprised to find Barry and Malina yelling at each other in the corridor, Nora watching in the corner. “Guys? What happened?”

“Tell her what you told me,” Barry says tightly. Malina glares at him.

“I don’t have to tell anyone anything.”

“You do when you’re disobeying orders and making dumb decisions.”

“Barry, what the hell is going on?”

“Malina is Cleo Bronwen’s new favourite person,” he says furiously. “She went undercover, auditioned for one of her races, and now she’s her star racer.”

Iris takes a step forward. “What – Malina, have you lost your mind? What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that this is my job, I’m an adult, and I don’t need the two of you telling me what to do.”

“Nobody here thinks you aren’t capable,” Iris says. “But we told you not to go after her, and you did it anyway! She’s dangerous – did you not hear that part?”

She folds her arms. “Yeah, and after I talked to Jesse, I realised how ridiculous you were all being.”

“Jesse?” Barry repeats. “Great, thanks, at least I actually have a reason to punch him now.”

“You guys-”

“No, Malina, this is what I mean. It’s all very well and good being trained by Waller and all that, but if you can’t listen to instructions, then I – look, you didn’t even know that Eddie, Barry and I were coming tonight! What were you going to do if you got in trouble, huh?”

“I have superpowers like you, Iris,” she snaps back. “I’m sure I could have figured something out.”

“Oh, right!” she scoffs. “Superpowers that you don’t even fully understand _or_ know how to use yet!”

“And whose fault is that, Miss Miracle, when you refuse to train me! Or is there only room in the family for one of us?”

“Okay, no, we are not doing that,” Iris replies. “There is only one of us acting like a freaking four-year-old here, and it’s not me.”

“The only reason I’m not making Chesca lock you in the Pipeline right now is because Bronwen wants you there tomorrow as well,” Barry mutters. Malina clenches her jaw in a way that’s exactly like her brother.

“Are you done?”

Iris looks at Nora. “You have anything to say?”

“Nope,” she says. “Barry was doing pretty well, and then you came and picked it right back up. I think you covered it.”

Malina disappears without a word and Iris sighs. “You know, I get how that’s annoying now. What happened?”

“She was the new driver everyone was excited about. Apparently, she thought if she got in that way, she’d be able to get some info on her.”

“Well, we don’t have much of a choice now, do we?” Iris rubs her eyes. “Nora, could I have a list of everyone that Josie associated with tomorrow? I think she’s going after all her old enemies.”

Barry shoves his hands in his pockets. “Malina’s next race is tomorrow, so Eddie and I will be there in case something goes wrong.”

“Where is he?”

“He went to get Henry,” Nora says. “We thought that he might know what to do.”

“Well, why don’t you talk to her?” Barry suggests. “I don’t think we’re her two favourite people right now, and you’ve always been good with the advice.”

“Henry’s her father,” she shrugs. “I think it would be best that he talk to her.”

Iris notices something, and she knows that Barry has noticed it as well because of the expression on his face. _I’ve got it. Tomorrow_. Iris hears it in her head and nods. “Well, I guess this is what we get for complaining about how boring Mondays are.”

***

“Dr. Allen? Your mother’s here to see you.”

Barry sighs the next day as Charlie gives him the message. Maybe he should count it as a success that he’s no longer calling him ‘sir’. “Thanks, Charlie. Send her in.”

His mother comes in with their lunch order and some files. “It’s a shame,” she says ruefully, “I can’t show this office off to all the other moms. They’d be so jealous.”

“Yeah, that’s why I do this.”

She swats him playfully. “So, what’s the occasion? Not that I don’t enjoy getting lunch with my star reporter, but you usually get lunch with Iris or one of the others.”

Barry hesitates. He hasn’t seen her since the whole fiasco with Malina the night before, and when she mentioned Henry, he saw the same helplessness he felt whenever Malina and Eddie hung out. “Well, I kind of wanted to talk. About Malina.”

“She’s still a little mad, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“No, I mean about you. Like, I’m sure she could have used someone to talk to, and you’re her parent too.”

His mother smiles. “Despite the fact that you and Iris parented her pretty well yesterday?”

“Hey, I have had way worse from you.”

“True.”

“But how are you doing with her, mom? Really?”

She doesn’t reply immediately, twirling her spaghetti around on her fork. “I – she’s incredible, Barry, but you know that. But I’m not her mom. Not yet. I don’t know what our boundaries are, so it makes it hard to know where I can push her and where I can’t.” She pauses. “I’ve always been okay with you because you’re my kid, you know? It’s always been us. When Iris came along, it was hard, but at least I knew that she was grieving and that she’d need support. Malina had a whole other life, and like she said, she’s an adult. It’s hard to see where I fit in there.”

Barry doesn’t know what to say for a moment. It’s always hard to hear your parents don’t have all the answers, especially when his mother has been as strong as a rock between his father leaving, and then Iris coming to live with them, the lightning, and Patty. But he guesses it’s like Francine being worried about her place in her life with Iris.  “Right, I get that. But right now I think there’s nothing we can do apart from let her know we’re _here_ , you know? It’s not like there’s a manual for this. We all have to wing it some time.”

“Such a sweet boy.” She ruffles his hair, and then stares at her hand. “Barry, who are you putting this much gel in your hair for?”

“No one! I like it!”

“Honestly. But you’re right.”

Barry grins. “Of course I am.”

Nora rolls her eyes, and then hands him a file. “Ah, before I forget. Our newest friend, Cleo Bronwen? Guess who was doing a job for her before she turned into Tar Pit?”

Barry sits back in his chairm studying all the names listed. “You’re kidding. Mom, there are over a dozen names on this list!”

“Yeah, Josie was a busy little bee before she turned into…whatever the hell she is. Can Iris do backup at the race tonight?”

“She’s not going to want to miss this. I’ll tell her, don’t worry. Right now, she’s trying to build something that will counteract Tar Pit’s powers.”

They finish their lunch and his mother leaves, and soon after he’s gotten settled he hears a knock on the door. “Come in!”

“Barry?” Wendy asks. “You busy?”

“No, actually. Come in.”

“Great.” She shuts the door behind her. “I sent you my article, and I wanted to know what you thought.”

Barry nods. “Right, I read that this morning. Look, Wendy, I am not printing that. Like, at all.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s like the beginning of a smear campaign!” He walks over to the printer to get the draft. “’Will Central City Run Out of Miracles?’ Seriously? That’s your title?”

“What’s wrong with that question?”

“It’s the wrong way to start an article unless you’re trying to get people not to like her. And – look, in the first part, you only highlight all her failures during the first year. She’s a _hero_ , and you’re making her out to be some kind of amateur.”

Wendy blinks. “I’m trying to make her appear more human, Barry. Not just some magical being in a golden suit, and sometimes that will involve pointing out the times she’s failed the city.”

“By tearing her down?” Barry demands. He doesn’t even want to imagine the look on Iris’ face if she ever found out that he let this article get out. Or worse – that he had a hand in it. “And then blaming her for not being perfect?”

“That’s not what I’m doing at all!”

“Well, it sounds like it. I’ve been there from the very beginning, and you don’t know her like I do. What she’s gone through, what she has to do just to be able to save people, how she keeps going when everything goes wrong. Printing something like this is dangerous and irresponsible.”

Wendy just frowns slightly at him, like she’s trying to figure something out. She clasps her hands together. “Barry, I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want you to take it personally, because goodness knows I have been there myself and I won’t judge you.”

Barry blinks. “What is it?”

“Do you not think there might be another reason you’re so upset over this Miss Miracle article?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because it sounds like you’re in love with her.”

Barry’s stomach drops out of him. He opens and shuts his mouth about four times. “I – that isn’t true,” he manages finally, but it sounds slightly strangled.

“Are you sure?”

He tries for a disbelieving smile. “You think I’m in love with a superhero? That’s not…how things work between us.”

Wendy doesn’t look judgemental. In fact, her expression is full of understanding. “Barry, I get it. She’s saving all these people, and doing all this cool stuff, and criminals won’t even go near you anymore because they know she’ll kick their ass. It’s romantic. But it’s not real.”

Barry swallows. “Thanks, Wendy, but like I said, that’s not how things work between us. Besides, I’ve never even…she makes sure to keep her superhero life and personal life separate.” That, at least, isn’t an outright lie, though it is sitting right on the boundaries of the truth.

She nods. “Look, I don’t have to write it, it was just an idea.”

“Right,” he nods. “Thanks.”

Wendy leaves and he sinks back into his chair, rubbing his face with a hand. His eyes fall on the Miss Miracle plushie toy on his desk, one arm draped over the picture of him and Iris at Disneyland. _Because it sounds like you’re in love with her_. Of course, he could deny being in love with Miss Miracle, because she’s just a persona that Iris puts on, and he can pretend he doesn’t know her. But he _does_ know the girl behind it, and if Wendy figures out that Iris is Miss Miracle because of Barry’s feelings…He puts his head in his hands.

“I am so, _so_ screwed.”

***

“You spend way too much time with Barry,” Chesca mutters, watching Iris pace up and down the Cortex. “You’re starting to look like him.”

“What if they don’t work?”

“They’re going to work, Iris,” Linda says.

“But how do you know?”

“Because you’ve been working like a maniac for about six hours,” Jesse deadpans, “and pissing us all off in the process.”

Iris doesn’t even respond to that, she’s so worried. When Nora gave her the list of all the people Tar Pit associated with, she went to work on how to combat the villain. Jesse is right, she has been working for over six hours, but with Malina’s race tonight, she’s half there with Eddie and Barry and half wondering where Tar Pit could strike next.

“Look, it’s simple,” Linda says. “The nitrous grenades you designed with neutralise and weaken her so we can put her in prison. We have eyes on all these people, so we’ll know if and when she hits. And Barry and Eddie are at the race track, and they’ll call if Malina is in danger.”

Iris turns the grenades over in her hands. “It’s Barry’s sister,” she says quietly. “I can’t let her be hurt. Not after everything they’ve gone through already.”

“Look, just do a patrol, like you normally do,” Linda suggests. “It’ll help you work off all this nervous energy. And then if we see anything, we can call you.”

“Right. Right, good idea.”

“Oh, Iris?” Chesca asks. “I meant to ask, is Barry okay?”

She frowns. “I think so. Why?”

“Well, when he came in earlier he seemed a little distracted.”

“I think there’s something at work that’s bothering him,” she admits. “There’s a story that his editor wants the paper to write and I don’t think he’s feeling it.” She shakes her head. “I’ll talk to him, but I want to get through this first, alright? Keep me posted.”

***

“These are always so much more fun,” Barry mutters irritably, “when you don’t’ know th person in the car.”

Eddie, who like Barry is trying not to pace, sighs. “I know you’re worried, Barry, but she _is_ trained in this. We learn how to drive when we’re kids.”

“That doesn’t make me any less worried. I’m a little more afraid of _you_ , though.”

When they told Henry about what Malina had done, he was furious – but he also pointed out that they were in it far too deep to back out now. “Bronwen knows her,” he’d said. “Knows her face, knows how good she is. Until we can arrest her, and you get your story, Barry, this is what Malina is doing. And you have to cover her until it’s safe.”

Barry shakes his head as he watches everyone gather around. Behind them, the stacks of cars are piled high in dozens of rows. Malina appears from a group of people, grinning at her opponent. Then another figure emerges, and the crowd parts for her. “That’s Bronwen,” he says. “Right on time.”

“Alright, people!” she croons over the cheers of the crowd. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we? Ready to challenge our reigning champion?”

“Born ready,” Barry sees her say, and she gets into the car. Everyone starts placing bets and step back as a boy raises his hands and then drops them, and both of them shoot off. They speed over the track, Malina keeping pace with her opponent even as they avoid the potholes and obstacles that are in the way. She swerves a bit, and Barry stares. “Is that supposed to happen?”

Eddie narrows his eyes. “I don’t know…maybe? This track is pretty bumpy.”

But then he sees the ground actually rumbling and that there are pools of asphalt snaking across the ground. “Something’s wrong,” he mutters.

“It’s Tar Pit!” Eddie says as everyone starts to realise what’s wrong. “She picked tonight to target Bronwen – call Iris.” But as they watch, the ground swells and Malina’s car is thrown headlong into the air.

***

Iris is on the other side of the city when she gets the call.

“Barry? Barry, slow down, I – _what_?” Iris pauses mid-flight. “Okay, I’ll be right there…” She teleports to the scrapyard in time to see everyone running away screaming, and Malina’s car flip in the air. Without a second though, Iris teleports in and gets her out, putting her on the floor away from the danger and landing the car on the floor. Before she gets the chance to do anything else, however, all of the _other_ cars in piles start shaking and crashing to the floor. “What the hell?” Malina says.

“It must be Tar Pit,” Iris replies. “But I can’t see her!”

She’s right, she can only see the ground shaking and shifting all the cars. “I can help,” Malina says quickly.

Iris sighs. It’s not like she has much of a choice. “Okay. Go back, get your suit, and help me keep all these cars away from all these people. I’ll go after Tar Pit.”

Malina nods and flashes away, and she spots Bronwen cowering in a corner as a car heads straight for her. Iris gets her out of the way and then looks around frantically. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see that Malina has returned and is moving the cars away from all the people. Then Tar Pit herself bursts out of the ground, black liquid dribbling down her body and hitting the ground, making it hiss and sizzle. “Out of the way, Miss Miracle.”

“Is that Josie Montoleone?” Bronwen demands, and Josie grins, advancing on them. Iris covers Bronwen with her body.

“In the flesh, Cleo. You know, I forgot a lot of things while I was in there, buried under concrete. The smell of roast chicken, the feel of rain on my skin…”

“Iris, why the hell are you letting her monologue?” Jesse demands. “Throw the grenades!”

“Not yet,” Linda disagrees. “She’s not in the right form yet.”

Tar Pit raises a single hand, and it morphs into a pulsating black blob, the pungent reek punctuating the air. “But hating you? I could never forget that.” She grows larger, larger, her skin taking on a thick black sheen.

Just as she makes to hurl a glob of tar at them, Iris launches the grenades at her. She stumbles, chokes – and then shatters into a million pieces. All that’s left is Josie in her human form, coughing and spluttering. Iris breathes a sigh of relief, but then-

 _Iris_!

“Malina?” she mutters.

 _Iris, my powers aren’t working_!

When she turns, she can see that Malina has her hands outstretched desperately towards some of the teetering cars, but nothing’s happening. Then one of them topples and falls before Iris even has any time to react, pieces flying off it. She flies across the yard, but not before a terrified shout hits her ears.

“BARRY!”

It’s Eddie’s voice, and Iris feels like something has stabbed her in the chest when she sees that Barry has been smacked across the head with something. He’s lying on the floor, unconscious with blood running down the side of his head, and Eddie runs up to them both while Malina looks on in horror. “I have-” Iris gets out. She swallows. “I have to get him to a hospital. Call the police, tell Nora to meet me there, take Malina back to STAR Labs to get checked out, and someone needs to take care of Tar Pit.”

He nods and Iris is left alone with Barry. Taking a deep breath, she puts both hands on his chest and takes them both to Central City Memorial West. Everyone gasps when they see Miss Miracle turn up with an unconscious Barry Allen in the ER, but thankfully she recognises one of the doctors. “Wally?” she calls and he turns away from the reception desk.

“Is that – Barry?”

She nods. “Help him, please.”

***

Barry wakes up to bright lights and the smell of chemicals. Then the blinding pain hits and he groans and curses, before he hears a soft laugh. “Oh, yeah. You’re totally fine.”

“Iris?” he sits up, looking around. He’s still in the same clothes he was in from the race track, but judging by the sun coming through the windows, it’s the next day. The door is half open, and he can see all the people milling about. “What happened?”

“Tar Pit went after Bronwen,” she explains. “You took a piece of glass to the head, but you’ll be fine.”

“I hate hospitals,” he mutters irritably.

“You and me both, dude. Your mom’s getting lunch, she should be back in a few minutes.”

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and then groans. “Careful,” she says as he rubs his temples. She pats his back and then sits down next to him on the bed. “You okay?”

He feels at the stitches. “Yeah, I think so. Or I will be, I guess.”

“Will it help if I ask you not to get yourself hurt anymore?”

“Not in my nature, apparently.”

“I thought not.”

Barry laughs and looks at his hands. She’s right, this team does get into an awful lot of scrapes. He’s beginning to think they’re cursed. They are silent for a moment, and then-

“I love you.”

Barry looks up at her, not sure what he’s about to say but determined to say _something_ , when he realises that Iris isn’t talking to him, she’s talking to Wally, who’s leaning in their doorway with an unimpressed look on his face. “I love you,” she says again pleadingly. Barry schools his features into a neutral expression. “You are my number-one favourite person in the world.”

“I was busy.”

“Did I mention that I love you?”

“I have responsibilities, Iris! I was supposed to be teaching today!”

“My firstborn son is totally being named after you. I will give you whatever you want.”

Wally folds his arms. “Well, I was supposed to be demonstrating a laparoscopic appendectomy for my students today, but I ended up putting stitches in this one’s forehead. Can you give me that? Can I have Barry’s appendix?”

“Uh, I don’t actually have an appendix anymore,” Barry adds helpfully. “So.”

Wally huffs. “Firstborn son!” Iris reminds him. “All yours.”

“Nora, Barry’s awake,” he says as she walks back into the room. She smiles kindly at him as he makes to leave. “Wally, we don’t deserve you.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

Iris stands, grabbing her coat. “Ignore him, he’ll get over it. Now, I have to go, but call me when you’re being discharged, okay?”

She hugs him goodbye quickly and leaves. “She’s supposed to be at work,” Nora explains, sitting down. “And she may have forgotten to tell Singh she wasn’t going. Are you okay?”

“I have a bit of a headache, but I’ve had way worse injuries. Remember Toni Woodward?”

“Unfortunately.”

They laugh at that and there’s knock at the door. Malina is pale and worried, holding a bunch of flowers. “Hi,” she says quietly. “Can I come in?”

“Malina, hi,” he says. “Of course.”

“I got you these flowers – are you allergic to flowers? I know we’re both allergic to strawberries, but-”

“No, the flowers are fine,” he says. She makes a face, one that he recognises because he makes it when he’s guilty and doesn’t know what to say. “It’s okay, Malina.”

Malina sniffles. “Okay, well, feel better.” She turns to go again, but his mother clears her throat.

“Okay, we are not doing this. You are not going anywhere, do you hear me?”

“Look, I know I should have been-”

“This is not a blame game, Malina,” she interrupts gently. “But we are a family. A strange one, with two metahumans and three spies and far too many headaches, but a family all the same. And we do not abandon each other when we’re in trouble. Now, I should have been more forceful when it comes to my role in your life, so I am asking you right now. Do you want me to be your mother?”

“Yes,” she replies. “Um, please.”

“Good. Because that means I can’t be your friend, and I will tell you when you’re being pig-headed. And you’ve met your brother, so you know how likely that is.”

“Hey!” Barry says indignantly. “That was kind of a drive by.”

Malina nods. “Okay. Just – I do have to go. I’m in a lot of trouble with Dad and Eddie. But I’ll come back.”

His mother nods. “Good.”

Malina hesitates, before stepping into a hug with her, holding it for a few minutes. Then she hugs Barry. “Barry, I’m-”

“I know. I said it’s okay. I’ll text you later.”

After she leaves, he looks at his mother. “For the record, I am not pig-headed, I am _tenacious_. There’s a difference.”

“Sure, honey.”

***

When Iris checks into STAR Labs the next day, she’s surprised to find only Dr. Wells there. “Iris, hello. Is Barry alright?”

She nods. “Yeah, they let him go yesterday evening, about the time they arrested Bronwen. So it looks like a win for everyone.”

Dr. Wells pauses. “And yet you don’t look like it.”

Iris takes off her glasses and cleans them. It’s been gnawing at her all day, this feeling. It’s true, hindsight really is 20/20. “There are so many things I did wrong,” she sighs. “I should have been a better teacher, or a more encouraging one. If I had, she wouldn’t have rushed off so quickly.”

“Being a teacher is never simple, Iris.”

“How did you do it?”

“Well, I was masquerading as an evil mastermind. I do not think that warrants a good teaching plan.”

Iris laughs. “Right. But Barry got hurt, and-”

“And now he’s fine,” she says. “Iris, while my motives for training you were definitely less than noble, what I remembered was that I recognised your want to help people. It encouraged me to teach you to better your skills, because I knew how much you wanted it. You could say that teaching you helped me remember the best parts of myself.”

It is times like these, when the warmth and belief come out, that Iris is saddest about what Colin did to her. And that Terrence never got to see it. “Thank you, Helena.”

“Of course,” she says simply. She surprises her by hugging her – and Iris feels a spark of electricity thrum in her.

Weird.

***

“You were discharged like _yesterday_ ,” Malina says as they sit down at the coffee table in Jitters. Barry waves a hand.

“I’m resilient,” he says. “You work long enough in this business, you get used to it. So, what’s your punishment?”

“Well, I have to come straight home after law classes, first of all,” she replies. “And I only go out if Iris wants to train me.”

Barry nods slowly. “What was the deal with her? Did she say something to you?”

“No, it’s…” She shakes her head. “Barry, do you know the first thing she said to me? _I’m a friend of your brother’s_. That’s all I knew about her, and then she told Colin to take her instead of me. She almost gave up her life for me.”

“Believe me, Iris and I have had words about her recklessness when it comes to her own life,” he mutters. “And maybe one day she’ll listen.”

“That’s not it.” She seems to be struggling for the words. “Where I work – and me and Eddie and Dad – it’s not like that. People don't _do_ that. I thought I was going to die, and I accepted it. But then this superhero shows up and is willing to sacrifice herself to save me. And then I found out what he’d done to her, and she was still going to do it. And I have this family, and these people who want to be my friend, but everywhere I go it’s all about Iris. The city loves her and Eddie thinks she’s great and Nora loves her and _you_ …Well, you know what I mean. You’re all so in love with each other.” She shrugs. “I guess I just wanted to get some of that.”

Barry gives her a smile. “Malina, you’re looking at it all wrong. I – did I ever tell you about Patty?”

“Her name is Thalia Thawne, Barry, and I don’t need to know more than the fact that I want her dead.”

“Because of the vendetta?”

“No,” she says simply, “because she hurt my brother.”

He smiles again. “Right. Well, with her I saw what happens when a parent dies and the other is too distant to give love. Her mom was alive, and so is Francine, but she was also not in Iris' life all the time. And without that, I don’t know what would have happened to Iris. Thalia became who she was because of a lack of love; all she had was killing me and mom. And honestly I don’t know what would have happened to mom and me if Iris weren’t there.” He sips his coffee, remembering what Francine told him. “I think the things we need come into our lives when we least expect it, but when it happens, we realise how much we need them. You’re here because you supposed to be. You don’t need to rush being a hero or being part of the family. Iris is like mom’s kid, but she knows who her real mom is. And Iris is _not_ my sister, she’s my…Well, she’s my… Iris.”

Malina gives him a look from beneath hooded eyelids. “Christ, Barry. It’s a shame you’re not a spy, because you’d be great in interrogations. Your denial game is on ten.”

Barry stares at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on. ‘She’s my Iris’? You look at her like she’s Christmas morning, complete with snow and Santa Claus, every time you see her. Believe me, I’ve never thought I had to fight for my place as your sister when it comes to Iris.”

Barry shakes his head, sitting back in his chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her eyes flicker behind him. “Hey, Iris.”

Barry whips around in his chair, then turns back to glare at her. “God, you’re annoying. And anyway, you just got here. How do you know?”

Malina grins. “You call her ‘sunshine’, Barry. I think anyone who’s ever seen your face when you say that knows. What are you waiting for?”

“I guess I…I’m waiting to know.”

“Know?”

“It’s one thing for people to tell me how I feel, but…Iris has been my best friend for years. She’s the person I trust the most in my life, and I trust her _with_ my life. She told me she loved me-”

“At Christmas, I know, and then Scott and Thalia and married doppelgangers,” she interrupted. He blinks.

“How did you know all that?”

“Jesse told me.”

“You’re friends with Jesse?”

“He’s hot. Anyway, keep talking.”

Barry makes a note of that last part. “But I’ve been in love before. I know what it feels like. Like, I loved Thalia, but nothing’s changed with Iris. Sure, she’s smart, and kind, and strong, and – and she’s beautiful,” he adds, because there really is no denying it – Iris West is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “But I still feel the same way about her before she told me she loved me. And if that’s true, then maybe we’ve been friends for too long for me to feel anything different. I can screw up everything in my life and I’ll be fine, but I can’t screw up and lose her because I misread my own feelings, I just can't. I want to be sure. I guess I’m waiting for the eureka moment.”

She nods. “I can respect that.” She gestures towards the door. “But that is one hot nerd you’ve got there.”

“Very funny, Malina,” Barry deadpans. Then someone taps him in the shoulder.

“What’s funny?” Iris wants to know, looking between them. Barry swallows.

“Iris, h-hey,” he stammers. Malina grins into her cookies. “How was work?”

She lifts a shoulder in a shrug, adjusting her shoulder bag. “It was work. Are you feeling okay? How’s your head?”

“Fine, it’s fine.”

Iris’ eyes flicker to Malina briefly. “Well, I was just getting my order to go, so I’ll see you both later.”

Barry gives Malina a look as Iris walks off, and she clears her throat. “Um, Iris?”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to apologise for…everything. I was being really impatient with stuff, and I kept thinking I knew better.”

“You know what? Forget about it, it’s water under the bridge.”

“Good, I’m glad. I actually had a question about that, if you’re not busy.”

Iris nods. “Sure, just let me get my coffee.”

Malina sits and laughs at Barry, who’s fiddling with his hair. “Dude, are you fixing your hair?”

“What? No.”

She laughs. “You totally are, this is hilarious. ’Let me fix my hair so you’ll think I’m cute and fall in love with me and have my tall babies, Iris’.”

“Shut up!”

“What’s the matter with you two today?” Iris asks, sliding in next to Barry. She crosses her legs and one of her knees brushes up against his. “Are you trying to make up for the past twenty years? Sorry.”

“S’ok.”

Iris stirs her sugar. “What was your question?”

“Well, why did my powers cut out?”

“Ah,” Iris says. “That’s easy. Your powers are like a muscle; they need constant exercise. You’re not used to them yet, so they’ll do that. But don’t worry, training will get rid of it. Which we are starting,” she adds, “tomorrow.”

“Really? Awesome! Won’t be long before this one is writing about me too.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Barry says. He pulls up his blog on his iPad, and scrolls to a dark picture of Malina in her costume. She lets out an excited squeal. “People are already wondering about you, so I’d kick those training sessions in the ass if I were you.”

“Don’t go easy on me, Iris,” she says. “You can go ahead and do that steely-eyed thing Jesse says you do when you get angry.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “He’s mad at me because I don’t stop Chesca from stealing his pizza pockets.”

“Oh, she didn’t take those this time. I did.”

“Malina!” Barry and Iris say together.

“What? They’re really good.”

Barry and Iris burst into laughter, and Iris lets out her tiny, adorable giggle-snort – and Barry Allen has his eureka moment

And it’s that he’s not going to have one.

He’s not going to suddenly realise he loves Iris, because he always has. He has always wanted her, has always needed her, and now he has space to realise it. The reason he doesn’t feel any different is because loving Iris has always been the most natural thing in the world to him. Why he feels so at home around her, why he seeks her comfort and warmth, why no one else can make him feel more like _him_ than she can. Barry wants her to fall asleep in his arms, not on his couch, because it’s just a normal part of their lives. He wants to spend the day doing nothing with her and enjoying every minute of it. He wants to kiss her goodbye and hold her hand and go to dinner with her, and he wants every little bit of their lives tangled up together.

“Barry?” Iris asks. “We’re getting more cookies, is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he answers, grinning. “Yeah, it’s cool.”

She gives him a curious look. “What’s that smile for?”

“Just happy about something.”

Barry knows, now, that he’d never been in love before with Becky, or Fiona from college, or even Patty. He couldn’t have been, not really.

Because his whole life, he has always been head over heels in love with Iris West.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this was late, but I do have a message.  
> I know people can get impatient with things that are happening in this story, and I love that, but please understand that I can only write as fast as I can, and I do have a plan for them getting together (even though I almost changed it to cheer you all up because the ANGST this week was something else). What I'm basically saying is, I know you want them together, and of course you're free to do as you please, but if your comment is going to amount to 'why hasn't x happened yet', I'd really rather you kept it to yourself.  
> ANYWAY, some things about the next one:  
> 1) There's a lot of kissing.  
> 2) It contains a very tipsy Barry singing to Iris.  
> 3) Here's a line: "She's not my wife, she's just my girlfriend. Well, my girl - she's a friend, who's a girl, who I'm not dating, yet, because we haven't started - I mean, I've been thinking about it, I have for a while, and I kind of hoped she was too, so eventually I thought we should stop thinking... and start...doing..." Barry trails off at the waiter's expression. "She'll have the parmesan and tomato soup with gnocchi."


	32. Unforgettable (Baby, You're Electric): Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I love you, Iris.” – Barry Allen.  
> He hopes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is only one part, but the next will come early tomorrow morning (my time) unless you guys want it in the evening.  
> Seriously this thing is thirty pages and counting, and I haven't even gotten to the REALLY good stuff. Hopefully this will tide you over.  
> Sorry again! It's like 3am my time and if I finish you guys are getting nonsense.

“Your girlfriend is driving me crazy.”

Barry Allen, working at his office desk on a Wednesday night, jumps about a foot in the air when he sees the young lady in the dark red costume stroll into his study, a bag of chips in her hands. He puts down the coffee he almost spilled when she scared him “What the – Malina, what are you doing here?”

“And it’s true what they say – she _is_ adorable,” she continues, sitting in his armchair, “but also kind of scary when she wants to be.”

“And those are mine!”

Malina puts her feet up. “Could you just go ahead and tell her you want to practice making babies with her? She might be less strict.”

Barry sails cleanly past the idea of ‘making babies’ with Iris and snatches the chips out of her hands. “One, quit eating my chips. Two, Iris isn’t my girlfriend. And three, aren’t you supposed to be training with her? I thought you wanted this.”

“Oh, I do. And seriously, Iris is kind of amazing. But I’m _exhausted_ – we’ve been training for hours!”

Barry grins, sitting down. “Nobody ever said being this city’s newest miracle would be easy. And you’re not going to learn if you skimp out on the training sessions. What are you supposed to be doing right now?”

“She’s timing me doing a patrol of downtown,” she explains. “I finished early, so I thought I’d come see my newest brother.”

Barry warms at the way she casually calls him that, and goes back to work. “Just make sure you get back on time.”

“Hey,” Malina says suddenly. “You’re, like, a good singer, right?”

“That’s what they tell me. Why?”

“No reason. But back to you and Iris-”

“There is no ‘me and Iris’,” he interrupts, blushing a little. “We’re just me and…Iris.”

“And why is that? She clearly makes you happy, judging by that dopey smile that you have whenever you see her.”

“Well – hold on,” he says when the phone rings. “Hello?”

“Hey, Barry,” Iris says cheerfully.

“Iris!” he says, giving Malina a look. “Hey, how are you?”

“ _Don’t tell her I’m here_!” Malina mouths.

“I’m good, actually. What are you up to?”

“Just working, you know?”

“Oh, how’s that new Wendy girl? Scott told me she’s the new junior editor.”

“Great!” _Apart from the fact that she thinks I’m in love with your alter-ago._ “She’s…great.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“It is.”

“Barry.”

“Yeah?”

“Could you put me on speakerphone?” she asks calmly. “I need to talk to your sister.”

Malina makes a face. “Oops.”

“Yeah,” she replies. “’Oops’. Malina, are you aware that there’s a tracker in your suit? We know where you are all the time. Just because you turned off the comms, doesn’t mean you disappeared.”

“Sorry, Iris.”

“Uh-huh. Visiting hours are over, little miss. Get your ass back here.”

“Okay,” Malina replies. She looks at Barry. “She so likes you better than me.”

“Because Barry does what I say,” Iris laughs.

“I’ll bet he does,” she mutters, and then blinks away. Barry grabs the phone again.

“You know, I don’t _always_ do what you say.”

“You’re right,” she quips. “Because if you did, you’d have called Clark Kent by now, instead of looking at the piece of paper like I know you have for the millionth time today.”

Barry doesn’t say anything, given he was doing the same thing before Malina came in. “Bartholomew!” she admonishes, laughing.

“Oops,” he grins sheepishly.

“My mom got you that number weeks ago; why haven’t you called him yet?”

“What am I supposed to say to him?”

Barry can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “How about hello, and then your name? Conversations usually flow pretty well from there.” He was as surprised as anyone when, when Francine came over to the house to give his mother advice on her vegetable garden, she mentioned that she met Clark Kent. “I told him that I knew you,” she’d explained to his shocked face. “And he said that he was a fan of your work and to give him a call any time you wanted.” Since then, he’s picked up the card and then put it down so many times he’s sure Clark’s fingerprints are all gone.

“Just be yourself,” she continues. “It’s worked pretty well so far.”

“But what if ‘myself’ forgets how to speak English?”

Iris just laughs again. “Come on, would you at least do it so your best friend can brag about how she _kinda_ knows Clark Kent? Would you do it for me?”

Barry’s heart swoops. “’Kay. I mean, it-” He swallows, laughs a little. “I’d…I’d do anything for you.”

“Malina – _Malina_ , put that down it’s-” There’s a crash and the sound of his sister cursing. “Dangerous. Wally, could you help her? Sorry, Bar, what did you say?”

“Ahem, nothing. So, it’s going well?”

“It is, actually,” Iris laughs. “She’s really smart, and she’s eager. She just gets distracted easily, apparently.”

Barry grins. “You’re one to talk, you daydream _all the time_.”

“Not when I’m saving the world, jackass. Anyway, I’ll see you later. Breaches to close and all.”

“Later, sunshine,” he replies, and she hangs up. Barry puts the phone down, trying to ignore the fluttering feeling in his stomach. A feeling that tends to show up more often ever since he realised that he’s always been in love with Iris. He sits down at his desk again, trying to concentrate on work, but failing, as usual. The thing with realising that he’s always been in love with Iris isn’t the problem. It’s a lot like coming home after a long day at work, actually, the most comfortable feeling in the world. Like, _of course, it’s you_.

The problem is now he _knows_.

He knows now, and he can’t undo it. And apparently, his brain isn’t going to let him forget it. Because every time he sees her now, he gets this fantastically overwhelming feeling of _mine_ , exactly like he told E52 Iris. Like he wants every little bit of her, all to himself, and doesn’t want to share. And it’s – really, it’s every bit of her. From the pretty brown eyes that can give an intelligent gaze and a loving look in mere moments, to her plump, full lips that he always finds himself staring at when they’re in the middle of a conversation (“Barry – _Barry_! What, do I have something in my teeth?” “Uh, no, sorry, I was distracted. So, Freddie wants to propose to Liv?”), to her laugh, easy and light and the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard in his whole life, which is why he spends a lot of their time together recently trying to make her giggle.

And the glasses. He has no idea how someone manages to make glasses sexy and adorable at the same damn time, but there it is. Barry Allen has a thing for girls in glasses. Well, this particular one.

Anyway, back to his feelings. Because he knows now, they’re always at the forefront of his mind when he sees her. When they part, he wants to kiss her goodbye. He always finds himself making excuses to touch her. Not to mention the fact that he basically offers her full use of his apartment whenever she wants it. Barry kind of wants to go back to being oblivious to his own feelings, because his brain turning to mush every time Iris smiles at him is really doesn’t help when they’re having a conversation.

 _I love you_.

And that – Barry keeps wanting to blurt that out at random moments. Like when they’re curled up on his couch watching a movie together and Yzma screeches ‘What? A llama? HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE _DEAD_!’, and Iris just _loses_ it, laughing and snorting and crying because it’s always been their favourite part, and he looks at her and thinks that he could spend the rest of his life in this spot, right here with her. Right then, and all the times like then, he just wants to say it. Barry’s kind of amazed that Iris managed to be in love with him this long and not say it completely by accident. Which leads him to his other problem.

_Do you still love me?_

Barry remembers every single bit of that confession. The music that was playing, what he was doing, the look on her face as she walked in. And he remembers that ever since then, he’d always wanted to ask whether all of that was true. Now it’s playing on his mind more than ever, because even though _he_ feels – and is probably acting – differently, Iris isn’t. She seems exactly the same as she always has, which could mean one of two things – that she’s still in love with him but she’s acting normal for the sake of their relationship, or that she’s completely over him and this is simply what their lives will be like from now on. She’ll meet someone else and fall in love and get married, forgetting everything she ever told him about loving him before she could spell the word; it’ll probably be something she’s embarrassed by at that point. The thought makes him want to throw up.

Barry opens up his blog again, scrolling through the social media updates for Miss Miracle. There’s nothing to report and he’s not on duty anyway, but he will have to sort through her fanmail later, and look through all the tweets and messages she gets (as well as block and report the less flattering ones). Miss Miracle actually gets her fair share of marriage proposals as well. There are a lot of people who aren’t…shy about how much they love her; the amount of chocolates and roses and love letters he’s gotten at work is ludicrous (Jesse insists that they test for poison, and then Chesca eats them).

And now Wendy thinks he’s one of them.

He’s had that before – jokes, mostly, that he might have a crush on Central City’s Golden Grace. And okay, maybe he did, and there was that dream he had when he was making out with her in Iris’ office (which he’s trying really hard not to think about), but then he found out Iris was behind it and he sort of started ignoring it because he had a girlfriend at the time. Plus, he and Iris had been in this weird place where he was mad at her because of the Miss Miracle stuff, and he couldn’t remember what happened that day. And it would be fine, honestly, but he actually _is_ in love with the girl behind the mask. And he’s starting to notice that, yeah, he is incredibly defensive of Miss Miracle, just because he knows it’s Iris and he’s been her first line of defence his whole life. Kind of like her knight in shining armour.

Or her Prince Charming.

But there’s how she’s acting, and how they’re finally back to normal. She’s still affectionate with him, but nothing more than usual, and he can’t tell what that means. And she still hasn’t mentioned anything about the kiss. He thinks about it, all the time, but he doesn’t know she feels about it. She very clearly told him that she wasn’t leaving out anything important when he asked whether he’d forgotten anything from the day Eddie – as Cobalt Blue – hit him with that memory-wiping gun. Plus, she’s never brought it up, she thinks that their married doppelgangers are mere coincidence, and she doesn’t think that their lightning rod connection thing is anything special. Plus, she’s said absolutely nothing about the fact that they’re married in the future that was supposed to happen before Colin used Gideon and Dr. Wells’ connection to the Mindscape to avert it.

When Iris told him she loved him, he’d spent a lot of time hoping that they could go back normal so he could get his best friend back. And now he’s desperate for her to never be just his best friend again.

Really, things were much less complicated in his love life when his girlfriend wanted him dead.

***

“Nice of you to join me.”

Iris grins as Malina appears in front of the building next to her. “You’re getting better,” she says. “Were you using the coordinates or the visuals?”

“Visuals,” she pants. “It’s the first time I didn’t end up three streets away, so… _whoa_! What the hell?”

“Building fire,” Iris says calmly, pointing. On the other side of the street, smoke pours from the top storey of a building. “The fire department won’t get here on time, so we’re going to save all these people ourselves.”

As she speaks, she’s running towards the fire, which is sending light smoke out of the top of it. They can hear the sirens in the distance but Iris is right – they won’t get here on time. “When you’re dealing with a fire,” she explains, “you need to look at everything in stages, and you have a lot of stuff to study in a short amount of time. The first thing you need to realise is that you need to understand what fire you’re facing, and then you can figure out the best way to fight it.

“Volume, velocity, density, and colour,” she says quickly, studying the building. People are screaming from the inside, and Malina watches in disbelief as Iris uses her mind to get all of the windows open with her mind…while still talking to her. “What do you see?”

“Um,” Malina says; the cries of the people and the alarms are rattling her; how is Iris so calm? “I s-see white smoke, not that thick or dense, moving slowly out of the building.”

“Good,” she nods. “That means that the fire’s just getting started and its moisture. What do we do next?”

“Fight the fire?”

“Nope,” she shakes her head. “Ensure safety before you tackle the fire. Always. Now, what can you hear? Use your mind and tell me where the people are.”

Malina takes a shaking breath and Iris puts a hand on her arm. “It’s okay, Malina. Nobody’s going to get hurt. Just tell me what you hear.”

She nods. “I – there’s nobody near the top, they’re all running down the stairs.”

“Good. Now, take my hand. I’m going to get us in there, and then we’re going to get all the people out. Teleport in, make your presence known, and then get them outside the building. After that, we tackle the fire. Okay?”

Malina nods and, with a determined nod, takes Iris hand and joins her in getting all the people out. She tries to stay calm as she does so, trying to mimick Iris’ icy cool, and revels in the fact that she gets to use her powers to help people for once. But then she’s outside with someone, making sure they’re getting to the paramedics that have by now arrived on the scene, and she hears a bang and a whooshing noise. When she looks up, she sees that the smoke has changed. _Iris!_

_Yeah?_

_The smoke changed, and – look, it’s faster, I don’t know what to_ -

Iris appears in front of her, soot slightly covering her arms and legs, but the same cool look in those golden, glowing eyes. “Okay. Tell me again – what do you see?”

“It’s brown, and it’s a lot thicker than it was before, and faster.”

“That means that it’s turning into a structural fire,” she explains. “The material has dried out and broken down, so what’s burning is wood and maybe plastic. The thing we have to make sure of is that the smoke doesn’t turn _black_ – that means it’s going to turn into a flashover, which is much more dangerous.”

Malina nods, trying to take this all in. “Now, since we can’t get to the fuel source without hurting ourselves, what’s the best way to put out this fire?”

“…starve it of oxygen!” Malina realises. “But how do we do that?”

Iris grins. “This is where the miracle part comes in.”

As she watches, Iris flies straight back into the building, to the gasps of everyone in the street. They hear several rounds of whooshing noises and the air lights up with Iris’ lightning – and then the fire goes out. She appears back in front of them, no worse for wear and smiling. “You good?”

“Yeah…” Malina says faintly. Iris nods, and then waves at all the people cheering. “Wave, Malina. They’re saying thank you.”

She grins as Barry’s sister blushes a little and then waves at everyone, her eyes widening fractionally when the cheers grow. Laughing, she grabs her hand and takes them back to STAR Labs. “And that,” Iris says, looking around the corridor, “is how you do it.”

“That was amazing!” Malina croons. “Did you see us? I was using my powers and everything?”

“You were.”

“Dude, how the hell are you so calm?” she asks as they start walking back to the Cortex. “I mean, I’m calm, usually, but you’re, like, _scary_ calm.”

“Practice,” she shrugs. “Believe me, once you’ve done a few of those, they all get pretty easy. You just have to assess a situation and anticipate anything that can go wrong, without rushing in without a plan.”

“Iris,” Chesca warns as they walk back in, “you’re starting to sound like the Green Arrow.”

“Ew,” Wally says. “Nip that in the bud.”

Iris laughs. “Noted. How did our girl do?”

Wally wheels over to the computers to sit next to his girlfriend. “She did great, according to this. Vitals all good, Mindscape levels sufficient, no signs of distress. You’re good, little miss.”

“Good,” Iris says. “We’ve got another breach to close.”

She’s surprised when everyone looks around at each other. “What?” Iris asks. “What is it?”

“Well, Iris, we’ve literally been at this for hours,” Linda points out. “Between you training Malina and the breaches, that is. We closed five tonight.”

“Yeah, and I’m still a little upset at the closing of the breach to Earth-20,” Chesca adds. Iris raises her eyebrows.

“You mean the place with the army of genetically modified jellyfish?” Iris demands.

“They were in tanks!”

“Nuh-uh! My arm still hurts when it rains from the last jellyfish attack, thank you.” She pauses. “I – okay, we have been working pretty hard. Malina, what do you think? Ready to call it a night?”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind closing one more breach,” she admits. “But I’ve kind of had a long week, and I wouldn’t mind an early night from hero stuff.”

“Yeah, let’s go out,” Chesca suggests. “Seriously, this week was long as hell.”

“There was actually this karaoke place that I thought would be totally lame, but also kind of cool,” Malina says, and Linda’s eyes widen.

“ _Crazy For You_? That place looks hilarious!”

“I think it used to be a nightclub,” Wally says. “Trajectory, I think.”

Iris feels a chill pass through her, but doesn’t say anything. “Okay, sure. How about Earth-17? It’s always good to make sure the Music Meister has no way of getting back.”

“Oh, she sounded like fun,” Malina says regretfully. Iris rolls her eyes.

“You’re not the one who had to talk in haikus for hours.” She crosses to the cabinet and grabs a breach blaster, a small, black, oval-shaped computer a little smaller than a football with blue pulsating lights on it. “Okay, we’ll close the breach and then all head over to Crazy For You to embarrass ourselves. Ready, little miss?”

Malina grins. “Ready, ready.”

“Chess, where’s the breach to Earth-17?”

“Roof of the AMC Theatre, downtown.”

Iris nods and holds her hand out to Malina, and they flash to the roof of the theatre. The night is cool and crisp, and they can hear the noise of the movies pounding dully through the concrete. Malina smiles at the city, sighing happily. “I love watching you do this. How do these things work again? Why can’t we see it now?”

“We grouped the breaches according to distance and stability,” she explains. “They fade in and out of existence because of the pockets of time and space folding in on themselves. So this one isn’t as unstable as, say Earth-52-”

“Flash Barry?”

“Flash Barry,” she agrees, “but it’s still pretty bad. So we have to wait a little bit for it to appear and…speak of the devil.”

There’s a pulsing feeling, vibrating through Iris’ bones, and then a low hum and the breach comes into existence, ebbing and flowing above them. Malina watches it, open-mouthed, and Iris grins, tapping her on the shoulder. “You care to do the honours?”

“Wait, really?”

“You’re part of the team now,” she says simply. “And it is kinda fun.”

Malina takes it from her and stands in front of the breach, taking a deep breath. Then she hurls it straight into the middle, gasping as it shakes and expands, before disappearing altogether. “That was _sick_!”

“That’s one way to put it. Come on, I have to lock up STAR Labs before we go out tonight.”

They make it back to the Cortex to find everyone bent over a piece of paper. “Well, Eddie has to sing,” Chesca says, as Iris gets out of her suit and outs it in the alcove. “I can’t believe he’s an international superspy, _and_ he can sing like he went to Julliard.”

“Make him sing ‘Call Me Maybe’,” Linda suggests, and Chesca laughs.

“Iris, you wanna sing?” Wally asks, and his cousin laughs.

“Absolutely not. You guys go ahead and plan all that, though. I have some stuff to take care of in the office.”

“Well, I have to go home and shower,” Linda tells them, stretching. “I’ve been at work all day and I smell like metal and oil.”

“I was in a six-hour intestinal surgery today,” Wally adds helpfully. His girlfriend looks at him.

“So sexy.”

Malina clears her throat. “You know, I can take care of that. You guys go on and get ready, it’s not like I have a lot to do before I get there. Hey,” she adds innocently, “should we invite Jesse and Barry too?”

Iris makes a face as she gathers up some papers from the desk. “Good luck getting Jesse out, but you’re welcome to try. Doesn’t Barry have work, though?”

“I’m sure I can get him to come with us,” Malina says, giving Linda a significant look. “I’ll put it in the group chat, okay?”

They nod and file out of the room, and Malina gets out of her suit before following Iris up to her office. She’s sitting at her desk filling in some papers, some music playing in the background from a dock. She raises crosses to the fridge and gets out a bowl of grapes, nodding along to the music, before she hears the lyrics.

_You see it’s getting late_

_Oh, please don’t hesitate_

_Put a little love in your heart_

Frowning, she picks up the iPod and starts scrolling through it. “ _Something’s Coming_? _Cell-Block Tango_? _Singin’ In The Rain_? I didn’t know you were a musical fan.”

Iris laughs as Malina sits down in the chair across from the iPod, fiddling with it. They have been getting alone much better in recent weeks, especially when Malina explained that she’s so used to doing everything herself that she’s not used to having someone tell her what to do all the time. And it _is_ fun having a partner in the field. “I’m not, really. I mean, I like them, but this is all Barry’s doing.”

“Really?”

“Your brother is _obsessed_ with musicals. When that TV show ‘SMASH’ came on a few years ago? Sang every song, from every episode, every day until the next one aired. I was lucky I didn’t live with him at the time. His dissertation playlist was full of musicals. But he kidnaps my iPod every few months and puts musical songs on it. This time it’s Hamilton.”

“You’re taking him to go see that, right?”

Iris laughs. “I’m not _taking_ him, I’m going with him because I’m the only one that won’t murder him by the time he’s done watching. My friend Olivia helped me get the tickets for him, since Queen Industries gets stuff like that for free all the time.”

Malina stares. “Olivia. Olivia _Queen_.”

Iris studies the tax return instructions and tries to resist the urge to murder someone. “Yeah, we’re friends. And you’re welcome to change that, if you want.”

Malina looks at the iPod. “No, it’s cool. I’m just looking for ideas for tonight; I feel like you guys should get out and have some fun. Think I can get Linda and Wally to sing something couple-y?”

Iris snorts. “Yeah, but you have to pick it _for_ them, because otherwise they’ll be up there singing ‘Drunk In Love’ and that man is still my cousin. I do not need to hear that.”

“What about Jesse?”

“Yeah, you have more of a chance getting Captain Cold to give up her gun than getting that man to do karaoke. I think it’ll probably be Chesca, Eddie, Wally, Linda, you if you want to, and Barry.”

Malina puts the iPod down; she got what she needed. “Yeah, he likes singing, doesn’t he? He’s always singing something.”

Iris smiles fondly. “Yeah, that’s something you’re going to catch up to in a hurry. It’s not as annoying as I pretend it is, but you’re not allowed to tell him that.”

She pauses. “Barry…He really loves you a lot. He thinks you’re amazing.”

Iris tries to keep her face neutral. People have told her that her entire life, but she knows that’s just how Barry is with her. That _love_ is a best friend love, and she’s learning to be okay with it since coming out of the Mindscape. She shrugs lightly, smiling. “He’s my best friend. If he doesn’t think I’m amazing, I’m not going to fix his computer anymore.”

“Both of them,” Malina mutters to herself, “both of them are in denial.”

Iris turns. “What was that?”

“Nothing. Hey, so I’ve gotta go get ready, but I’ll see you there? You’re definitely coming?”

“Uh, yeah,” she says, frowning slightly at her papers. “Sure.”

Malina grins as she skips out of the room. “Great!”

***

**BARRY YOU HAVE TO COME OUT WITH US TONIGHT**

Stop yelling, Malina. I’m in the group chat, remember?

**WEAR GREEN**

I said stop yelling. Why green?

**AND DO YOUR HAIR**

My hair?

And that’s the last text he got before Malina just stopped replying. He supposes this is what it’s like having a sister. He raises his eyebrows when he gets to the neon lights that surround the large ‘Crazy For You’ sign and pushes his way inside. Barry never came here before when it was a nightclub, but he assumes the bar and mood lighting is the same. The tic-tac-toe theme he’s not so sure about. He spots his friends by the bar when he walks in and walks over, trying to ignore the guy singing ‘I Touch Myself’ onstage. “Barry!” Chesca greets him happily, hugging him. “You made it!”

“Yeah, well I got about a dozen texts reminding me that I had to come,” he replies, eyeing his sister. “Plus I was getting kind of bored, working all night. Wait, you got Dr. Asshole to come?”

Jesse who’s sat at the bar in normal clothes for once, scowls. “I do go out sometimes, you know.”

“Yes, because you can’t kick puppies inside,” Linda says dryly, and Eddie snorts.

“I’m glad you’re here, Jesse,” Barry says quickly before everyone starts arguing. He orders a drink from the bar. “How was your conference?”

“Good, actually. Dr. McGee is giving a great series of talks; I may invite Iris to the next one.”

He looks around. “Is she not here? I thought she was coming.”

“She is, dude, relax,” Malina says, waving a hand. “She had some stuff to take care of. Here, have a kamikaze.”

She hands out a tray of shots to everyone and then Barry frowns. “Hey, you’re legal, right? Is she legal?”

“Barry’s she’s going to be twenty-three in a few weeks,” Eddie reminds him, and Malina bristles.

“I am sitting right here, you know. Besides, you don’t have our job and not know how to handle your vodka from day one.”

Both of her brothers glare at her. “I mean,” she says, “I have been safely and legally and _responsibly_ consuming alcohol for as long as I have been allowed to do so.”

“Nice save, sis,” Linda grins, nudging her. Then she spots something behind Barry and grins. “Hey, Iris! Wow, you look great.”

Barry’s heart does the swoopy thing again when he sees her, beautiful in a sleeveless blue dress with big hoop earrings, her hair loose down her back. “Thank you, it’s nice to see everyone all dressed up. Hey, Bar.” She hugs him tightly and her hair tickles his nose. Another problem that he’s having is that he’s trying to make sure his feelings aren’t written all over his face. Thankfully, Iris doesn’t seem to notice. “Whoa, you actually got Jesse to come out?”

“Malina, I’m going to take this moment to thank you for being the only one of my friends who doesn’t think I’m a hermit.”

“That’s not true!” Chesca says. “I don’t think you’re a hermit.” Iris giggles.

“Chess, I don’t think you should say that when there’s a mind-reader in the room.”

Malina claps her hands together. “Enough of that, you guys. I need to get everyone tipsy enough to sing. Including you, Bambi Eyes.”

Iris frowns at the shot she gives her. “What is this?”

“That is a quadruple-vodka kamikaze with twice the amount of triple sec,” Wally says. “It would kill a normal person in seconds.”

Iris shrugs and downs her shot with everyone else. “ _Whoa_ ,” she mutters, buzzed. Then she blinks and sighs. “Well, that was fun while it lasted. So, who’s singing first?”

“What, you didn’t put yourself on the list?” Jesse asks.

“Ah, no. You guys would not want that.” Barry snickers.

“Smart decision for the ears.”

“Hey!” Iris says, rounding on him. Even irritated with him, she looks pretty. “I am not that bad!”

“You’re not good,” he smirks, sipping his drink. Iris rolls her eyes.

“Jackass.”

“Nerd.”

Malina and Linda share a look, and she clears her throat. “Barry, we’re first,” Malina tells him. “And then it’s Chesca, and then Wally and Linda, and then Eddie.”

“What are you guys all singing?” Jesse asks.

“Malina won’t tell us,” Wally says. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.” She grins.

“You’ll know right before you go on. Besides, it’s more fun that way! Come on, beanpole. Iris, could you hold this for him?”

Malina hands Iris Barry’s jacket and drags him off towards the stage, just as the guy’s finishing the song. “Hey,” Barry winces. “ _Hey_ , what are you doing? And what’s the rush?”

“Duh, Barry, we have a song to sing. Got those pipes with you?”

He laughs. “Yeah, I think so. What are we singing?”

“’Just the Way You Are’ by Bruno Mars.”

“Really? Cool. Hey, Iris loves that song.”

Malina gives him a sly grin. “Why do you think we’re singing it?”

Barry’s eyes widen. “Wait, what? How did you know that?”

“It’s the most-played song on her iPod. Thank God you listened to me when I told you to wear green,” she adds, eyeing his shirt. “And it’s a decent shirt to boot.” He frowns.

“Why did you want me to wear green?”

“Because it’s her favourite colour.”

“You – Malina, did you set this up as some sort of bizarre date between us? What’s going on?”

She snaps her fingers. “Damn it. I should have told everyone but the two of you it was off. Oh well, next time.”

“ _Next time_?”

Malina sighs. “Barry, come on, it’s just one song. Besides, I told her that you were singing to her, and she’s really looking forward to it.”

Barry puts his hands to his head, panicked. “You told Iris that I would sing to her?”

“Well, no, that would ruin the surprise. And it’s not like you have to sing _to_ her. But are you really going to sing that song about anyone else, Barry?”

Barry glances back to where all of their friends are sitting. Iris is happily chatting with Eddie about something or other, and all he wants to do is go over and tell her that he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about her since he remembered that kiss. He’s always kind of liked the idea of Iris loving his voice when he sings to her; he’s just never been brave enough to task. “No, I guess not.”

“Aw!” Malina says. “That’s so sweet!”

“Really?” he smiles. He makes a face. “You don’t think it’s just pathetic?”

“Well, _maybe_ a little. But mostly sweet. Honest And then you can tell her you want to get married.”

“I’m not going to tell – can I have another shot?”

Malina gets one from the bar quickly and he downs it. “Okay, I can do this. It’s just singing, right?”

She grasps his shoulders “That’s the spirit, beanpole.”

Barry shakes his head, trying to clear it, and then tries to calm his nerves at the guy onstage walks off and someone announces them. “Give it up for Randall guys! Interesting choice of song. And now we have Barry and Malina, everyone put your hands together!”

“Wait, are you singing to anyone?” he asks right before they’re led onstage. She shrugs, looking around.

“Jesse,” she decides.

“ _Jesse_?”

“He’s hot. And it’d freak him out if he realised. Ready?”

“I guess,” he nods, and they’re led out onto the stage to cheers from everyone. His eyes are automatically drawn to Iris, who’s smiling encouragingly at them both. He smiles back and then the first bars of the song start. Iris’ face lights up and she grabs Linda’s hand, who’s sitting at the table next to hers. “I love this song!” she says to her, and Barry grins and starts to sing.

_“Oh, her eyes, her eyes_

_Make the sun look like they’re not shining_

_Her hair, her hair, falls perfectly without her trying_

_She’s so beautiful_

_And I tell her everyday…”_

Barry takes the chorus and then he and Malina take the next verse. He tries to keep his cool and get into the song, but he can’t help but be drawn to Iris’ smile as she watches them and sings along with their friends. He looks at her and then has to look away before he forgets himself, before she figures out how much he loves her from the look on his face and the way he’s singing to her. Barry wonders if she knows that he means every word for her. There’s a moment in the middle of the song when he’s singing ‘ _The way you are, the way you are…_ ’ and he’s looking at Iris and she mas the brightest smile on her face. Something in him feels at once light and grounded, like he’s floating on a cloud, but also like there’s electricity coursing through his veins.

For a second, he forgets that there’s anyone else in the room but her.

And then the song changes and they have to sing the chorus. Everyone is cheering when the song ends and he and Malina high-five each other. When they walk back up to their group, even Jesse is smiling. “Okay, I have to admit, that was pretty good.”

“The hermit smiles!” Malina says triumphantly, but strangely enough, he just laughs. “Okay, I’m getting chicken wings. Wally and Linda, get ready because you’re after this next couple.”

“Wait, I’m coming too,” Chesca says, sliding out from under Eddie’s arm. “I want another kamikaze.”

Barry goes to join Iris at her taller bar table – which Barry has noticed is conveniently far enough away from everyone that they’re basically in private – unable to help the smile on his face as he sits on the stool next to hers. The music has died down to low level as they take a break before the next performance. “You guys were so cute!” she squeals. “I love that song.”

“I know you do,” he shrugs lightly. He grins. “So, how was I?”

Iris raises her eyes to the ceiling, turning unimpressed in a matter of seconds, and takes off her glasses to clean them. “You know you were good, Barry.”

“Yeah, but you have to say it, or it doesn’t count,” he points out, taking them from her and cleaning them with his shirt. She sighs.

“You were very good, Barry.”

“Thank you, Iris.”

“Such an ass,” she mutters, but she sits still as he slides her glasses carefully back onto her face, and smiles her thanks. Barry looks at her for a second, unsure what to say next. There’s no easy way to just drop _I feel myself falling harder for you every day, and I really love it if you’d be my girlfriend because I kind of think you’re the love of my life_ in the middle of a conversation, he’s finding. But maybe he can try to segue into it somehow. “I’d never even heard of this place before Malina talked about it,” he says. “I only knew it as Trajectory, but I never went when it was like that.”

Something passes over Iris’ face, but she blinks it away with a shrug and a sip of her drink. “Yeah, she was really excited to come here. I’m glad she got to… go up there and have fun.”

Barry turns to her at the odd note in her voice. She’s twisting her mouth around, looking kind of sad about something. “Wait, Iris, you – you know I was kidding about your singing, right? I didn’t mean you can’t go up there if you want, I’m sure you’ll be great-”

“No, Barry, that’s not…” She sighs, shaking her head. “You know what? Don’t worry, it’s dumb.”

He frowns at her. “Iris, come on, it’s me. You know you can tell me anything. _Hey_ ,” he adds when she looks down at hands with a sad frown. “Now you’re scaring me. What is it?”

Iris looks at him, hesitating. “Well, it’s…You remember a year ago, when we were supposed to write that story but you had to go to dinner with Patty and her mom?”

“You mean the dinner where they looked at me like I was the cow before it’s steak? Yeah, I remember.”

“Right,” she laughs softly. “Well, I ended up coming here, when it was Trajectory, and that’s the night I met Scott. But I wasn’t alone, I was with…with Colin.”

Barry feels cold wash over him automatically. Iris pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. “And,” she continues quietly, “I guess being here just reminded me of him – I keep expecting him to walk out of the bathroom. I know Waller is keeping him in that bunker and there’s very little chance he’s getting out, and I can deal with Captain Cold and Queen Shark and all those people, but…but there’s something different about him. Like, every time I have a meeting with Waller, it never changes. He still…Colin still wants to kill me. I can ignore it, mostly, but it gets to me sometimes. The only thing he has left in the world, left to keep him going, is killing me.”

If Colin Snow were in front of him right now, Barry would break every damn bone in his body for putting that look on Iris’ face. “God, _Iris_ – I’m so sorry, I didn’t know,” he says quietly. He looks around at everyone happy and celebrating. No wonder she hadn’t felt like getting involved. “Do you want me to – come on, let’s go somewhere else-”

“Barry, really, it’s fine,” she interrupts. “Honest.”

He pauses. “You’re still having nightmares. Aren’t you?”

Iris blinks at him. “How did you know that?”

“Iris, it’s me. Besides, I’m your lightning… whatever – every time you have a nightmare that’s bad, I feel it too.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. “I’m still figuring out what that whole thing means. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he replies. He squeezes her shoulder. “And – and don’t worry about Colin, okay? He’s not going to hurt you ever again. I won’t let him.”

She smiles at him, her big, doe-like brown eyes soft, and he removes his hand. “Okay, maybe you’re not an ass.”

 _I love you_. “Anyway,” she continues, turning back to the stage, “I shouldn’t let him ruin my fun, right? Who’s next?”

As if in answer, they hear the chorus of the song that someone’s been singing during their whole conversation. “ _And I…will always love you…_ ”

“Oh man,” he mutters. From their vantage point, Barry can see Linda rolling her eyes and Malina and Jesse giving the song identical unimpressed looks.

“Oh, _God_ ,” Iris moans. “Seriously? Of all the songs to sing.”

“This is painful.”

“This is _torture_.”

Barry glances at her. “Hey, can you promise me something?”

“Sure, what?”

“Promise me if we ever _do_ get married, we will not have that song at our wedding.”

Iris snorts. “Oh, I can promise you that. Not the wedding,” she adds quickly, sipping her drink, “the song.”

Barry nods. “R-Right.” And if he is being honest, he can’t imagine that song at any wedding. He briefly wonders what songs Detective Allen and Dr. Iris West-Allen they had at their wedding and then laughs to himself, shaking his head. Iris nudges him, smiling. “What’s with you?”

“Nothing.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Uh-huh.”

“Nothing! Nothing, I was just…” he shrugs, laughing a little, “thinking about how weird it is that we’re married in the future – well, _a_ future – and Earth-2.” He glances at her, gauging her reaction.

Iris nods. “Yeah, it is one of the weirder things about all of this.” She sips her drink. “Hey, what do you think our married doppelgangers are doing tonight? Think this is their scene?”

Barry laughs. “Well, I didn’t spend that long with both of them, but I don’t think so. I think their scene is more whatever Earth-2’s equivalent of ‘Netflix and chill’ is.”

“Mm, must be nice,” she muses. “I mean, for them. Oh, Wally and Linda are next, thank God.”

Barry tries to mould his features so he doesn’t show his disappointment, instead cheering along with Iris as Wally and Linda make their way up to the stage. Okay, so she still thinks that their doppelgangers being married is weird, shut down the hint about the wedding, and completely missed the thing about ‘Netflix and chill’. He’s not entirely sure what would have happened if she picked up that last part, but-

There are several crashes and shouts, and the lights start blinking out. They frown at each other. “What the hell?” Iris mutters. They can barely see anything with all with all of the lights flashing, but Barry can see odd puffs of smoke disappearing and reappearing in random places. Iris grabs Barry’s hand and leads him over to the group. “Are you guys okay?” Jesse shakes his head.

“Someone stole my wallet. Did you guys see that?”

“Something keeps flashing in and out of this place,” Linda says. “I looked over, but they disappeared as soon as I saw them.”

“You guys, someone over there needs a doctor,” Chesca says, running over. She turns to Iris, who’s looking around the room. “You – Iris? Iris, what is it?”

“It’s a metahuman,” she says grimly. “And whoever they are, they have powers like me.”


	33. Unforgettable (Baby, You're Electric): Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I love you, Iris." - Barry Allen (He hopes).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the messy updating.  
> This contains lyrics from 'Unforgettable' by Nat King Cole  
> Title taken from above song and 'Electric Love' by BØRNS.

Nothing.

That’s what Iris finds the next day when she’s studying the crime scene. It doesn’t help that there were dozens of people in the bar the night before, so she does have to cross-check the fingerprints she found with the people on the list, but this is quickly turning into her own personal hell. Nora walks up just as she’s putting her gloves away. “Hey,” she says shortly. “People keep saying this was you, Iris.”

“Yeah, totally,” she says. “I was bored of the whole CSI thing, thought I’d try something new. Anything?”

“Nobody saw much,” she admits. “Just someone blinking in and out, knocking them over, taking their stuff. Made off with a few hundred dollars.”

“Great,” she mutters. “Now I’m a petty thief, too.”

Iris looks up when she hears Barry walk towards them, flashing his press badge at people to let him through. It’s a shame that their night was interrupted; she’d missed having fun with her best friend. She’s conveniently forgetting that, while Barry was singing that song, that she was pretending he was singing it exclusively to her. A girl can dream, right? And it was nice to tell _someone_ the reason she hadn’t been so gung-ho about the whole expedition is because she’s still having nightmares about Colin some of the time. She hadn’t wanted to burden anyone with it but, as usual, Barry saw right through it. It had been sweet of him to promise that he was going to protect her even if she’s the one with the superpowers. And they’d even managed to joke – somewhat – about their weird the-universe-wants-us-together-except-not-really status. She thinks. She’s still catching Barry looking at her oddly sometimes, but every time she asks what it means, he just brushes it off. She gets the feeling that he’s stressed at work about something; she needs to ask him about it later.

“Hey,” he says tersely, fully in journalist mode. “So, I talked to some people and they’re all saying the same thing as we heard before. But one guy managed to get a video on his phone…” Barry gets the picture up, and Iris’ heart sinks when she sees that it’s someone appearing and disappearing from sight in the same way that she does. Nora frowns.

“Wait, people can’t think that’s Iris. Look, there are no sparks.”

“There don’t have to be,” Iris tells her. “The sparks only turn up when I’m really charged up after a big fight and forget to turn them off. Usually, I can teleport without them. People could easily think this is me.”

“Don’t worry,” Barry assures her, “we’ll find him, we always do. Are the others on it?”

She folds her arms. “Yeah, Chesca’s seeing whether she can figure something out with the video feed, Eddie’s helping her, and Dr. Wells is trying to see whether she recognises the person’s powers to see if they’re really similar to mine. Or – or if it’s, um-”

“Iris,” Barry interrupts her. He grabs her shoulders. “Look at me. It’s not him, alright? If it were, we would know. I told you, I’m not going to let him hurt you again.”

She lets out a breath, focusing on his face and his words, so much so that neither of them notice that Nora’s eyebrows have gone up so high on her forehead they’re practically in her hair. “Okay,” she sighs. “I have to get back to work-”

“Me too,” he says. He looks between the two of them. “Keep me posted, okay?”

Barry wishes them both goodbye and leaves, and Iris rubs her eyes between her glasses. She’s starting to feel a little fatigued by this hero thing – every time she gets somewhere in her life, another part just inexplicably falls apart. Nora clears her throat as she begins clearing up her stuff. “What was that all about?”

“What was what about?”

“What was he talking about? Who’s this ‘he’ you two are being so mysterious over?”

“Oh,” she replies. “I’ve been…having nightmares about Colin. It’s okay,” she adds at Nora’s expression. “Mom knows about them, though she thinks it’s just because of everything I’ve seen. We’ve moved all the heavy stuff out of my room. I keep thinking Colin is going to come back, and now there’s this new meta with powers like mine…”

“Iris, Colin hasn’t escaped because if he ever hurt a hair on your head, your mother would murder Amadeus Waller,” she says firmly.

“He’s never even met my mother.”

“He knows she’s your mother – that’s enough. Besides, Henry told him that she threatened to kill him if he never brought you back safe from that time he took you to their bunker to talk to Dr. Wells.”

Iris actually finds it in her to laugh. “As much as I appreciate everyone saying they’re going to protect me, I am the one with the superpowers.”

“I can’t say I’m happy about Barry going up against Colin,” Nora admits, but Iris shrugs.

“He’s worried – that’s why I wasn’t going to tell him. He’s just being Barry.”

Nora regards her and tries not to smile. “Right. He’s just being Barry.”

***

Barry’s expecting it, but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about it. He gets to work and everyone wants to talk about what happened at the karaoke bar the night before, of course. He brushes them all off, of course, only saying what he’s legally allowed to say and repeating what he put in his bulletin. But the problem comes when they get to the meeting – Erica is almost reluctant when she starts handing out the assignments, and when she gets to the senior crime editor, Barry sees why.

“Okay, Jake, what’s crime looking like this week?” she asks. Jake, a guy a couple of years older than him with dark slicked-back hair, sits up. He’s worked here for a lot longer than Barry and is kind of high on himself. Simply put, he’s the kind of guy to send interns to research something, and then take all the credit for a discovery since it was his idea to get on something in the first place.

“Well, since Central City’s Golden Grace decided to go rogue yesterday, I get to cover the spate of robberies at Crazy For You from last night. Who was the reporter on the crime scene this morning?”

“I was,” Barry answers. “Jake, that’s a Miss Miracle piece – I’m the one who’s covering it.”

“Not this one, you’re not,” he disagrees. “It’s crime. She stole over five hundred dollar’s worth of cash and valuables last night, not to mention the criminal damage and the people she injured while she was doing it.”

Barry sighs. “Why would she do all of that? She’s been operating in this city for about two years now – does anyone have any justification or reason at all for her to break into a karaoke bar, of all places, and steal things?”

A few of the people around the table look like they agree with him, and he presses on. “And did anyone actually _see_ her steal those things? I mean, I was there for most of the night, and when it happened, and I didn’t see it.” Mostly, because Miss Miracle herself had been sitting right next to him when it happened. Jake, however, snorts.

“That is bull, Allen, and you know it. You don’t need to see her to know that she’s there – she never shows _you_ her face, does she? And as she’s perfectly capable of committing crimes as the next person.”

Barry scoffs in disbelief. “A superhero that commits crimes. Really?”

Jake shrugs. “Maybe the power got to her?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Barry,” Wendy interjects, and everyone looks at her. “I mean – it’s not _that_ unheard of. Everyone thought that Jane Crane was a great doctor until you found out that she was the Scarecrow and was experimenting on people. Helen Strange worked in the medical sciences. And I think everyone knows about Harley Quinn.”

“None of those people were superheroes.”

“Yes, they were all people with much more power and influence than the average citizen abusing it in the worst way,” Jake points out, “just like Miss Miracle is doing.”

“You don’t know that’s true!” Barry snaps.

“You don’t know that it isn’t!” Jake snaps back. “Look, Allen, I’ve read your stuff, I know for a fact that you’re not this naïve. But you might have to start looking the idea that Miss Miracle isn’t as angelic as she makes out to be.”

Erica must see the expression on Barry’s face, because she clears her throat. “Okay, everyone take a breather. Look, Barry, I’m sorry to say this, but they have a point.”

Barry resists the urge to glare at her. “That Miss Miracle has turned into a thief?”

“Barry, I am one of the last people on this earth that want to implicate Miss Miracle in something like this. She saved our lives from Calamity, and the Trickster, and every crazy person who decided to attack Central City.” She sighs. “But we deal in truth, and what we can see and prove, and the truth is that something that looks a hell of a lot like Miss Miracle attacked a lot of people last night. She _did_ leave this city alone for extended periods of time at random times throughout the year, and she _did_ almost kill you and your girlfriend. We owe the people of this city the truth.”

Barry hasn’t got anything to say about that, but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about it. Wendy doesn’t look that happy about it, but she doesn’t exactly look sad, either. Jake looks vindicated. “Jake, you’re covering the robbery at Crazy For You, and wait for CCPD to send down their official statement and any evidence we’re using for the article. Barry, you’re going to write that story that Wendy pitched to you about Miss Miracle.”

“ _What_? But-”

“No buts, Barry. You can edit it, make the style a little more you, if you want, but I think in a time like this, we need an article like that to give us some perspective. We all trusted the DA’s office before everything came out about that – maybe if we had some insight we wouldn’t have been so blindsided.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barry sighs, barely succeeding at masking his irritation. He spends the rest of the meeting trying to figure out how he’s going to write an article taking down Miss Miracle without hurting his best friend. He gets open the article that Wendy sent him a few weeks ago, wincing at everything he’s expected to work with. There’s never really been a problem when it comes to Barry writing about Iris – he does write about her mistakes, but they’re usually the first time she’s tackled a villain; the second time, she pretty much has the whole thing down. And he gets quotes from her (usually over coffee, or when they’re at each other’s apartments hanging out), but nothing like _this_.

“Hey,” someone says, and Barry looks up to see Scott. “You okay?”

“I guess,” Barry replies, shaking his head. “I have no idea how I’m supposed to write this. It’s bad enough that people actually think she did this, but now I’m supposed to tell everyone what a terrible hero she is?”

“How’s Iris?” Scott asks, making sure no one can hear them. “Is she okay? And are the others working on it?”

“Yeah, we’re trying to figure out who it was last night. It’s kind of hard to convince people Miss Miracle didn’t do anything when she was literally standing right next to you watching all the bad karaoke.”

“Nice pipes, by the way.”

“How did you know about that?”

“Chesca put the video on Facebook.”

Barry chuckles. “Of course she did. Well, Iris is freaked, obviously, but she’s trying to figure it out too. And there’s no way I’m going to make it worse with this whole thing.”

“What are you going to do?” he asks. “You’re not going to wait until the thing is published, are you? Because I guarantee that will turn out a lot worse for you.”

“Hell no.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I guess I’m going to try to convince Erica not to publish unless we have concrete proof. It’s not much, I know, but I don’t think helping the panic along is a good idea. I do have to work on it in the meantime, though – she wants a draft by the end of the day.”

Scott nods. “Well, let me know what I can do to help.”

He walks off back to his desk and Barry faces the article again. The problem isn’t that it’s badly written at all (he at least can understand why the Gotham Gazette hired Wendy), it’s that there’s no way in hell he wants Iris reading something like that about herself. Iris usually worries that she’s not doing enough to look after the city – that she should take more all-nighters, or make her patrols longer. He, his mother and Francine already have a hard time making her take at least one day off a week, except for emergencies; something like this could kill her confidence and force her into overworking herself for real.

By the time lunch rolls around, he’s only changed the introduction. He’d still rather Iris not read it, but it’s much better than it was before:

_Since the dawn of Superwoman, Batgirl, Aqualady, Marvel Man and more, we have come to rely on superheroes. We trust them with our safety, our city, and our lives. However, there may come a time when we have to ask ourselves: do they deserve it? Do we rely on these masked men and women too much? And what happens when and if they betray our trust?_

Barry sighs, taking a bite of his sandwich, and sends it to the printer so he can look over it. Honestly, he’s still not happy about it; this is going to take a couple more extra shots in his cappuccino-

“Oh, thank God, food,” someone says. Iris has perched herself on his desk, stealing fries out of the packet. “I only got to have one lunch before I came over here.”

Barry takes a breath, trying to get his heart to stop beating so fast. This entire thing would be much easier if Iris weren’t so damn beautiful. He’s never paid that much attention to what she wears, but he’s certain she’s never looked bad in her whole life. She’s changed out of what she was wearing this morning (Barry guesses that she’s not the CSI on duty anymore), so now she’s wearing this grey skirt and fitted black cotton shirt, as well as those boots that make all of his thoughts stop, and her hair is pinned to the side. He shakes his head and gives her a mock irritated look. “And that’s my fault? Hands off my fries!”

“Like you even noticed,” she says, still eating. “You were too wrapped up in whatever it is that you’re writing to notice me come in. Missy told me you got some new assignment that you had to get out by the end of the day.”

Barry glances up at her. “She did? What did she say, exactly?”

“’Hello, Petunia, Allen’s locked himself in his office with the story Erica forced on him this morning, and if he doesn’t get it done today he’s roadkill’.” She eats another one of his fries, shrugging. “I was paraphrasing. What’s the story?”

“Nothing, it’s not a big deal. And she really should stop calling you that.”

Iris shrugs. “I don’t think anyone ever makes Missy do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

“Still, it’s not funny.” He clears his throat. “Uh, what are you doing here? Did we have plans, or…”

“No, I have to deliver the police statement to your boss so she can sign it. Is she around?”

“She has a conference call with Morgan Edge,” he explains. Iris frowns briefly, dipping the fries in ketchup.

“Isn’t she the crime lord that owns you guys and the Star City Sentinel?”

“Yeah, but we’re supposed to pretend that’s not true.” He eyes the envelope in her hands. “Hey, why don’t I give that Erica to sign, and then we can go and get lunch somewhere?”

“I thought you were eating already.”

“I was, but someone keeps eating all my fries,” he points out, and Iris gives him an adorably sheepish grin and he quits pretending that he minded her eating his food anyway. Plus, her visiting him at work is probably going to be the best part of his day (and if she were his girlfriend, hopefully she’d do that all the time).

“Sorry! Stress-eating.”

He laughs. “It’s cool, sunshine. I’ll give this to her and then we can go to Jitters or something.”

“Awesome.” She flips her hair and steals some M&Ms from the bowl on his desk, and Barry tries and fails not to stare at her. “What?”

“Nothing. I – I like your hair like that. Ahem, I’ll be right back.”

Iris watches him head out of his office and up the stairs and she frowns briefly, before shrugging and scarfing down the rest of the fries. It’s been such an exhausting day, having to listen to people think about Miss Miracle think that she could do those things. Chesca and the others don’t have any leads as of yet, and she’s going crazy trying to figure out who it could be. It’s also not lost on her that the night before she had been worrying about Colin coming back, and now he could be behind this. She shakes her head again. Honestly, with her imagination and the things that she’s seen, she can talk herself into knots inside a minute and convince herself that she’s going to be murdered by a team of poisonous jellyfish. Iris wanders out of Barry’s office, meaning to wait for him in the main office. Just as she gets there, a tall guy that she knows Barry can’t stand almost walks into her.

“Oh, sorry,” he says quickly. He’s holding a couple of pieces of paper in his hand. “Hey, you’re Allen’s friend, right? The CSI. Iris?”

“That’s me. And you’re, um…John?”

“Jake,” he corrects, and she smiles apologetically.

“Sorry, I’m bad with names. Are you looking for him, or…”

“Yeah, he sent some stuff to the printer and I was just looking for him to give it to him. Hey, Margolis?” he says to a pretty red-haired woman talking to someone. “Did you see Allen anywhere?”

“He went up to talk to Erica about something,” she answers, and then goes back to her conversation.

“Thanks, Wendy,” Jake says, and Iris looks at the woman again.

“That’s Wendy?”

“Yeah, new junior editor. Barry told you about her?”

“Barry tells me most things.” Wendy is extremely pretty, with hazel eyes and freckles spattered across her nose and cheeks, as well as red hair that most people repeatedly dye their hair to get. Jake grins.

“Well, then I suppose he’s told you about the newest article he’s writing about Miss Miracle?”

Iris tips her head to the side. “Barry’s writing an article about her?”

“Yeah, about how’s she’s lost it and started down the path of crime. ‘Miracle to Menace’, that kind of thing.”

Iris stares at him. That doesn’t make any sense at all – surely Barry would have told her about something like that?  “I…didn’t know he was doing that.”

Jake nods enthusiastically. “Oh yeah, he’s been at it all morning. It’s about time, if you ask me. That’s actually what I was getting for him on the printer – you wanna see?”

He gives her the article and her heart constricts when she sees Barry’s name at the top. More than that, she recognises the first paragraph, his voice and his inflection. She reads the rest of it with a sinking heart, like the world is spinning around her, and feels like she’s about to throw up. Barry really wrote these things about her?

“Iris?” Scott calls, walking up to them. “What are you doing here? What’s this?”

“I was just showing Barry’s bestie what he’s working on,” Jake explains, and Scott’s eyes widen when he reads it over her shoulder.

“Oh, God, Iris – you’re not supposed to be reading that – it’s not finished-”

“Iris!” Barry’s voice makes her jump and cuts right through her. She arranges the papers back together, swallowing around the painful lump that’s formed in her throat. “There you are. Okay, if you’re ready, we can go.”

“Barry,” she says carefully. She’s finding it a little hard to look at him. “What is this?”

Barry freezes. How the hell did she find that? “I – where did you get that?”

“Jake showed me,” she replies. Barry can see she’s trying very hard not give anything away, to keep her features neutral, which makes him feel about a million times worse. “I…didn’t know you were writing about Miss Miracle.”

“It’s new,” he explains. “I didn’t – I mean, I wasn’t even writing it until this morning. It’s not… finished.”

“It looks pretty finished to me.”

“No, that’s not – it’s more of an edit, really-”

“Allen, quit selling yourself short,” Jake says, probably thinking he’s being kind for once. “Come on, you were working on that as soon as Erica gave it to you.”

Iris lets out a breath, and he desperately wants to shove everyone out of the room so he can explain things to her. She looks up at him, the ghost of a smile on her face. “Sounds like you’re pretty passionate.”

“The only part that’s mine is the introduction.”

“You mean the part where you ask whether people can trust Miss Miracle?” she points out quietly, and it’s worse than if she had screamed it. Jake, completely missing the point, looks between everyone.

“I don’t see what the big deal is. Allen’s actually writing something real for once, not puff piece to make everyone feel better.”

Jake is lucky that they’re in public, because Barry is about two seconds from punching him, but he’s too concentrated on Iris to care. She looks at him, then at the article, and then him again, her brow furrowed like she’s trying to work through something. Then she nods to herself, like she’s making a decision. “I should go,” she says finally, handing him the article. “I have to get back.”

“Wait. Iris, wait,” Barry says desperately. She can’t just leave without giving him a chance to explain. “I – don’t you want to get lunch?”

“I’m not that hungry anymore,” she tells him. “It was nice meeting you, Jake. I’ll see you both later.” She directs this last part to Barry and Scott, but she’s already turning away and heading out of the door before either of them can do anything about it. To make matters worse, as soon as she gets outside someone calls her on the phone, so he can’t even call her to explain why the hell he’s writing this bullshit article.

“What’s with her?” Jake asks, and Barry seriously considers just punching him anyway. Scott must see it on his face, because he clears his throat.

“Miss Miracle saved her mom last year,” he explains quickly. “She was kidnapped by the Trickster, and they almost killed her. And her mom only just got out of prison, so you can imagine…”

“Oh, right.” Then Jake shrugs. “But still, she can’t ignore the news, right? And at least she waited until after she saved her mom before she went crazy.”

“Ahem, Jake, I think Erica was looking for you,” Scott says, and he nods and walks off towards her office. Then Scott turns back to Barry. “Okay, that could have gone worse.”

“ _How_?”

“Right, I see your point.”

Barry lets out a groan of frustration. “Can’t someone put a muzzle on that guy? Every time he speaks I wonder why he was gifted with the ability to talk when so much bullshit comes out of it.”

“A question for the ages. Is she going to be okay?”

Barry wraps his arms around himself. “I – I don’t know. She was really mad.”

Scott gives him a disbelieving look. “Really? She didn’t look all that mad to me.”

“When you’ve known Iris as long as I have, you know that quiet, measured thing she does means she’s furious.” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t know, maybe I should have told her before – but I was so sure they’d forgotten about it.” He shakes his head. “I have to go talk to her. Can you cover for me?”

“Sure,” he says easily, and Barry goes to his office to get his jacket. Maybe if he hurries, he can get there and back and only be a little late back from lunch. He almost runs into Missy, who’s absently reading something on an iPad. “Barry,” she says. “Did your friend find you?”

“Huh?” he frowns, shrugging on his jacket. “Oh, yeah, she did. Thanks.”

“Good. It’s always nice to see Lotus.”

“ _Iris_ ,” Barry corrects. Missy blinks at him.

“What?”

“Her name is _Iris_. Not Lotus, not Petunia, not Tulip – Iris. Look, you can call be Harry or Larry or Bart, I don’t care, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make fun of my…my friend, because it’s not funny. Um, respectfully,” he adds quickly, his face heating up. “Ma’am. Respectfully, it’s not funny.”

Missy looks pleasantly surprised. “Alright, Allen, I hear you. My apologies.”

“Thank you,” he says, and Missy walks off with this knowing look on her face. Then he hears Scott chuckling. “Dude.”

“What? What is it?”

“You’ve got it _bad_.”

***

Iris isn’t there.

When Barry gets to her lab, it’s completely empty apart from the intern that’s too afraid to speak to anyone who’s not Iris herself. After he gets nothing but a mumble out of him, he goes back downstairs and finds his mother, who’s talking to Rose in the atrium. “Barry?” she asks. “Barry, what is it?”

“Have you seen Iris?” he asks, looking around like she’s going to pop out at any moment. She gives him a weird look.

“She’s in a meeting.”

“Will she be done soon? I just – I really need to talk to her.”

The weird look she’s giving him intensifies. “Barry, she’s in a meeting with Waller. She’s not going to be back for hours.”

“Waller? Why is she talking to him?”

“I should ask you the same thing. She got back, told Singh she was taking the rest of the day, and practically ran out of the building. I thought she would have told you – didn’t she deliver the police statement to the paper?”

“Yeah, but…” he sighs. “She’s mad at me, and now she’s not answering the phone. Everything keeps going to voicemail.”

“Why on earth would she be mad at you?”

He explains what happened and the paper and her eyebrows go up. “Goodness. That Wendy is certainly something. But I don’t think Iris is as upset as you think she is.”

“You didn’t see her face, mom,” he points out, pacing up and down the atrium. “I – she’s never looked at me like that before.”

“I know, but I did see her face before she left, and – Barry, honey, calm down,” his mother says when he keeps pacing.

“Why do you think she’s talking to Waller?”

“I don’t know, she was pretty determined to leave, and even if she was mad, I’m sure it isn’t anything you guys can’t fix.”

“I just…I should have told her about the article the minute I heard about it,” he says. He rakes a hand through his hair. “The minute I figure out I’m in love with her, I have to go ahead and make her mad at me.”

His mother stares at him. “You…you’re what?”

But Barry hasn’t noticed. “Maybe I could convince Erica to-”

“Barry,” his mother interrupts. She looks completely over the moon. “Are you in love with Iris?”

Barry stares at her, going over the conversation in his head, and realises he’d pretty much just blurted the whole thing out without so much as a second thought. “I…” He swallows, suddenly feeling twelve years old again and asking what it meant to have a crush on someone. He sighs. “I was…just…Look, don’t tell her, okay? Because I know how you get, and I need to work my way up to telling her-”

“I won’t tell her!” she says giddily. “Of course, I won’t – you just go ahead and tell her yourself. Just tell me when you’re doing it. And what she says. Oh, and be charming! And-”

“Mom.”

“Bartholomew Henry Allen, do not ‘mom’ me,” she says happily. “I have been waiting for you to admit you’re in love with her for years.”

“Wait, what?” he demands. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, I always knew she was in love with _you_. But I thought it was unrequited and, to be honest, I kind of wanted the poor kid to grow out of it, because that stuff can suck. But then I figured out that you felt the same way, and I’ve basically been waiting ever since. It’s about time, honestly.”

Barry feels like he’s been dropped in the middle of a play without knowing the script. “So you mean this whole time you thought I had feelings for Iris? _How_?”

His mother laughs. “Barry, please. You used to make her brownies when she got upset. Most people, when their best friend goes into a coma, get a goldfish or a puppy. _You_ got a girlfriend. And then there was the singing.”

Barry folds his arms, feigning confusion. “Singing? What singing?”

She smiles fondly at him. “Barry. She lived in our house. I raised you both. You really think I didn’t know about the singing?”

Barry takes in her face, the knowing smile, and realises that perhaps the only difference between him and Iris is that she’s the only one who knew about her own feelings. He laughs a little shyly. “Right. Well, like I said, I haven’t…told her, yet, and now with everything that’s going on-”

“Barry, Iris has loved you since before she was old enough to know what love was. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

He looks at her hopefully. “So – so you think she still does?”

She smiles. “Only one way to find out.”

***

Iris looks at her watch for the third time that afternoon and then glares at the door of Amadeus Waller’s office. Not only has this man kept her waiting for over two hours, but their vending machine offers absolutely terrible food. Plus Waller’s agents confiscated her phone, which she liked at the beginning because no one could talk her about her idea, but now she’s irritated because she wants to order Chinese to this place. Except, of course, ‘the middle of nowhere’ isn’t really an address. So she’s stuck with her idea, turning it over and over in her mind, until she’s sure she has the whole thing memorised.

Seeing those words written about her on the page, and that Barry apparently wrote them, was like being doused in a bucket of cold water. But then something she had read, further down the page, had stuck with her.

 _Who holds her accountable_?

And…it’s true. Iris’ powers are out of this world. She has put countless metahumans – not to mention meta- _animals_ – twice her size away over the years. Even Olivia has said that, if she hadn’t been whammied by Rainbow Raider, she probably would have defeated her (except Iris isn’t allowed to tell anyone that). But apart from her own sense of morals, nothing is holding her accountable. There’s Waller, but no one knows about him. She’s a good person, but the city doesn’t know that. For all they know, if Miss Miracle decided that she wanted to level the city, no one could stop her. There’s no one in the city powerful enough.

Which is why Iris is here.

There needs to be someone, or a group of people, ready to take down a threat like Iris. Otherwise, how will people feel safe? How are they going to trust her when they know that no one can check her? Maybe it was okay in the beginning, but with this person pretending to be her, people are starting to realise that having someone all-powerful with no limits isn’t such a good idea.

And honestly, maybe she was kind of harsh with Barry, now that she thinks about it. As soon as she got that idea, she wanted to contact Waller before she chickened out, and he’s also a pretty busy girl. She now realises she left without giving him a chance to explain, but…but it was kind of hard to look at him knowing that article was going to come out about her, and he may not even have told her about it.

Iris shoves that thought to the back of her mind when Waller’s door opens and he beckons her in. “Miss West,” he says pleasantly as she sits down. “I’m sorry about the wait.”

“Are you?”

“Given that I was dealing with something called ‘The Ventriloquist’ with our liaison from Gotham for the past few hours, I can honestly say that I am. Now, how can I help you?”

Iris sits forward. “Look, Amadeus, I’m sure you’ve heard about the metahuman that attacked the karaoke bar in Central last night-”

But he raises a hand, stopping her.  “Rest assured, Miss West. I know that wasn’t you.”

“You do?”

“Miss West. You are extremely demanding, annoyingly headstrong, and extraordinarily bossy for such a small person. However, you are also honourable and kind. Of course I knew it wasn’t you.”

Iris pauses, not sure whether to feel complimented or insulted. “I – thank you.”

“Besides,” he continues, shuffling some papers on his desk, “Miss Ramon tagged you in a video where Miss Thawne and Mr Allen were singing at the bar in question. I never knew Mr Allen could sing that well.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him.”

“Mr Thawne has already reported that your team is doing everything you can to locate this newest threat. To be honest, I don’t quite understand what the urgency is otherwise.”

“Right,” she says. “I mean, it – it was spur of the moment.”

“I guessed.”

“There’s this…article coming out, maybe, about Miss Miracle, and how she may not be the city’s saviour or whatever.”

He nods. “Superwoman has had to deal with those from time to time, usually from someone working for the Luthor family, though. And Batgirl gets those every week.”

“Right. But it also mentioned that no one holds me accountable for what I do – and even if they do, even if the city condemns me or whatever, who could stop me?”

Amadeus raises her eyebrows. “I like to think that’s what we’re here for.”

“And it is – but no one knows about you,” she points out. “M.A.I.M.E.D. – not to mention A.R.G.U.S. – isn’t supposed to exist. To the people who exist outside of me, you and our respective teams, I’m this all-powerful person who doesn’t have anyone to stop her if I lose control.”

He regards her. “That’s an…interesting way of looking at it. I understand your point. What would you like from me?”

Iris takes a deep breath. “I want you to take me to meet Superwoman.”

***

Iris doesn’t show up at her apartment until the end of the day, a large takeout bag in one hand as she trudges up the stairs. Barry, who’s been sitting outside her door since work ended, sits up when he sees her. “Barry?” she splutters, her keys dangling from her hand. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” he replies. “About today.”

He holds his breath as Iris considers this. He’s been calling her all day, but her phone went straight to voicemail. Nobody else knew what was going on, and he hadn’t wanted to call Francine because he didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily. But the fact that she doesn’t seem so irritated with him right now at least gives him a little hope.

“Okay,” she says. She passes him and turns the key in the lock, before turning back to look at him. “Barry, have you been waiting here all day?”

“Not all day,” he says. “Just a few hours. I think your neighbour has a pot garden on the roof, by the way.”

Iris laughs and gets the door open. “Yeah, we’re not supposed to know about that. And as a metahuman, I do have my own permanent case of the munchies.”

Barry follows her through to her lounge, watching as she dumps her coat and bag on the armchair, grabbing a couple of forks from the kitchen and settling on the couch with her food. He’s been in this apartment so many times before, it’s second nature to feel at home here. But then with all these new feelings, he’s starting to second-guess every action he takes. How close is he supposed to sit next to her on the couch? Should he cut back on the tickling? Is it okay to go into the kitchen to get drinks?

“Barry,” she says, and he realises she was saying something to him. “I said, what did you want to talk about?”

He sits next to her. “Oh. Right, Iris, that article wasn’t my idea, and I didn’t know about it until-”

“Yeah, I thought that was it,” she sighs. “I’m sorry, Barry. I shouldn’t have reacted like that, especially in front of everyone. I should have known that you wouldn’t write something like that about me unless someone made you.”

“I still should have told you,” he says. “I knew about it weeks ago.”

“Then why didn’t you?” she asks quietly. He shakes his head.

“I thought they were done with it, really. And I thought I talked Erica out of it, but apparently not, and Wendy really doesn’t like masks, and Jake has always been a jackass of epic proportions-”

“I’ll say.” Iris shudders, reaching for some garlic bread. “I could feel the mansplaining vibes radiating off him. So is it…is it still coming out?”

“No,” he replies quickly. “I’m not – I’ll talk them out of it, Iris, I promise.”

“You don’t have to do that, Bar. This is your job, I get that. I just wish we had some leads on this meta that has my powers, because my other idea didn’t work.”

“What do you mean?”

“I went to see Waller today – that’s why I left work early,” she adds, “to talk to him about something.”

“Yeah, I tried calling you,” he says. She makes an irritated noise.

“Their stupid armoured car blocks out all signal, and then Waller took my phone when I got there, and then I was damned if those assholes weren’t driving me to get my damn takeout. I was going to call everyone once I was done. And you didn’t have to wait, really.”

“I know,” he shrugs. “But I wanted to. Hey, what was your idea?”

“Well, Wendy had a point,” she says. “I’m not accountable to anyone the public can see, and there’s no one powerful enough to stop me if I _did_ go rogue. What they’re seeing now may be someone pretending to be me, but to them, it’s a real thing that’s happening.”

Barry fights the urge stroke her hair or something, because that would _definitely_ give it away. “Iris, there’s no way you’re going to turn on people.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know that. So I thought, if I knew someone who was powerful enough to stop me, and the public new about it, it would make people feel safer. So I asked Waller to take me to meet Superwoman.”

“Superwoman?” he repeats. She adjusts her glasses.

“Yeah. I guess I thought that I could start the whole Justice League thing this way. I mean, I don’t know what the catalyst was – I never asked the Mindscape, and every time I ask Gideon he just says ‘spoiler’ and rickrolls me, but making people feel safer is never going to be a bad thing.” She sighs, picking at her pasta. “Didn’t work, though. Waller said no.”

“Really? Why not”

“He said she likes her privacy, and it wouldn’t be fair if he just let everyone who wanted to meet Superwoman meet her. He has a point, I guess, because if _everyone_ they worked with wanted to meet me, I’d get pretty pissed.”

“Okay, that’s fair.”

“And if it weren’t for this meta, maybe I would actually just fly to Metropolis and wait around to meet her,” she jokes. “It’s not like I have her number. Whatever, I guess I have to defeat this meta and then get people to love me again.”

“People still love you,” he insists. She makes a face. “They do, Iris.” He swallows, glancing down at his hands. “And…and I…I lo-” Then Barry breaks off, the wheels in his mind turning.

Iris doesn’t have Superwoman’s number.

But she knows someone who knows someone who does.

“Barry?” she asks. “You what?”

“I have to go,” he says quickly. He stands up. “Ah, erm – work…thing. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“O-Okay,” she says uncertainly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Fine! I’m fine, it’s fine, I just have to go.” He finds his keys and heads towards the door, before doubling back. “And don’t worry about this, okay? We’ve got it.”

“I’ll try.”

As soon as Iris lets him out and he gets down to the street, he gets out his cell and the number he’s been hoarding since Francine gave it to him. It’s picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Is this – is this Clark Kent?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Barry,” he replies. “Barry Allen. A friend of mine has a proposition for a friend of yours.”

***

“This meta,” Chesca declares the next day, “does not have your powers.”

Iris looks on in disbelief. Chesca, Eddie, and Jesse seem confident, and Dr. Wells hasn’t refuted anything they’ve said yet. Malina, sitting on the table, nods. “They explained it reallt well. I don’t remember how, but they did.”

Barry looks at his sister. “Don’t you have a class today?”

“Relax, I can teleport.”

“And we’re making this quick,” Chesca promises. She points to one of the monitors. “It took me all day to slow down the pictures to get frame-by-frame images that we could actually use. And if you study them, you can see that instead of sparks, like Iris, or smoke, like we thought, it’s actually dark matter.”

“So they were affected by the Particle Accelerator explosion?” Malina asks.

“Right,” Jesse answers. “And I looked at the people who were injured or had things stolen. If Iris was teleporting or moving at that speed, she would have caused people static shocks – but there weren’t any.”

“Plus,” Eddie adds, “I studied the way the meta moved. If you look at the way they teleport, they turn their head slightly into the direction they’re going in. Iris doesn’t have to do that.”

Iris shares a look with Barry. “That’s pretty compelling,” she admits, and Dr. Wells speaks up.

“There’s something else, Iris. When you are around Malina, or Jay, or when you were around myself as Calamity, you could feel it, couldn’t you? You could feel the Mindscape. But I’m guessing with this metahuman, you couldn’t.”

Iris considers this. With all her training, she’s pretty much managed to block it out anyway, but she sure as hell would have noticed another meta with her powers in a place like Crazy For You. And she hadn’t. “Okay, well that all helps – they probably don’t have offensive powers then. Do we know what they look like?”

“We were waiting for you to get here,” Chesca says. “I’m running some facial recognition software on it right now. Should give us a result any minute now.”

“Malina,” Eddie says. “Those are my pop tarts.”

“I am a superhero,” she says. “If you can’t offer one of your city’s miracleworkers nourishment in her time of need, then-”

The computer pings with the results, and Chesca brings up a picture of a man’s driver’s license. Iris hears Barry gasp beside her. “Iris,” he breathes. “Iris, we know him.”

Eddie curses. “Crap. That’s Baez. That’s Shawn Baez.”

“Who’s that?” Jesse asks.

“The DA who used to work with me,” Eddie explains. “Calamity did a number on all of us – got me to steal Barry’s watch so she could catch Iris, convinced Shawn that the DA threatened his family so he had to help…”

“And then she kidnapped him,” Barry finishes grimly. He’ll never forget the terror of that night. Then he notices Dr. Wells, quiet devastation on her face. “Dr. Wells, I wasn’t-”

“Of course not, Barry,” she says. “Carry on.”

“Well, that’s it. We thought Colin would have him in that bunker where he kept Malina,” Eddie says. “Or, I did. But he wasn’t there, so I assumed he died like all the others.”

“Clearly he’s not – look at him,” Jesse says. “Teleporting in and out of here like he’s playing peekaboo.”

“Hey, can that be his meta name?” Malina asks.

“Malina,” Eddie warns, and Chesca scoffs.

“Besides, that name is weak.”

Jesse, who has stepped closer to the screen. “That’s the least of our worries.”

“Jesse?” Dr. Wells asks. “What is it?”

“Well, much as it creeped me out to read the notes of a sociopath, I’ve studied Colin’s actions with the people he turned. The ones who he experimented on early started to show signs of mental breakdown later on. It didn’t happen to Linda, but she was let go early. It was starting to happen to Eddie. And it happened to all the metas you caught. My guess is that he never let you guys see the reports to hide it.”

“And now?” Iris asks. “What’s happening now?”

“Well, something must be happening to make him like this. I can’t imagine that he has full control of his faculties.”

“We have to tell everyone he’s not in the right state of mind,” Barry decides. “One, he’s technically a missing person. Two, the whole city thinks he’s a criminal, so I don’t even want to think about what could happen if the police found him.”

Iris nods. “Jesse, help Barry write a statement for his blog. Can you get that meta-watch thing up, so people know to tell you if they see him?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, Chesca, is there any chance at all that someone else could find out who this is?”

“Not likely,” she replies. “This tech came from the best hacker in the world.”

“Freddie Smoak?” everyone says.

“Y’all did that the last time, haven’t you learned by now?”

Iris laughs. “Uh-huh. I’ll be back this evening, maybe we can come up with a plan to get this guy. Malina, could you come with me? I need to show you something.”

She hops off the table and follows Iris to the training room, who points her to the treadmill. “I need to see how the meal plan we put you on is doing,” she explains, heading to a computer. Malina nods and hooks herself up to the machine, before walking slowly on the treadmill.

“Good,” Iris nods. She sets it a little faster. “Your energy levels are great.”

“It’s those taquitos that Chesca makes – I’m telling you, they’re magic.”

Iris laughs. “Yup. Thank god for my metabolism.”

They are silent for a while, only the beeping of the monitors to keep them company, and then Malina clears her throat. “So…so this Shawn guy. That’s Peekaboo? And he’s really not like you and me?”

“Apparently not.”

“Because – well, while we were at the bar, I kind of thought it was-”

“Colin?” Iris asks quietly. Malina nods, stepping off the treadmill and sinking back into the chair. Gone is the cheer from her blue eyes, replaced with a fear that Iris recognises as someone who was terrorised by Colin not long ago. “I didn’t even see it for very long. It was like I was back in that room again, locked up and tied to the bars of the cell.” She rubs her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Iris.”

“Sorry?” Iris repeats. “What are you sorry for?”

“I kept thinking I was over this thing with Colin and Thalia, but I’m not. And – and I treated you horribly because of it. The Thawnes took me from my family and Colin kept me locked up. I’m so mad at them for …for _everything_ , but they’re not here. You are. And part of me thought of you as the girl who got my mom, and my brother, and the city loved you for your powers before they got to see mine. You were the only one left to be mad at.”

Iris shakes her head. “Malina, if you knew how much anger I kept in me for years, you wouldn’t feel bad about telling me this. It’s okay – look, I still go to my mom’s counselling sessions, because we’re both still angry. Don’t worry about it. Okay?”

Malina nods. “Iris?”

“Yes?”

“What if he comes back?” she whispers. “What if they both come back?”

Iris hesitates, because she’s been wondering this question herself. But Malina is younger than her, and was locked up by a crazy person, so she can’t be the scared right now. She has to be brave for the younger girl “If they come back,” she says, “I guess we’ll just have to show them what _two_ miracleworkers can do.”

Malina smiles at her and they both turn at a knock on the door. Barry gives them both curious looks, hovering in the doorway. “Hey. We okay in here?”

“Yeah, we are,” his sister replies. “What’s up, beanpole?”

“I was seeing whether you needed my help,” he shrugs. “I was done with Jesse, so…”

“Well, we’re just doing medical stuff,” Iris says. “But you can hang out until you have to leave, if you want. I have to do this properly or Jesse will murder me, and seeing as he’s one of the few people who actually knows how, I don’t want to risk it.”

Iris goes back to the terminal, so she doesn’t see Malina give Barry a sly smile. “I’m sorry you guys got your night messed up,” she says, hopping back on the treadmill. “Jesse’s always saying how you all need to have more fun together.”

“There’ll be other nights,” Iris shrugs. “And this actually happens more than you think. Remember movie night?”

“One day,” Barry laughs, “we’re going to finish _The Theory of Everything_ without getting interrupted.”

“I’m telling you, it’s not on the cards.”

Malina clears her throat. “Hey, Barry, what about that party that the mayor throws for journalists? Isn’t that in soon?”

“Yeah…” he says suspiciously. “But that’s in, like, two months.”

“So? If you take Iris, I’m sure she’ll want to find a dress in time.”

“Malina,” Iris laughs, still looking at the screen. “Barry can take who he wants.”

“Yeah, but he’s not going to have as much fun as he will with his best friend, is he?” She looks at Barry. “Are you?”

“I’m sure Iris has way better things to do than to go to one of those things with me,” he replies, while secretly hoping that she wants to go.

“Well, not that I don’t want to hang out with you, but I don’t know about all those journalists. That Jake guy was kind of an ass.”

“Right?” Malina agrees. “Scott’s nice, but the rest of them? Dull City.”

“How do you know all of this?” Barry wants to know. “Was this what you were doing when you came to visit?”

“God, no. I ran a background check on them. You know, Jake dyes his hair.”

“Malina!” Iris and Barry say together.

“What?”

“Unbelievable,” Barry mutters, and Iris giggles. Malina shrugs.

“I recognise that Wendy girl, you know. She was an intern while we lived in Gotham.”

“Oh, yeah? She seems nice,” Iris says. “Pretty.”

Malina frowns. “Yeah, if that’s your type. Personally, I think redheads are overrated. What do you think, Barry?”

“I-”

“Crap, I have to get to work,” Iris mutters, looking at her watch. “Could you tell Jesse I’ll finish this tonight?”

“Sure,” Barry says easily. She nods and wishes them both goodbye. Barry turns on his sister. “I swear to God, you should be locked up.”

Malina grins at him.

***

When Barry checks his phone for the third time in as many minutes while waiting to fill out his lunch order, Scott sighs. “What are you, robbing a bank?”

“Sorry,” he says. “Waiting on a call.”

From Clark freaking Kent.

After he’d gotten over the fact that Clark Kent was indeed speaking to him, he laid out his idea. Miss Miracle is interested in starting a group of superheroes so that each one can both protect the city and stop a member who becomes dangerous. Barry’s still kind of surprised that the man heard him between all the blind praise and adoration (he’s pretty certain Clark thinks he’s in love with him), but he promised that he would ask Superwoman. So now he’s waiting.

He spots Wendy go into her office and steels himself. He handed in the draft to Erica last night, and he’s kind of okay with it because Iris seems resigned to it, but he can still do something about Wendy. As soon as he’s done filling in his order, he knocks on her office door. She looks up at him, her eyes hooded. “Barry.”

“I’m not going to yell at you,” he promises. “Really. Can I come in? Are you busy?”

“Nope, come on in. Do you need my help with something?”

“No, not really. But I…I was wondering if you wanted to get a coffee at the end of the day, or something? I just really think we got off on the wrong foot with the whole Miss Miracle thing, and I would hate for us to go on like this. I wanted us to talk.”

Wendy looks surprised, but then she smiles. “Sure, okay. That’d be nice. I’ll meet you outside when work is done.”

“Great,” he says. “I’ll see you later.”

(And had Barry Allen knew what was going to happen, he would have been content to send her an email).

It feels weird, being at Jitters at the end of the day with someone who isn’t Iris, but she’s working with Jesse tonight and he wants to make sure Wendy knows where he stands on Miss Miracle. “I swear, no matter where you go, there’s always a Jitters,” she smiles as they wait at the counter.  “Even if the one in Gotham kept getting held up by Calendar Girl.”

“Right, I heard about her. The one who liked to dress up as a Thanksgiving Turkey?”

“No, I witnessed her visit on the day of good old St. Nick. Threw exploding crackers everywhere. Talk about a merry Christmas.”

Barry chuckles. “Thank God that never happened when I worked here.”

“Dr. Barry Allen, barista?”

“Yeah, I served coffee and bussed tables with the best of them.”

“So, any recommendations?”

Barry grins. “Well, I think we both know that the Miss Miracle is my favourite. Great coffee and it comes with a donut.”

Wendy shakes her head, her red curls swinging, as they walk to a booth. “I still don’t believe that’s a thing that exists.”

“The people love Miss Miracle, and they want to show their appreciation,” he says simply. “I think it’s admirable. We don’t often get the chance to show this much appreciation for the things that we love.”

“But you don’t think it’s a little too much?” she asks, sipping her latte. “You don’t think that people are little too reliant on her?”

“Come on, you cannot be that convinced that she’s going to turn on everyone.”

“Barry, almost every district official in Gotham was corrupt, half the doctors were experimenting on the patients, and the other half were running off _with_ the patients to start a life of crime.”

Barry decides that this is not the time to mention that he once helped Olivia locate Harley Quinn while visiting Star City. “Okay, maybe you have a point,” he admits. He scoots closer to the table. “Look, Wendy, I know it can be…hard to trust these people, especially in light of what people think Miss Miracle did.”

“You’re kind of amazing to her, you know,” she concedes, which surprises him. Wendy is nice, but also pretty severe when it comes to stuff like this. “Most people would throw her under the bus after something like this happened. Try to save their own skin.”

“We’ve been through…a lot, together.” More than she would ever know. “But I don’t have feelings for her. She’s not…We don’t operate like that. All our conversations are strictly professional. I actually…I’m interested in someone else. And I would hate for you to think that things between me and her was anything other than platonic. Okay?”

Wendy stares at him for a moment and then smiles again. She does have quite a pretty smile. “Okay. Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“Yes and no. Look, I know these people. Miss Miracle, the Green Arrow, Black Canary, Arsenal-”

“You know the Green Arrow?” she practically shrieks.

“ _Shh_!”

“Sorry,” she whispers. “You’re friends with the Green Arrow? And the Black Canary?”

“Yeah. And what I’m saying is, more often than not, these are just people like us. It doesn’t matter whether they have powers or a bow and arrow or whatever. They’re just trying their best. Sometimes they fuck up, and sometimes it’s really bad, but the thing we have to remember – the thing I always try to remember, is that there’s a person under all that. And I can’t tell you their names, or anything about them, but believe me when I say that they’ve been through a lot.”

Wendy sits back, taking this all in. “Wow. When you want to convince someone, Barry Allen, you really go all in. And I guess on your list of dating wants, ‘Miss Miracle hater’ isn’t one of them.”

It takes Barry two seconds to work out what’s going on. “I – You – thought-”

Wendy gets to the realisation about a second after he does. She puts a hand over her mouth. “Oh. Oh, God.”

“Wendy-”

“You know what? It’s fine, I have to go anyway,” she grabs her stuff quickly, her face going almost as red as her hair. Barry looks around helplessly.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“It’s okay. I’ll…see you at work.”

***

“So he hasn’t hit any banks?”

“Nope.”

“Or jewellery stores.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Or robbed anymore banks.”

Chesca rolls out from behind the terminal. “Peekaboo has not done anything remotely interesting in the last forty-eight hours.”

Iris sighs, massaging her temples. Trying to track a metahuman slowly losing their mind, especially one with teleportation powers like hers, is actually much _harder_ than it sounds. She and Chesca have been at it for hours, and they’re still no closer. Finally, she sits down next to Chesca. “Look, this isn’t the kind of meta to have a plan like Geomancer to the Trickster. We just have to be vigilant, right? So I’m putting Malina in rotation on her own.”

“Think she’s up for it?”

“I think she’s almost there,” Iris admits. “But she’s never going to get ready if she doesn’t get her feet wet. I’ll be on standby in case she needs help, but young Miss Miracle is ready to go out into the world.”

Chesca puts her feet on the table. “You know, we really do need to come up with a name for her.”

“Yeah. Oh, but don’t let Jesse do it, because ‘Peekaboo’? Dude.”

“Hey, I have to let him have one,” she admits. She looks over at Henry, who is across the room working on something for their security. “Is he always so…”

“Yes,” Chesca answers. “You know, Henry’s actually really sweet. Is Barry used to having a dad yet?”

“I don’t know. I think he’s getting there. Anyway, why are you asking me?” Chesca rolls her eyes.

“Because Barry tells you everything. And even if he didn’t, you two have that thing that means you have mental conversations when you think none of us notice.”

Iris blushes a little. “We don’t do that anymore. As much.”

“Come on, do you really think there’s anything about that boy you don’t know?”

“I guess not,” she admits. He’s still being kind of coy about the work thing, but maybe it’s a confidentiality thing. Almost as if she summoned him, Barry himself walks into the room, in the middle of a conversation with Nora. “Hey, you guys. What’s up?”

“Well, I was coming over to give you the report you forgot,” Nora explains, “and I found this one outside.”

“Well, I thought I could help with…whatever you guys were doing,” Barry says. He looks around. “Which is sitting around and eating Pringles, apparently.”

Iris laughs. “Well, I was about to go finish that medical thing for Jesse,” she says, gesturing to her computer. “But you can go see if Henry needs anything.”

“Okay, cool.” Barry grins at her as he walks off. Henry’s studying some blueprints on a desk, marking things down with a pencil. “Barry!” he says cheerfully. “How was work?”

“It was…work,” he shrugs. “Need any help with anything?”

“I’m good, actually, but I’m never going to say no to company. You alright?”

“Ha,” he laughs a little. “Why wouldn’t I be alright?”

Henry removes the glasses he uses to read, and Barry’s struck by all the times he just looks like a normal, suburban dad who sells insurance. He studies him. “Call it a hunch.”

“Ah. Well, I guess…” He rubs the back of his neck, leaning against the desk. “I kind of went on a date. Wendy, she’s a girl from work.”

“Are you… sure about that?”

“It was an accident.”

“Barry,” he chuckles. “How on earth do you go on a date accidentally?”

“I’m special, I guess.”

Henry laughs and comes to stand next to him. “Well, did you enjoy yourself?”

Barry shrugs. “Well, she was nice, and pretty, and I don’t _think_ she had a vendetta against my family, but…Well, technically it was my first one since Patty, so I guess I just feel weird about it.”

“Right. Well, Barry, you’re the only one who’s going to know when you’re ready to move on, but you shouldn’t be afraid of pursuing something – or rather some _one_ – new. So if you want to date this Wendy girl, you should.”

Barry nods absently, watching Iris explain something to Chesca and Nora, her smile lighting up the whole damn room. “Uh-huh.” Henry chuckles quietly.

“And if you want Iris, I think you should tell her.”

Barry whips around. "Oh, I'm not...Iris and I - aren't, because she's my...Iris..." He sighs. "Is it that obvious?"

“Barry, I turned up at your office and asked whether they’d seen her, and you told me that if I hurt her or went near her again you’d break my legs. I’ve known for months.”

“Yeah, but I was kidding.”

“You weren’t kidding.”

“Alright, maybe I wasn’t,” he laughs, and Henry joins in.

“Barry, the question here is really pretty simple. Do you love her?”

He looks over again at Iris, who’s now levitating things while Nora and Chesca laugh. “I…I’m crazy about her,” he smiles helplessly. Henry nods.

“Barry, when you have that kind of love, when you have something that great, you should do everything your power to keep it. Because there are… too many things in this world that could take it away from you.”

And is it his imagination, or is Henry looking at his mother?

“Henry?” he tries, and the man clears his throat, turning back to his blueprints.

“Like I said,” he says quickly, “you should tell her. Before it’s too late.”

He doesn’t want to think about what ‘too late’ means. Chesca walks off downstairs and his mother takes a call, so Barry walks up to Iris. “Hey.”

“Hey, Bar,” she replies cheerfully. “What’s up?”

“Uh, it – where did Chesca go?”

“She went to get Linda and Malina,” she explains. “Both of them forgot their keycards. You good? How was work?”

“It was okay. Listen, are you-”

The bone-shattering klaxon cuts him off, and several alerts pop up on the monitors. Iris curses. “It’s him,” she breathes. “It’s Peekaboo.”

“Where is he?”

“Central City bank,” she replies, crossing to get into her suit. “Could you tell the others-”

“I’ve got it. Go.”

Iris nods and pictures the bank. When she gets there, she sees that Shawn’s not actually doing anything other than shifting from place to place, the dark matter following him in small clouds wherever he goes. “Iris, you can’t call him by his name,” Barry reminds her. “We can’t do that to his family.”

“I know,” she mutters. People notice her there and they look back at Shawn, clearly thinking that they had been one and the same. He turns to her. He managed to get a mask and a costume from somewhere – dark trousers and a sleeveless shirt, as well as a mask that covers his whole face. “Hey! Stop, you-”

Iris gasps when he disappears – and reappears right in front of her, snarling. She narrowly misses a punch to her face, but he does grab her and take her outside to an alleyway, where no one can see them. She wrestles herself away from him. “Shawn,” she says. “Shawn, I know you’re in there, I know what Colin-”

He swings on her again, this time catching her arm, but she springs back up again. “ _Shawn_. You have to come with me, okay? We-”

But he’s had enough, and she’s not fast enough this time. He shoves her against the wall, pressing his arm into her neck. “Don’t call me that,” he growls. Iris grabs at his hands; she’s starting to see spots. “And don’t come after me again. _Miss Miracle_.”

He disappears and she drops to the floor. Iris rubs her eyes, before getting her bearings enough to teleport back to the lab. By the time she gets there, everyone else has arrived. Barry breaks away from the group to steady her as she sways. “Iris,” he says. “Hey, what happened?”

“That – could I have some water?” she says hoarsely. She takes a swig from the bottle that Malina offers her, and Barry helps her up onto an examination table. “Thanks. Look, guys, whoever the hell that guy was in there, it’s not Shawn.”

“Why would you say that?” Eddie asks.

“Well, first of all, he tried to punch me when I said his name. But I was trying to read his mind, get a sense of where he was going, and there was just…chaos. I have no idea what was going on up there. He wasn’t acting like Shawn at all.”

“I was afraid of that,” Jesse says. “Whatever Colin did to him…I studied his reports, and it’s highly likely that he thinks he’s an entirely different person.”

“Dissociative identity disorder?” Henry asks. “Really?”

“Well, it’s the most likely explanation.”

“He knew my name, though,” Iris points out.

“Because he was designed to attack you. That’s likely the only thing he remembers.”

“Why didn’t you try to subdue him?” Eddie asks. Iris sighs.

“I thought I could get through to him. It’s not his fault he’s like this. Besides, with you, I had no idea you were under there, so I just punched you.”

Malina frowns. “You punched him?”

“He hit Barry with a memory-wiping gun.”

“You hit Barry with a memory-wiping gun?”

“I was mind-controlled.”

Malina turns to Barry. “Did you get all your memories back?”

“Most of them,” Iris answers, and doesn’t see the look Barry’s giving her. “That’s not important. What do we do?”

“Well, I have to tell the team that nobody should go near him,” Nora says. “Clearly, he’s dangerous. Luckily nobody knows it’s him yet, so his family don’t have to go through that yet.”

Iris thinks for a moment. “Look, I don’t like this as much as the next person, but there’s nothing we can do right now. If he’s having a negative reaction to what Colin did to me and there’s no plan apart from ‘attack Miss Miracle’, we just have to wait.”

“I can synthesise something to counteract his reactions,” Wally says. “Calm him down. If Jesse will help. But you’re right, we have to wait until he shows up again, and then you can hit him with it.”

Nobody looks particularly happy about this either, but they all agree. “I have to go give Jake your statement,” Barry grimaces as everyone starts talking amongst themselves. “Since he’s covering it.”

“Go,” she says. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“I don’t care about that.” He touches her arm. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Won’t be going to anymore banks in the near future,” she jokes, “but fine.”

Barry looks like he’s about to say something else, but he just nods and leaves, followed by a few of the others. The only ones that remain are Iris, Chesca, Linda, and Malina. Malina herself is staring at her suit, her arms folded. Iris hops down off the table. “See, this is where a little anger is good,” she says. “Let it drive you, not control you.”

“Hey, some anger can be useful,” Linda adds. “Just make sure you make it your weapon, not the other way around.”

“Ooh, been there. Remember what happened the last time I got _really_ mad?”

“Mm,” Chesca replies. “Damn near killed the Vanilla Pistol-”

“ _Chesca_.”

“Oh, but ‘Vanilla Pattycakes’ is wrong.”

Malina blinks. “Who are you guys talking about?”

“Barry’s ex,” Linda explains. “Iris, you didn’t like Vanilla Pattycakes? It was a hell of a lot better than One-Shot Kill.”

“I’m trying to up my karma here,” Iris laughs. “Whenever I do bad things, the universe punishes me by sending me poisonous jellyfish.”

“Besides, that name was fake,” Chesca adds. “And she _shot_ you. You’re allowed.”

“I like Vanilla Pattycakes,” Malina admits. “But why the vanilla part?”

“Good God, she was dull. I mean, I know it was part of her cover, but still. Did she have to be so cheery all the time?”

***

By the time he talks himself into it for the final time, it’s almost the end of the next day.

But Henry’s right and his mother is right and all those stupid songs on his iPod are right. He loves Iris and he always has, and he has to tell her before something takes her away from him forever. Whether it’s metahumans or another accident or more Scotts or Julios. So he is going to tell her.

Barry can’t help the grin that spreads across his face when he finally spots her, in the middle of a conversation with Rose. Trying to ignore the image of Malina laughing at him, he smooths down his hair and takes a deep breath.

“It’s okay,” he tells himself. “She’s your best friend, you’ve known her your whole life. Just be charming and ask her out to dinner. You can tell her how you feel then.”

Iris spots him and smiles just as she’s signing something for the detective. “Barry, hey, what’s up?” Then she frowns. “Wait, you’re not here because of yesterday, are you? Because I told you, I’m fine.”

He shakes his head. “No, that’s not it. I was just around, you know, and I wanted to talk to you.”

Iris nods, adjusting her glasses, and gives him an expectant look, and he smiles back at her. She frowns when he doesn’t say anything. “Um, Bar? What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, then why are you looking at me like that?”

“Mm? Oh, nothing, you just look really nice today. Not that you don’t always look nice,” he adds quickly when she frowns at him, “you look nice all the time. Beautiful, even,” he says with a nervous laugh. “So.”

Iris stares at him and then rolls her eyes, putting her papers away. “Look, Barry, flattery is great and it usually works, but I  _really_  can’t tell you about the Michaelson case. You’ll have to wait until the press conference like everyone else.”

Barry nods, rubbing the back of his head. “Haha. I guess you caught me.”

“Well, it is probably your oldest trick on the book. Anyway, how was your date?”

He blinks. “My what?”

“Yeah, Henry told me you went on a date yesterday,” she continues evenly. “With Wendy?”

“Oh.  _Oh_ , right, Wendy.” He gives her a shrug and a smile. “Yeah, that was terrible.”

“It was?”

“Oh, yeah. It totally blew.”

Iris is staring at him wondering why he’s  _grinning_  at this. “I’m…sorry?”

“Don’t be sorry! We’re gonna be friends. Yeah, it’s gonna be awesome. Besides,” he adds, glancing at his shoes, “I'm…holding out for something great.”

Iris nods. “Alright. So, what’s up?”

“Well, I just wanted to ask whether you were free tomorrow? I just figured with the multiverse and the doppelgängers and my dad and your mom and Team Arrow and Vibe and everything, we haven’t really gotten a chance to just talk, you know?”

“Barry, we talk all the time,” she points out. “I called you this morning.” He nods.

“Yeah, but that wasn’t a real  _talk._  And there’s usually about a million other people there.”

“We do have a lot of friends,” she admits.

“Right, and it’s not like I don’t like them, but there are just so many. And …and I want it to be just us.”

“Okay,” she agrees slowly. “You want to get like a coffee or something?”

He rubs the back of his head again. “Actually, I was thinking, um -  dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah, and then we could, you know, talk about stuff we’ve got rolling around in the old noodle, you know? Really get into it, and that’s always better with dinner and dessert and…waiters.”

Iris just stares at him, her hands on her hips. “Barry Allen, you’re being really weird, you know that?”

“W-What?” he stammers. He feels his face heat. “I’m not - I’m not being weird. I’m being normal. Totally normal.”

“You’re being weird, and I think I know why.” She reaches up to grab his chin and looks into his eyes. He swallows as she feels his forehead with the back of a hand. Her fingers are dangerously close to his hair, and he’s reminded of how much he wants her to run her hands through it like the time she kissed him.

“You…do?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

She lets go and folds her arms. “Yes, Barry, and I have told you before not to eat those energy bars that Chesca synthesised - they’re not FDA approved. They’re making your pupils dilate and your face all warm, and you seem really nervous.”

Barry chuckles again. “Ha, you caught me again. So, uh, dinner? Malina’s on duty instead of you, right?”

Iris still looks kind of confused at how damn  _giddy_  this man is acting, but she shrugs. “Okay, yeah. I’m working late tomorrow, though.”

“How about eight? You can just meet me at my office and we can walk over. I can make reservations. Is that okay?”

Iris gives up and smiles. “Yeah, sure. That sounds great.”

“Awesome!” he grins. “I can’t wait. I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Iris watches him leave with the oddest look on her face. That boy is definitely on something. “Nora?” she calls when she sees the other woman coming down the stairs.

“Yes, honey?”

“Is everything okay with Barry? He’s acting… really weird with me. He has been for weeks, actually. Is everything okay with Henry, or…"

Nora frowns briefly at the report in her hand. "He seems fine with Henry. Actually, if I’m honest, this is the happiest I’ve seen him in months. Might be something to do with the fact that not _everything_ is trying to kill us. And,” she adds slowly, “maybe talking to his best friend made him happy.”

Iris makes a face. “Because we’re getting dinner?”

Nora’s face lights up. “You guys are getting dinner? That’s wonderful! Oh, you guys are getting dinner, I’m so happy!”

Iris’ features twist into confused surprise when Nora hugs her. “That…we’re eating?”

“No, of course not. But you two needed to spend more time together anyway.” She gathers up her papers. “Have fun! I’ll see you later.”

Iris watches her leave, still shocked. Honestly.

What is _with_ everyone lately?

***

“I told you,” Scott says, amused, watching Barry at the conference table. “You’ve. Got. It. _Bad_.”

Barry grumbles. It’s after hours and most people gone home, so he’s here waiting for Iris. And he’s never been so nervous in his life, which is ridiculous, because it’s just _dinner_. They’ve gotten dinner together their whole lives. But here he is, unable to decide whether or not to wear a tie. “I shouldn’t wear a tie,” he says, putting it down. “Too formal.”

“Gotta say, this is kind of funny,” Scott continues. “Barry Allen, ace reporter, reduced to this by, and I quote, ‘the cutest nerd he knows’.”

“But I don’t want it to look like I’m not trying,” he says. “Okay, tie.”

“I should have made my bet with Missy bigger.”

“Okay, but this tie sucks-”

“Barry!” Scott laughs. “Would you calm down? I dated Iris, remember? The entire time, she was in love with you. You can’t just turn that off.”

He hopes. “Right. Thanks. Wait, what bet?”

Scott is saved by the arrival of Eddie and Malina, and Barry stares at them as they make their way through the news office. “Hey, guys, what’s up? What happened?”

“We just wanted to let you know that everyone’s on duty tonight,” Eddie says. “Literally everyone, including little miss over here. So you and Iris are free to do…well, whatever. Don’t give me details.”

“You better not be wearing that tie,” she says. “And great, did your hair already. Just resist the urge to do it again when she walks in, okay?”

“You guys noticed that too?” Scott grins. “It’s adorable, don’t you think?”

“I hate all of you,” Barry mutters, shoving the tie in someone’s desk drawer. Malina’s eyes flicker behind him as the door opens.

“Dude, resist the urge.”

“I’m not falling for that again-”

“Falling for what again?” Iris’ asks idly from behind him, and he turns around, and his breath catches. Iris looks completely stunning in a grey dress that she’s wearing the hell out of, her lips rosy and her cheeks pink. It takes him a moment to remember how to speak.

“Nothing,” he replies. He grins at her. “I – Iris, you look great. I mean, really incredible.”

“Oh.” She adjusts her glasses. “Well, you told me they had a dress code, and I was covered in chemicals from the day, and I couldn’t exactly wear Converses…so.” She pulls her bag more securely on her shoulder and shifts her jacket in her hands. “You look nice, too. Wait,” she adds, seeing the others. “What are you guys doing here? Malina, you’re-”

“On duty, I know,” she says. “Relax, Bambi Eyes, we were just going over the plan to deal with Peekaboo with Barry.”

“Peekaboo?” Scott repeats. “Wow, Chesca’s slacking.”

“Anyway, we should go,” Barry says. “We don’t want to be late.”

“Right, just…Malina, c’mere.” Iris pulls her to the side. “Okay, I know this is your first time, and you want to go out and kick ass, but be careful.”

“I will.”

“And call me if you need anything.”

“Of course.”

“And Chesca and Jesse should-”

“Iris!” Malina grabs her hands. “Dude, I’m going to be fine. There’s a metahuman, two doctors, a gun expert, a cop, and two spies looking after me. Go enjoy your date.”

“It’s not a date,” Iris corrects her quickly, even though her stomach has butterflies in it. Because it’s Barry, and they’re going to a fancy restaurant at night, and she actually took the time to do her hair and makeup. She never blamed Barry for being his normal, affectionate self when he was around her growing up. She suspects its because of how quickly he lost his father and his sister, but he’s never been shy about hugging her or squeezing her shoulders or anything like that. And they always get dinner together; in fact, this is replacing the coffee they always have at the end of the day. “It’s just dinner.”

“Well, have fun anyway. And tell me about it. Wait, don’t. He’s my brother, that’s weird.”

“ _Malina_! I-” She sighs. “Go. Go be a superhero before I take your suit away.”

When she joins Barry outside, he’s giving Malina a curious look through the doors. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Malina’s just…”

“Got a mouth the size of Texas?” Barry suggests, and Iris laughs, nodding.

“Yeah, a little. She’s sweet, though.” They start walking to the restaurant, and Barry’s glad it’s such a nice night. “So, how did you find this place? I’d never even heard of it before tonight.”

“I googled it; I wanted us to go somewhere nice. And Tyler works there.”

“Really? Our Tyler? Brownie and cronuts from Jitters Tyler?”

Barry nods. “Yeah, he’s doing his internship for them, so he suggested it when I was looking. We might see him tonight, except he’ll probably be wearing some pretentious chef’s had instead of an apron.”

“We may need to remind him of his roots,” Iris says.

“So you want us to order a cronut and brownie plate, five cups of coffee, and then not leave until the moon is out?”

“We did not eat that much.”

“ _I_ didn’t eat that much – all those things were for you. And this was before you became a metahuman. I have never known how you can drink that much coffee and live.”

“I think that was my original superpower,” she laughs. “Jesse says if you distilled me in a jar, I’d be Iris-flavoured coffee beans.”

They carry on their conversation, revelling in not having to go off and be part of the Miracleworkers. Iris tells him about her counselling sessions with her mother, and Barry mentions that Henry might have actually convinced him to go fishing. At one point Iris almost drops her jacket and Barry catches it; he holds it for the rest of the walk. And if he thinks this is weird, he doesn’t say anything.

“Wow,” Iris says when they get to the restaurant. “You really…made reservations. This place is something else.”

“I’m glad you think so.” They walk up to the maître d and Barry clears his throat. “Allen, reservation for two?”

He checks his list and nods. “Very good, Dr. Allen, madamoiselle. Right this way.”

They follow him inside and Iris pokes him in the ribs. “Barry, you should have told me we were coming to a place like this – I’m totally underdressed!”

“You are not,” he replies as they’re shown to their table. “You look great. Have I seen that dress before?”

She glances down at it, kind of embarrassed. “Yeah, I wore it to your graduation.”

“Right, I thought so. It’s nice,” he says simply. He pulls out her chair for her and she sits, trying not to stare at him. Did he break her microscope or something? But she doesn’t have much time to ponder, because the waiter gives them a couple of menus. Another lights the candles on the table and sets out wine glasses and a breadbasket. “Someone will be with you shortly,” he says, and walks off. Iris opens up the menu and whistles.

“Everything here looks great – I’ve never had tomato and parmesan soup before.” She looks at the dessert menu. “You wanna go Dutch, or…”

“No, I’ve got it.” Iris almost drops the menu in the bread basket.

“Barry, you can’t be serious.”

He shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because this place has, like, Michelin stars, and I eat like a starved horse.”

“This is probably a bad time to mention that I already gave my card to the waiter, wouldn’t it?” He laughs at Iris’ expression.

“When did you do that?”

“When you asked the waiter about the bread. Look, Iris, I’m the one who asked you. Besides, we both know that we’re going to order stuff together and then share.”

“I guess,” Iris replies. She reaches for some bread just as a flower vender comes up with a bouquet of roses. “A rose for the lady, monsieur?”

Iris blushes, embarrassed. “No, that’s fine, we-”

“Actually, could we have, uh…” Barry studies the table. “Three, please?”

Iris watches in disbelief as Barry buys three roses for him. “Barry,” she says quietly, her heart thudding in her ribcage. “What are you doing?”

“No, Iris, look.” He takes his glass of water and drinks it until the glass if half full, before putting the roses inside. Then he puts them in the middle of the table between the candles. “See? All the other arrangements are overdone, but ours is cute. Our table is totally the best one now.”

Iris laughs and sits back in her chair, regarding him with an amused look on her face. “Okay, Barry Allen, what are you up to?”

But he just shrugs, still smiling. “I’m not up to anything, Iris. I’m just having dinner with you.”

They carry on looking at the menu, Iris finally deciding on a starter but nothing else, since she still feels bad about making him pay for everything. “Look, I have pretty much said I want everything on this menu, apart from the stuff with the boiled cabbage.”

“Okay, let’s just do one at a time,” he suggests.

“Great, and let’s get some more free bread, because I think I’m in love, I – oh, hang on.” She looks at her phone. “Okay, I told your sister to only call in emergencies; I have to take to this. Will you order for me?”

“Sure,” he says easily, and she walks off to the bathroom. Not five seconds later, a waiter appears with a notepad. “What would you like, monsieur?”

“I’ll have the bagna cauda, please,” he replies.

“Mm, and your wife?”

“Oh, she's not my wife, she's just my girlfriend. Well, my girl - she's a friend, who's a girl, who I'm not dating, yet, because we haven't started - I mean, I've been thinking about it, I have for a while, and I kind of hoped she was too, so eventually I thought we should stop thinking... and start...doing..." Barry trails off at the waiter's expression. "She'll have the parmesan and tomato soup with gnocchi."

“Your sister,” Iris says as she sits back down after the waiter has walked off, “wanted to know how many times we can write off takeout as a business expense before the accountant writes me a letter.”

“So, not an emergency?”

“Kind of an emergency, depending on how much you eat. Hey, is it me or is that waiter a little weird?”

Barry sips his wine. “What do you mean?”

“I walked past him and he just went ‘good luck’. Are we cutting his tip in half, or what?”

“Nah, let’s just leave him be. How are Freddie and Olivia doing, by the way?”

“Okay, I think.” She laughs. “I never know with those guys. Freddie is still carrying that ring around, waiting for the right time, but I don’t know. There’s a magical maniac trying to kill them this year. Next year, it’ll be something else.”

He gives her a curious look. “And you don’t think they’ll last?”

“No, it’s not that. I just keep telling him there’s never going to be a ‘right’ time. There’s only how you feel in the moment.”

He nods, seeming to decide something. “Iris, I-”

“Tyler!” Iris grins when she sees their friend coming up behind Barry. He grins back and hugs them both. “It’s so good to see you!”

“Yeah, thanks for the hookup,” Barry adds. “This place is great.” Tyler gives a modest shrug.

“Yeah, you only become the best if you learn from the best, as much I miss getting a certain pint-sized CSI her million coffees.”

“Okay, I feel like the two of you are blowing this way out of proportion.”

“Iris, you were kind of a legend amongst us busboys,” Barry tells her. Tyler nods.

“Yeah, there was a bet to see how much you could drink, and you always just kept going.”

“Really? God, I hope that was the only bet about me.”

“Well, there was the one about how long it would take you two to-”

“Hey, Tyler,” Barry interrupts. “Didn’t you say the risotto was good?”

“Y-Yeah,” he says quickly. “Really good. Actually, the whole menu today looks good. Especially the duck, it’s the chef’s special.”

“Did someone we know make that?” Iris asks, and Tyler puffs up his jacket a little.

“I may have had a little hand in it,” he says proudly. “It’ was really great to see you guys, okay? We’ll have to have dinner or something. But, like, real Italian food. Like pizza hut.”

“Dude, don’t let the snooty maître d hear you say that,” Barry laughs, and he fist-bumps Barry and walks off. Iris smiles fondly after him.

“I miss him. Nobody makes my coffee like you two anymore. I had to train the new barista.”

“How hard is it to get an Americano with an extra shot right?”

“It’s not just that! There’s my added foam, the coffee art, and the cinnamon dust. Like, what’s the point if none of that is right?”

“Ah,” he says seriously. “The cinnamon, I forgot about that.”

“Barry.”

He moves a little out of the way as someone delivers their food. “Look, I can teach you to make that yourself. I have that fancy coffeemaker you made me buy for my apartment.”

Iris waves her wine glass. “Please, you love that thing. And your apartment is gorgeous, admit it.”

“It’s nice.”

“Is it that hard to admit that you need me?”

“No,” he replies. “I’ll always need you. Uh,” he adds, “your soup might get cold.”

They eat their starter in between their conversation, getting lost in each other’s company in the way that they’ve done since they were kids. Iris’ soup is delicious, especially with the free bread, so much so that she decides she only wants one starter, and Barry likes all the vegetables that come with the bagna cauda. But he mostly just enjoys having dinner with Iris.

“…so we spent the whole day just watching _Girlfriends_ ,” she finishes as the waiter takes her plate away. “But she’s doing good. Anything new with your parents?”

“No, not really – wait.” He frowns. “I think my father might have a crush on my mother. Is that weird?”

“No. Well, yeah, for you guys. God, we are never going to be normal, are we?”

“Not in this lifetime, apparently.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Okay, I guess,” he shrugs. “I mean, I’m not mad at him anymore. And if he makes her happy, why not?”

Iris reaches across the table to squeeze his hand. “Good, I’m glad. And I’m proud of you.”

Barry blushes, glancing at his hands. “Look, Iris-”

“Excuse me.”

Barry doesn’t know where the shy, small voice comes from, but then he looks around and is faced by a kid who can’t be older than ten. “Hey, kid, you okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” he replies quietly. “Are you Barry Allen?”

“That’s me.”

He thrusts a newspaper article at him, his face the colour of a beetroot. “I was wondering – could you, um, kind of…s-sign this for me, sir?”

Barry stares at him and Iris’ hands fly to her mouth. “Oh,” Barry says. “Oh, I…”

“Oh my God,” Iris squeals. “You don't have to call him 'sir'! You’re so adorable!”

“Thank you,” the little boy replies, and looks hopefully at Barry.

“Of course I’ll sign it,” Barry says, reaching into his pocket. “What’s your name?”

“Clay.”

“Okay, _Clay, read a lot, dream big, and never give up. Love, Barry_. He studies the article as he signs it. “Oh, you like Miss Miracle?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “But I like you more. I want to be a reporter when I grow up.”

Iris is still looking at him like he’s the most precious thing to grace the earth. “Do you want a picture with him, sweetie? He won’t mind.”

“Um. Um, if that’s okay…”

“Of course it’s okay! Barry, take a picture with him. Clay, do you have a phone?”

He hands it to her and Iris positions them (she actually straightens Barry’s shirt), before taking about a dozen pictures. “Thank you,” Clay says brightly, holding the paper like it’s the best thing in the world. “Of course,” Barry replies easily.

 _Hug him_.

_What?_

Hug _him, Barry_.

Barry gives him a hug goodbye and his smile gets even wider. “Well, that was…something,” Barry says when Clay leaves.

“It was _adorable_. Did you see his face?”

“Yeah, it was pretty cool. That’s never happened before. I mean, I’ve had people recognise me, but never had that.”

She frowns. “Really? Barry Allen?”

“Well, I’m okay.”

“Please, you are not. I actually use this photographic memory for good sometimes, and I’ve read every single one of your articles. You’re an incredible writer.”

He smiles. “Thanks, Iris.”

“You’re welcome,” she says simply. “Wait, I think our mains are here.”

“These waiters,” Barry laughs, “are about to see something really special.”

Eventually everyone knows about the table where the people with the apparently bottomless stomachs are sitting. Barry can barely restrain himself from laughing when each waiter brings a new dish and tries to see where they’re putting all their food. When they’re done, he’s fairly certain the one who takes away their last dish wants to applaud them.

“I hope dessert is that good,” Iris sighs contentedly. “Tyler’s doing well for himself, working here.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think the free dessert thing works like it does in Jitters.”

“We totally have to come back here,” Iris says idly. “If not just  for the dessert, but because the bathroom attendant fixed my hair.”

“We could…do that,” Barry says. Okay. Now or never. “Iris.”

“Barry,” she smiles in a mock-serious tone.

He laughs. “I have to tell you something.”

She gasps. “Barry Allen. Are you leaving me for Batgirl?”

“No, it’s…different than that. It’s about both of us.”

“Okay,” she says carefully. “Should I be scared?”

“No, it’s good. I think it’s good. Um.” He scoots forward in his chair. “Look, Iris, I’ve been through a lot, these past couple of years. With your coma and Patty and Calamity and my dad and my sister and…everything. And there were times – lots of times – when I thought I wouldn’t get through it. But I did. And I think the reason – the biggest reason anyway – is…is you.”

Iris smiles. “Well, being there for each other has always been a superpower of ours.”

“Right. But, um…W-When you told me how you felt about me at Christmas, I was so sure I knew what I wanted. I had someone, and I wanted us to keep being friends, like we always had. I didn’t want to lose you in that way. But I have thought about you, every single day, since you told me how you felt. And I keep thinking, with us being married in a future, and our doppelgangers being married, and even the Mindscape making me your lightning rod,” he laughs, “maybe…I don’t know, maybe we were meant to be together. It definitely feels that way.” He pauses, steeling himself.

“And I don’t care about your powers, or however dangerous it might be to be with you.” He swallows. “Because – because I would follow you, anywhere you wanted, however you wanted. I would be whatever you wanted me to be. Whatever you needed, for however long you needed it. I don’t care what’s going on in our lives or what could happen in the future, or even if you never save another person again.” Barry’s heart feels like it’s going to escape his chest cavity and run for the hills, and he has never been more terrified in his life, but he has to finish. “It may have taken me a while to figure it out, but you’ve always been the most important person in my life. Whenever I imagine myself in the future, you, Iris – you’re always right there with me. And I - I want a future with you.”

Barry looks at Iris, taking a breath to calm his nerves. About halfway through she stopped smiling and just kept staring at him, her face a mask of shock. Which is understandable, to be quite honest. He hadn’t known where all of that came from. When he stops, she seems to snap out of her shock and tears her eyes away from his. To his surprise, a single tear falls down her cheek, and she takes off her glasses because they’ve fogged up. He frowns. She doesn’t look sad, but she doesn’t exactly look happy, either. She’s taking several deep breaths, her hands on the table. “Iris?”

“I’m so-” her voice breaks and she swallows the words. “That’s a lot, Barry…”

He swallows again. “I-I know, but-”

“Excuse me, are you Barry Allen?”

This time it’s an older man in a suit. “I – yes,” he replies. He glances at Iris. “I’m sorry, we’re kind of in the middle of something-”

“I think it can wait,” he says grimly. He shows him his phone and Barry’s eyes widen. “What is this?”

“That’s Miss Miracle’s new sidekick getting her ass handed to her by some invisible thing that’s making cars crash.”

“We need to go,” Iris says urgently. “Barry, we need to go. _You need to call Miss Miracle_.”

By this point everyone is looking at their phone, all staring at the same footage. They leave their seats then and there, making their way into an alleyway. In seconds they’re in STAR Labs, Iris already running to the alcove to get her suit. “What happened?” Barry demands. “Why didn’t you call us?”

Chesca, who’s typing frantically at terminals. “Barry, we had no idea it was him – it looked like a traffic pile-up.”

“How’s she doing?” Iris calls.

“Okay, she’s evacuating,” Jesse replies. He shakes his head. “But this guy is operating on the assumption that he needs you dead. I don’t think he’s going to care about Malina.”

“I’m going to help. Where are they?”

“The Causeway.”

Iris nods. “Someone find Nora and tell her that I need the exits to Star and Coast City cordoned off, Wally needs to get that formula ready, and Henry or Eddie need to call Waller and let him know that we found another one of the people controlled by Colin.” Then looks at Barry and looks away just as quickly. He thinks he actually feels his heart snap. “I’ll be back.”

 

***

 _You’ve always been the most important_ -

“Chesca, which exit?” Iris demands. She flies low over the cars, but the Causeway is huge and half the lights are out. She can hear Chesca frantically typing.

“North!”

“Okay, tell me once you’ve got a visual!”

She still can’t find Malina, and it’s driving her nuts. Malina is strong and brave, but she’s still new at this, and she’s still seeing the little girl who she almost gave up her life for in that warehouse.

_-meant to be together-_

Iris grounds her teeth. That – she does not need that right now. Then she sighs in relief when she sees Malina, frantically evacuating people out of a pile-up that’s making Iris’ eyes water. “I’ve got her!”

She appears next to Malina as she sets down an elderly couple. “Hey, little miss,” she says breathlessly. “How are you finding it?”

“Okay,” she replies, and Iris puts a hand on her arm. “Deep breaths,” she says. “You’re doing fine. Did you see him?”

“No, not yet. I was just getting these people out.”

“Good girl. Keep going, I’ll get the people in the taller ones.”

“Don’t you have to be careful? The cars are all twisted up.”

“That’s what miracles are for. You good?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Iris nods and rises into the air. She hates pile-ups, simply because there’s a larger margin for error – she could seriously damage someone. Thankfully the police have cleared a space, so she has time to carefully lift each car and set it on the road so it doesn’t jostle anyone. She does it carefully, always ware that Peekaboo could show up at any moment and-

_-thought about you, every single day-_

“God _damn_ it,” she mutters. She’s trying not to think about that, about the expression on Barry’s face, made softer by candlelight and roses, what he was saying, the way he’d _looked_ at her, because there’s no way-

A bone-shattering scream rips her out of her thoughts, and she looks around at the cars to see whether one of the paramedics is hurting someone during the extraction. But then, out of the corner of her eye, she sees the dark matter smoke disappear, and Malina pinned to the floor by a car door. When Iris gets there, she’s crying and gasping with pain. “My – _ah_ ,” she breathes. “He hit my arm…

Iris kneels next to her, equal parts anger and dread. Malina’s arm is bent out of shape, bleeding onto the street. She spots Peekaboo’s mask, ripped in places, and stuffs it into her pocket. “Malina, your arm is broken,” Iris tells her, trying to keep her own voice from cracking. “I’m going to take you back to STAR Labs, okay?”

“O-Okay,” she sobs quietly, and Iris puts her hands on her body, closing her eyes. The first thing Iris hears when they make it to the elevators is Malina’s scream of pain. Iris curses and lowers her to the floor, looking around. “JESSE! _JESSE_!”

He runs out of the Cortex, closely followed by Chesca and Linda. Malina starts shaking as Iris kneels next to her. “Jesse, get a gurney,” she orders, “and tell Wally we need my painkillers. Vibe.”

Chesca pales at the use of her superhero name as Jesse runs back to the medical room. “Yes?”

“This is Peekaboo’s mask. When I go back out there, I need you to vibe his location, okay? Linda, you’re going to have to assist Wally and Jesse. You okay with that?”

“I’m on it.”

Iris turns back to Malina, who’s trying to say something. “I’m s-sorry,” she sniffles. “I thought I was ready…”

And that – that starts Iris crying for the second time that night. “Don’t apologise,” she orders, wiping away her tears. “You did so good, Mal, you did _so good_.” She looks up. “Someone get Nora and Henry. And Eddie and-”

She hears Barry’s curse and then he’s next to her, covering the room in a few strides and kneeling next to her. “What happened?” he demands, his voice shaking.

“Peekaboo broke her arm,” Iris replies. “Where’s Nora?”

“She’s coming,” Barry says shakily. “Are they-”

“She’s going to be fine, Barry. Wally and Jesse will fix her.”

“OH MY GOD!” Nora screams, crashing out of the elevator, and Malina’s face crumples.

“M-Mom?” she whimpers, and Nora stops, her face frozen.

“Nora,” Iris says forcefully. “ _Nora._ She’s going into surgery. You all need to be there to hold her hand.”

Right at that moment, Wally and Jesse come out with gurney, and Iris carefully lifts her on to it. As they’re wheeling her off, she hears, “Iris.”

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to – the look on his face is enough. But she can’t take in what it means, what any of this means, because if she can’t concentrate, people will die. She looks away from him. “I’m sorry, Barry. I have to go.”

***

Peekaboo doesn’t go back to the scene of the pile-up, she finds. Chesca has to keep sending her to different locations, and by the time she’s caught up to him she’s been all over the city. “What the hell is he doing?” Iris mutters.

“I think Jesse’s right, I think he’s just attacking anything that looks like you. Malina _and_ you, so – _Clock Tower_!”

Iris teleports to the Tower on the other side of town, looking around for Peekaboo, and spots him looking over the city. He looks like he has no idea where he is. “Shawn,” Iris tries. “Shawn, you have to-”

He blinks away and Iris sighs. “Docks,” Chesca says, and Iris goes there next. He’s waiting for her, then, armed with a crowbar that she narrowly misses. “Shawn, please, I don’t want to hurt you!”

“Really? Because I want to hurt you.”

“ _Why_?”

He pauses, rattled. “I – because I have to.”

“Why, Shawn?” she says. She walks towards him slowly. “I know what he did to you. I know you have to be confused, and scared, and-”

The crowbar cracks across her head and she sees stars before she hits the floor, and feels blood trickling on her forehead. From very far away, she hears Chesca call her name. He stands over her, half-confused, half-angry, and Iris blinks. “Stop,” she whispers quietly. “S..Stop.”

But he doesn’t, and Iris is too disoriented to move. She has to make him stop. “Stop. S… _ow_ … _Stop_.”

Shawn falters. A cold feeling seems to burst forth from Iris’ gut. “ _Stop_.”

Shawn freezes. Iris lies back, relieved, for exactly two seconds, before she passes out.

***

“…she’s waking up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why else would she be making that face?”

“Honestly, Jesse-”

Iris sits up quickly and immediately regrets it. The lights are too bright, it’s warm, and her head hurts. Someone helps her lie back, and as the faces come into focus, she recognises that it’s Linda. “What happened?” Iris murmurs. “Where’s Shawn?”

“Waller has him,” Linda explains. “Took him to be depowered and be reunited with his family.”

Iris blinks. “W-What? How did we get down? I fainted.”

Everyone shares a look. “I think,” Dr. Wells says, a little proudly, “we should thank Vibe for that.”

“What?”

“Vibe opened a portal to the roof and got you guys back here before the police got there. Pretty cool.”

“Aw, Chess, I’m sorry I missed it.”

“Iris, you passed out from blood loss,” she points out. “Besides, I’m sure there’ll be more opportunities for you to see me doing cool shit.”

“Great, that’s-”

_I want a future with you._

_Barry_.

“Great. Um, where’s Malina?”

“Oh, she’s at home,” Jesse says. “We set her arm and it healed quickly. Nora and Henry are looking after her, and Wally’s on-call.”

“Okay. Where’s Barry?”

Everyone looks at each other. “I have no idea,” Dr. Wells admits. “When he called to say Malina was okay, he said he was going to the precinct. But then he made a statement from the paper.”

Iris nods slowly and starts to get out of bed. “What are you doing?” Jesse demands.

“I need to talk to Barry.”

“Iris, you were hit in the head with a crowbar. You’re not going anywhere until I’ve checked you’re not bleeding in your brain.”

“But-”

“ _No buts_ ,” a voice says. Her mother pushes past everyone and hugs her, and Iris hugs her back tightly. “You sit down and you let these people check on you, and then you tell me how on earth you let yourself get hit in the head with a crowbar.”

***

 _…thankfully, Miss Miracle was able to subue the threat. While her newest companion suffered injuries, I am told that she will make a full recovery, and the metahuman in question will be receiving treatment_.

Barry looks over it once more and presses publish, before standing up and stretching. He has no idea when it got so late, but the past few hours went so quickly he’s not surprised. The main thing is that Malina is okay – she healed as soon as they set her arm, and by morning she should be fine. Henry’s still staying in the house. Barry and Eddie offered to stay too, but Malina said she was okay. “You should go check on Iris,” she’d insisted.

“She’s busy,” he’d said, trying to ignore the hollow feeling in his stomach. “I’ll call her later.”

It’s still there, that feeling like he’s about to be sick, and that he wants to see Iris more than anything in the world, and also that he never wants to see her again, which is why despite what he told Malina, there are twelve missed calls and three voicemails from Iris on his phone. He can’t get her face out of his head, the confusion and shock when he told her how he felt about her. How she avoided looking at him when she came back.

 _I’m sorry, Barry_.

Every time they say they love each other, they have to apologise afterwards.

Barry glances at his phone again. There are text messages now – he caught his name a few times, and something that sounded a lot like a threat, but he’s not sure how he can face her. He has no idea how Iris faced him after Christmas, because this feels like having his heart cut out.

The doorbell rings and he gets up to answer it, still thinking. Maybe he can convince her he was kidding. Or that they can work around it. Or-

“Iris,” he splutters. Dread washes over him as she looks up at him. She’s changed out of her dress and into jeans and a sweater.

“Barry,” she says evenly. He has the urge to kiss her and run away, all at once.

“I – Iris, what the _hell_ happened to your head?”

He ushers her in, shutting the door behind her. “I got hit in the head with a crowbar,” Iris replies. Barry surges towards her.

“Jesus, are you okay?” He stops short of grasping her arms, and she notices. “Uh, sorry. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, Jesse did a CT scan.” She watches him carefully. She’s probably afraid he’s going to admit to being a supervillain next. He looks around, avoiding her eyes.

“I got a statement out for you,” he says. “So you don’t have to – worry about that.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you see Malina?”

“Yeah, I saw her just before I came here.”

“Oh.”

Iris sighs. “Barry, we need to talk.”

“I know.” He swallows. “I’m sorry, Iris.”

She blinks. “I – you’re what?”

“I just dumped all that on you, with no warning. And I was so focused on what I wanted that I wasn’t thinking about you, and whether you’d even feel the same way anymore. And – and it’s fine, that you don’t-”

“ _What_? Barry-”

“Really, Iris, it’s fine. It’s not your fault. I waited too long, and I was…late to loving you, and I took you for granted, and now you’re not in lo-” He cuts himself off, shaking his head, because he can’t even say that part. “You don’t have those feelings for me anymore. Which is your right, obviously. I guess I was too slow.”

Iris has taken several steps towards him. She looks like she hasn’t understood a word he said – maybe he should be clearer. “Barry, would you just-”

He presses on, because he won’t be able to start again if he stops. “You don’t have to do anything. Nothing has to change. I can – I promise I won’t make you uncomfortable or anything, I can – keep it in. I won’t make it weird, I swear. But if it’s weird already and you don’t want to be friends for a while, or ever again, you can have space-”

Iris is now standing right in front of him. “Barry. _Shut up_.”

And she yanks his shirt down and kisses him.

He’s in such a state of shock for a moment that he doesn’t respond, but then he realises that the love of his life is kissing him, and it’s not a dream, or a doppelganger, and he wakes right the hell up. He pulls her into him, moaning a little when her hands drift up to wrap around his neck, her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.  She tilts her head and traces his lips with her tongue, the sensation sending electricity across his body. She coaxes his mouth open and he brings one hand up to tilt her jaw up to him. They’re like that for God knows how long, until Barry breaks off, needing air and to hear one thing.

“Iris,” he breathes.

“Yes?”

“Do you – um. Do you still love me?”

Iris actually rolls her eyes, stepping away from him so she can rub her temples. “Barry Allen, you have got to be the biggest doofus on all fifty-two earths, parallel timelines and all, of course I’m still in love with you. You think I can just turn off these feelings? And that’s another thing, I-”

Instead of letting her finish, he just grabs her and kisses her again, cutting off her words. Iris threads her fingers through his hair and sucks on his bottom lip, making him moan and push her into his counter. She lets out a soft sigh into his mouth when her back hits the edge, and he curls one of his hands into her shirt. “How,” he breaths into her mouth, making her shiver, “ _how_ did I ever forget this?”

“You know what, Bar?” she says, between kisses. “I am totally fine with you needing a reminder once in a while.”

***

“I took you to dinner, Iris.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“It totally counts!”

Iris twists in Barry’s lap. “It doesn’t when you’ve been getting dinner together for over a decade.”

“There were roses on the table!”

“Barry, we’ve been best friends for years. We slept in the same bed. We went on movie dates all the time. We danced at Prom together. Boundaries is not a thing that we do.”

“You really didn’t notice I was acting differently?”

“A little, but you kept denying everything,” she points out. “And you’re always touchy.”

“Not that touchy.”

“Hey, Iris, let me play with your hair and your glasses and tickle you and pick you up and’-”

“Alright, point taken. Well, I keep calling you pretty.” She waves a hand.

“You always did that just to cheer me up. It kind of lost its meaning, like…well, your best friend telling you that you’re pretty.”

“Well, you’re gorgeous,” he says simply. “And I mean it. Now, is our food close?”

Iris turns back to the computer screen. The kissing got interrupted when Iris’ stomach let out the most unladylike noise she’s ever made in her life and, realising that they never actually finished their dinner, they reluctantly let go of each other and decided to get takeout. “Mm, kinda. Ten minutes.”

She settles back against Barry and he wraps his arms around her, and they both listen absently to the music coming from Barry’s iPod. “Sorry I was so…” Iris struggles for the words. “When you told me. I was just surprised; I hadn't seen it coming. You didn’t act that different, when I asked you blew it off, and I kind of just thought you were stressed at work.”

“Iris, something tells me we’re the last to know when it comes to how we act with each other.” He pauses. “I do have a question, though.”

“Sure, what?”

“How come you never… told me about the kiss? If you were still had feelings for me?”

“Oh.” Iris twists her fingers. “Well, it – the day you found out I was Miss Miracle, you were so mad at me. And you had every right to be, of course. So I couldn’t tell you then. But I just started to think it wasn’t going to happen.”

“Because of Patty?”

“Partly. I mean…the day I was going to tell you the first time, I got struck by lightning. Then when I did tell you, you moved in with her. Then we kissed and you literally got hit by a memory-wiping gun. I don’t know, Bar, I thought the universe was sending a pretty clear message.”

She looks down at her hands, and then Barry tilts her chin up to look at him. And she’s as lost in his eyes as she was that very first day. “How’s this for a message?”

He brushes her mouth against hers, lightly, teasingly, like a promise of what’s to come. Iris leans forward and kisses him properly, slipping her tongue into his mouth. She threads her fingers into his hair, and feels the low growl in his throat. Without a word, he lifts her up, shoves his laptop away, and places her on the counter, standing between her legs so they’re level and she can kiss him properly.

Iris fists her hands in his shirt and he puts his hands on her hips, squeezing them and pulling her flush against him. This kiss is all tongues and teeth, his breath hot against her mouth. When the doorbell rings, it’s like they’ve been hit by an electric shock. “Um,” Barry says intelligently. He licks his lips, swollen from the kissing, and clears his throat. “Food.”

“Right.” He starts to move away but she pulls him back to kiss him again. Only this time she lingers, and bites on his bottom lip. He lets out a low whine when she lets go and seems reluctant to let go of her. While he gets the food, she clears all the stuff away so they can eat. Then she texts everyone that she’s fine, because she did have to get stitches from the attack and they’re all still worried.

“Okay, food,” Barry says, dumping them on the table. “Although how you’re still hungry…”

“I’m a miracle, Barry Allen.”

He doesn’t reply, and she looks over him. His head is tilted to one side. “I know this song.”

_Unforgettable, that’s what you are_

_Unforgettable though near or far_

Barry starts moving his feet. “You do a waltz to this, right?”

Iris giggles. “No, Barry. This is Unforgettable, Nat King Cole.”

“So a tango?”

“Barry!”

He’s still trying to dance to the song. “Wait, is it a wango?”

“That is the one bad thing about that movie,” Iris grumbles. “There is no such thing as cross between a waltz and a tango.” Iris walks up to him and takes his hands. “It’s nothing complicated. You just…move.”

“Oh,” Barry breathes quietly. They sway together, and Barry moves his hand down so it hovers near her waist, and then looks to her for permission. She places the hand there herself and rests her head on his chest.

_Unforgettable, in every way_

_And forever more, that’s how you’ll stay_

Barry pulls her closer to him and rests his cheek on her head, sighing contentedly.

_That’s why, darling, it’s incredible_

_That someone so incredible_

_Thanks that I am unforgettable, too_

_Unforgettable_

“I love you, Iris,” he tells her quietly. “I don’t know if I said that part already. But – but I do. More than you know.”

Iris’ heart soars. “No. But, um go ahead and keep saying it.”

_Unforgettable_

_In every way_

_And forever more_

_That's how you'll stay_

“I love you,” he whispers against her ear. “I love you,” he says into her hair. "I-"

Iris would gladly let him keep going, but she has to kiss him, so she stops him with her mouth before he says it again. This boy who loves her even when she thought it would never happen. Kiss him because he fixes her glasses and protects her from everything and makes her heart sing. And Barry kisses her back, the girl who’s always been the centre of his world, even when he didn’t know it, and makes him feel like he can do anything. And it’s not desperate in the face of a tsunami, and there are no doppelgangers, but it tastes like lightning for both of them.

_That's why, darling, it's incredible_

_That someone so unforgettable_

_Thinks that I am_

_Unforgettable, too_

They’ll have more, after they’ve eaten and for the rest of their lives, so this kiss might not be that important. But it tastes like lightning all the same, like electricity blasting through them. So this kiss isn’t panicked, or forgotten, but the most important thing for them?

It is unforgettable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hee.  
> Also, phew. I need a drink.  
> Lines from the next chapter:  
> Linda puts it down. "Barry, I know how much Iris means to you, and you want your first real date to go well, but don't you think this is a bit...much?"  
> Barry considers this as he looks at the list he gave her. "It's not that much, is it? I just want it to be special."  
> "Yeah, but Barry, this is a lot. I mean, the next thing you know you're going to tell me you're planning on getting a plane and writing her name in the sky." Barry doesn't say anything and Linda's eyes widen.  
> "Barry Allen, you are not."  
> "...it's a very - it's a SMALL plane."


	34. Scatterbrained and Lost in Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry Allen does The Most.  
> (Iris doesn't mind).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a monster, it's late, and I'm sorry.  
> TW: Iris gets hurt badly in this, but there's a happy ending!

Iris doesn’t quite believe it at first.

She wakes up the next day with a slight twinge of pain in her forehead and briefly cannot remember where she is or how she got here. But then she wakes, slowly, and comes back to herself, and her limbs wake up, and she realizes that she’s in her room in her mother’s house. She can hear her mother pottering around in the kitchen downstairs, and remembers that the only reason she let her go to check on Malina was because Jesse performed several CT scans on her, gave them both several doses of her painkillers to take home, and that she promised she’d be back soon.

But back from where?

Iris smells eggs, bacon and pancakes, and her stomach rumbles in anticipation. Her mother already promised, before she left, that she would call in to work to inform them that she had a mild concussion and would probably be in later in the afternoon. But there was something else, something she’s forgetting…

Iris swings her legs over the bed and gingerly places her feet on the ground, closing her eyes against the slight feeling of nausea. She knows that crowbar did a number on her, and even with her powers, it’ll probably take until that afternoon until she’s fully healed. She looks around, scratching her hair, and feels a scarf wrapped neatly around her head. So she must have been awake enough to do that, right? Iris frowns, about to go down to ask her mother what happened last night, when her gaze falls on a book on her bedside table. It jolts something in her, old and new. Old because she sees it on more occasions than she can count, on summer days in Nora’s garden with fingers thumbing eagerly through pages, on long train journeys while she looks through her scientific journals, and on rainy days when she’d had enough of the world, how they treated her and her mother, and he’d sung her to sleep and she was dozing, curled up on his chest as he read.

And new…new because he’d given it to her yesterday – not permanently, she’d insisted, though he promised that he didn’t mind. But _The Catcher in the Rye_ is his favourite book ever, and it’s the first edition version that she got him when she lost his original. But he was adamant about it, and she can barely manage to say no to he when he isn’t even trying, let alone when he makes her promise like this.

It comes back to Iris, then, as she opens up the hardback book to his favourite quote – ‘I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, but I mean it’ – and watches as three roses fall out, along with two thin sheets of absorbent paper. They’re still fragrant, red as rubies, and one of them is shorter than the others. She remembers now she’s supposed to wait a few weeks (they googled it), so she very carefully puts them back. She’ll find a book of her own to put them in so she can return the book.

Iris remembers it all now. Moonlight through blinds, his arms around her and Nat King Cole’s voice, and his green eyes bright and soft as he looked at her.

 _I love you, Iris_.

***

Iris stares at the three roses in surprise as Barry carefully lays them on the coffee table. Someone – probably him, actually – wrapped them in twine so they’re all bunched up together. She puts down the tea she made and looks up at him. “Barry, how did you get these?”

He smiles. “Well, after I left mom’s, I called the restaurant to get my card back, since reporters can’t exactly have the city’s restaurants mad at them, and Tyler had saved them.”

“ _Tyler_ saved them? Why?”

“Because, Iris,” he laughs, “when I called him to ask for restaurant recommendations and mentioned that I was taking you, he went ‘Oh, you guys are finally dating?’ He figured us out years ago.”

“Oh.” Iris sits back on the sofa. “Well, that’s…something.”

“Right. Anyway, he thought it just got interrupted by Miss Miracle stuff, and that I would want to keep them. And I want to give them to you – I know it wasn’t a real date,” he adds quickly, “and I want us to go on a real one, but, um, it was special, so I thought-”

“I want to keep them, Barry,” she assures him. He grins, his face a mixture of happiness and relief, and Iris stares at him and marvels. He’s told her that he loves her but she still cannot believe that she’s responsible for making him this happy, for putting that look on his face. “Just like I want to keep you.”

He looks up at her through his eyelashes, an adorably bashful smile on his face. “Yeah?”

Iris leans forward and presses a sweet kiss to his mouth, her palm cupping his neck. “Yeah,” she whispers.

“’Kay,” he breathes, and Iris really is going to have to get used to this – that awed look in his eyes, the tenderness in his voice when he talks to her, his pulse beating rapidly under her fingers where she’s touching the skin of his neck.

Because Barry Allen is in love with her, and she affects him as much as he affects her.

“We should preserve them,” he says when she’s settled back on the couch with her tea again. “We’re supposed to stick them between absorbent pieces of paper and then put them in a heavy book, like a telephone directory or something.”

“People still use telephone directories?”

“Not me. But we can put it in a hardback until we find something. Hang on, let me get the paper.” Iris frowns as he heads over to his study.

“What, you just have absorbent paper lying around your apartment?”

“I do, actually,” he calls through the door. “Remember that pen you got me? It’s a fountain pen, so I have to use blotting paper when the ink gets everywhere. Plus I do this every year, remember?” He comes back out with the paper and some scissors, and they carefully measure and cut a big enough square for the flowers. Then they look around for a book.

“This’ll work,” Barry says, grabbing one from the table. Iris’ eyes widen.

“Barry, not _The Catcher in the Rye_ – you love that book!”

He shrugs, concentrating on getting the flowers in. “I love you more. Okay, done. Who says we need a flower press?”

Iris giggles but then feels a sharp pain in her head. “Hey, are you okay?” Barry asks when she clutches her head. He pulls her closer to him. “You want me to call someone? Wally, or-”

“No, I’m good,” she sighs. She pokes gingerly at the stitches. “Shawn really did a number on us. I know Jesse explained what was going on with him, but it doesn’t make the crowbar hurt any less.”

“But at least people know it wasn’t you that was doing all that stuff,” he points out. “I don’t have to write that article anymore.”

Iris bites her lip. “Actually, I think you should write it anyway.”

“You do?”

“Well, yeah. Maybe I didn’t go crazy or attack anyone, but your job is to report the truth. I’ve always been really proud of you for that, and the truth is that we have to call out the people who protect us, because they have the power to change our lives, whether it’s me, or Olivia Queen, or the President. You don’t have to make it like you hate me, or whatever, but still. You know how much people love your writing and trust you to report on things like this. I think you could pull it off, Barry Allen, Ace Reporter. Just don’t leave me for Superwoman.”

“Well I don’t think you have to worry about that, you’re way cuter than – shit!”

“Cuter than shit?” Iris repeats. “I mean, I guess…”

“No, I – hold on.” He starts typing rapidly at his computer. “So, remember when you had that idea, about meeting Superwoman?”

“I remember mentioning it to you, and you spacing out and then running out of my apartment like you were being chased.”

Barry laughs. “Sorry about that. I wanted it to be a surprise, and I wasn’t sure whether it would work.”

Iris sips her tea. “You wanted what to be a surprise?”

“So, um, I sort of called Clark Kent.”

“You did?” Iris grins at him. “Finally! What did he say?”

“Well, I wanted to see whether Superwoman would want to meet you and start that Justice League thing. And he promised to talk to her and get back to me, and this morning he emailed me back…”

Iris watches in disbelief as Barry opens up his email and shows it to her. It’s right there in black and white:

 _From:_ [ _CKent@dailyplanet.org_ ](mailto:CKent@dailyplanet.org)

_To:_ [ _BHAllen@centralcitypn.com_ ](mailto:BHAllen@centralcitypn.com)

_Hi Barry,_

_So I finally talked to the Lady of Steel (sorry for the delay, I’m sure you saw the news), and she thinks teaming up with Miss Miracle is a great idea. She’s actually been thinking about something like for a while, so she’s looking forward to it. Any time you guys are in Metropolis, or the Golden Grace decides to flash over, give me a call. She’s always wanted to meet her anyway._

_Clark_

_P.S. Can my girlfriend have an autograph? Lois really loves Miss Miracle._

Iris stares in disbelief as she reads the words over and over again. It’s genuine, she knows – she recognises the domain address for The Daily Planet, and she can see the little photo of Clark that comes up when you hover over his name. She looks up at Barry. “S-Superwoman. Superwoman wants to meet _me_?”

“Yeah!” he says excitedly. “There’s more stuff, I think – he messages me sometimes and she really likes your idea of making sure that there’s different ways of keeping someone from causing trouble if they’re whammied like you were, for example. And you guys could do more stuff together, because apparently, she’s realising she can’t do everything herself. So, I was thinking, since we’re both, uh – since we’re going to see Hamilton soon, and it’s right next to Metropolis, we can go then?”

Iris takes a deep breath. She shouldn’t be surprised, because she has been in love with this boy since the first time she saw him, and he has spent their whole lives proving exactly why she should, but still. “Barry, I can’t…you did all this for me?”

“Well, I’m just your social media manager, remember?” he jokes. “You’re the one who has to do all the work, Miss Miracle.”

Iris laughs and he glances down at his hands briefly, blushing a little. “Besides, I already told you, Iris. I’d do anything for you.”

And Iris kisses him again, she has to, and it’s a while before they remember anything about Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Superwoman, or Hamilton.

***

Iris puts down the roses when she hears her mother knock on the door, and her stomach rumbles when she sees a tray piled high with pancakes, bacon and eggs. There’s also a large pile of toast that’s making her mouth melt because of the smelling of melting butter. “Welcome back to the world, sleeping beauty,” she says, setting the tray down on her bedside table. Iris crawls back into bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she admits. “My head hurts a little, but I’m okay.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’ve put some painkillers with your food – Jesse told me you had to take a few. He also told me not to let you out of bed, you’re not on duty again until he says so, and no working from home. You can watch TV and eat.”

“Usually,” Iris says idly, picking up a piece of toast, “I hate when that man tells me what to do, but sometimes he knows what he’s talking about.”

Her mother stirs sugar into her tea. “He also wants you and Malina to go to STAR Labs so he and Wally can do a check-up on you.”

“Right,” Iris nods. “That’s a good idea. I was going to call Malina myself, actually, but I can’t find my cell. Have you seen it?”

Her mother’s mouth twitches before she breaks into an amused smile. “Ah. Well, I wanted to talk to you about that, actually. Because we got a lot of messages on the landline today, and I think you might want to hear some of them.”

She pulls the phone out of her pocket and places it on her bedside table, pressing the button for messages and putting it on speakerphone. Iris’ heart jumps when she realises it’s Barry. “ _Hi_ ,” he says. “ _So, um, Iris, you kind of forgot your cellphone in my apartment last night. It’s not a big deal, obviously, it’s just that Jesse wants you and Mal to come to STAR Labs tomorrow so he and Wally can look at your injuries. And Waller wants to know whether you’re okay after everything and he wants to discuss Vibe. And I think Linda says you still have – crap. Crap. I shouldn’t be reading your messages, should I?_ ” he asks frantically. Her mother presses her lips together and Iris puts a hand over her mouth. “ _Sorry, sorry, I’ll – you can just look at them when I give you the phone. Which – I was thinking I could come to the house and walk you over? If you wanted? Or we could drive, if you’re still feeling weird. So just text me…on a cell that you don’t have. Ha. Right. I’ll swing by around lunch and see if you’re there. If you’re not, I’ll just meet you at STAR Labs. Anyway, I hope you feel better, and that you got a good night’s sleep, and stuff. I think that was everything – oh_! _I love you. See you later._ ”

The message cuts off and Iris opens her mouth, but her mother stops her and presses the button again. This time, Barry sounds a little embarrassed. “ _Hi, Francine_ ,” he begins. “ _I realise now that Iris might still be sleeping, and I’ve just left this really long message on your machine after calling it for five minutes, so if you could just tell her what I said? You can leave out the stuff about her messages. Or – you know, just play it for her. That could work too. Thank you_.”

Iris’s eyes are starting to water, but her mother presses the button again. “ _It’s Barry, by the way_ ,” he says without preamble. “ _Just in case you – yeah. I’ll give you your cell when I see you. Um, I love you_. _Bye_.”

“Barry always was very sweet to you,” her mother smiles, amused. “But maybe you should tell him that we have caller I.D.” Iris doesn’t even try to hide the grin on her face.

“Yeah. So, um, that happened.”

“Yes, Iris, I thought something was up when you were bleeding from the head after being hit by a crowbar and you kept insisting that you had to go and see him. I have to say, I’m glad he finally told you.”

Iris frowns. “Wait, is that why you spent so long helping me pick a dress last night? You knew too?”

“I wanted you to look nice! Besides, look how happy you are. So you guys are official now?”

Iris frowns briefly, fork halfway to her mouth. Most couples dated and then kissed and then fell in love and had the talk about being official somewhere in the middle of all that. Barry and Iris have been subconsciously dating for years, fell in love somewhere along the way, and have kissed themselves _and_ several versions of each other. Well, she has. “I’m not sure.” Her mother laughs.

“I’m sure the two of you spent all night talking about everything and got distracted. You always were lost in own world when it came to each other. But you are happy, right?”

Iris smiles helplessly. “Yeah, mom. I’m really happy.”

“Good. If Barry knows what’s good for him, he will keep it that way. Now, I have to get to work, but I’ll meet you at STAR Labs for the checkup. Unless you want me to stay and look after you? I can drive you myself.”

But Iris shakes her head. “No, I’ll be okay. I’m just going to lay here and catch up on Empire until I have to leave.”

Her mother gives her a knowing smile. “Alright. Tell Barry I said hello.”

Iris promises to call her mother if anything goes wrong, but she’s used to injuries like this. She finishes her breakfast and gets ready, impatiently waiting for lunchtime to arrive and for Barry to show up. She _would_ walk to STAR Labs herself, but her head still hurts a little and it’s not exactly responsible to go off by herself with a head injury with no way to contact anyone if anything happened. And, okay, she admits it.

She just wants to see him again.

Iris practically skips down the stairs when she hears the doorbell ring, checks herself in the mirror in the hall once more, and then opens the door. Her heart melts when she sees him, at the way his face lights up when she opens the door. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she smiles back. He blinks at her, and then pulls something out of his pocket.

“I – here’s your cell,” he says quickly, handing it to her. “Sorry about – did you get my message? Or – uh, messages?”

“I did,” she grins. “And I did get a good night’s sleep, thank you.”

“Right, and how’s your head?” Barry steps forward to examine the stitches on her forehead, and she gasps softly when his hand gently tilts her face so he can see it. She can’t take her eyes from his even though he’s not looking at her – he’s carefully searching her forehead. “Does it hurt?”

“Um. Not…really.”

His eyes fall back to hers, green and amber and gold in the morning sun, and the studious frown he had drops off as he gazes at her. She feels her own breath catch as a small smile spreads slowly across his face. “Hi,” he whispers.

“Hi,” she breathes. His other hand comes up to cup her cheek so he’s cradling her face, and he brings his head down and she stretches up so she can kiss him. She doesn’t know why she’s expecting it to be less intense than last night, when he was kissing her like he needed her to breathe, but she should know better by now that Barry Allen is always going to leave her breathless. It’s not just that he’s kissing her, it’s the _way_ he kisses her. It starts off steady, unhurried, spreading a warm feeling through her like sunshine on her skin as it rises in the morning. She’s still on earth. But then his hands move down to her waist and he gathers her against him, and she twines her hands around his neck and she is never, _ever_ coming back down to earth.

And she is never letting anyone take this boy away from her, either.

Iris is certain they would have stayed like that for the rest of the afternoon, giving the mailman that usually comes at this time a wonderful show, but then Iris feels something vibrate underneath her fingers, and for a second she completely forgets what it is. “What is that?” Barry murmurs, and Iris makes an irritated noise when she realises what’s making that sound.

“My cell,” she replies. She lets go of him, reluctantly, though he keeps his arms on her waist. “Sorry – hello? What, Jesse? Dude, stop yelling, I  - yes, I’m on my way. Yes, I have an idea of the long-term effects of a traumatic injury and what they can do to the body, I have been struck by lightning _twice_.”

Jesse pauses in his growling and his tone turns sincere. “Are you feeling well enough to come? Do you want me to come get you?”

“No, I’m good.” She glances at Barry. “I’ve…got someone.”

“Oh. _Oh_. Whatever, tell Barry I said hi, just get both your asses over here because I have work to do.”

He hangs up without another word and Barry laughs. “He sounded his usual angelic self.”

“He was,” Iris replies, stepping away from him to turn on the security alarm and lock the door. They head down the steps and onto the street. “Thanks for my statement, by the way. I was too out of it to think about anything smart.”

“No problem. Have you heard anything else from Shawn?”

“Not yet, I need to call Waller after Jesse’s done. Have work called you?”

Barry explains that there’s a meeting this afternoon about it, because he’s already pitched the article with a twist, and Iris listens. As they walk and talk, she starts to feel self-conscious. She wants to hold his hand (well, if she’s honest, she wants him to figure it out himself), but maybe she should just go for it? What if he thinks it’s weird? But then the way he was kissing her, not to mention that whole pushing her body into the counter thing…But what if-

Iris breaks off her thoughts as Barry, without interrupting the flow of conversation, reaches down to take her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. He grins down at her and she smiles shyly back, and they continue their conversation as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like they’ve always been on their way to this. They get to STAR Labs and Iris swipes her keycard so they’re let in through the lobby. “Hey, remember when we had to come here for the Particle Accelerator turning on?” he asks.

“Yeah, it always looked so different when it was empty,” Iris muses. “I guess I’m supposed to do something with it, but I’m not sure. Plus there’s that hangar out in Ferris Airfield.”

“How much land did Dr. Wells get with this place?” Barry asks. Iris shrugs.

“A lot. There’s this place, the Hangar Hall – even though we don’t own any planes, as far as I know – and another facility in Maryland that I really have to go and look at.”

Barry squeezes her hand as they make their way down the elevator. “Look at you, owning scientific facilities all over the country.”

“Yeah, more tax returns for me to file,” she mutters, and Barry nudges her.

“But it must be kind of fun, admit it-”

 “Well, it’s about time!”

Barry’s interrupted by the sound of cheering and Iris jumps. Chesca is grinning after her exclamation, and they both frown at everyone who’s gathered around the room. “What are you all smiling at?” Iris asks suspiciously. “And what are you all doing here?”

Chesca, Eddie, Malina, Henry, Nora, Wally, Linda, Jesse, Dr. Wells and her mother are all gathered in the Cortex, smiling at them. “Well, _I_ work here,” Jesse points out. “And so does Chesca. Malina has a doctor’s appointment.”

“And I’m here because my daughter got herself hit in the head with a crowbar and we need to see if this is going to give her superpowers too,” her mother replies sardonically. Iris turns to the Allens and Eddie. “We’re here for moral support,” Eddie says quickly. “Malina wanted us to come!”

Malina, who isn’t wearing her sling, nods. “Yeah, totally.” Iris narrows her eyes before turning to Linda.

“And you?” Linda just snorts.

“Please, I don’t need an excuse.” Then she points at their entwined hands. “I have been waiting for this since that dinner last year.”

Barry frowns, sharing a look with Iris. “What dinner?”

“Oh, come on,” Chesca says. “With Patty and Scott? The two of you were acting so _married_ , it was embarrassing. Even Colin thought it was funny, and he’s a psycho.”

“I almost felt bad for Patty,” Nora muses. “But she and her mother tried to shoot me, I’m over it now.”

“I can’t believe Thalia Thawne just worked for the police,” Malina mutters, and Wally laughs from where he’s sitting at the terminal.

“Oh yeah. She always did freak me out, she was too damn _perky_. It’s always the perky ones. I thought she was going to murder you at that table, Iris.”

Iris still looks confused. “But why? We weren’t doing anything weird.”

“See!” Chesca points triumphantly. “Totally, totally oblivious. You know who I did feel bad for, though? Scott.”

“Poor guy,” Linda says. “But he won the bet, I think Freddie owes him fifty.”

“Seriously? I didn’t know Freddie bet against Scott.”

“Well, Freddie said they’d get together, no drama, but Scott was at the dinner, so-”

“Damn, that means I owe him too,” Eddie says. “But I think Olivia owes me, she thought they’d wait-”

“Hold on,” Barry interjects as everyone devolves into their own conversations. “What bet? What are you all talking about?”

“Nothing,” Chesca says quickly. She gives Wally a look, who presses something on the terminal. Iris advances on him.

“Wally?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Wally.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“ _Wallace_.”

“Linda made me do it!” he says, pointing, and she gasps.

“That is so not true, it was Chesca’s!”

“ _Et tu, Brute_?” Chesca demands. Nora chuckles.

“Actually, it was mine.” Barry stares at her.

“Mom, you made bets on us getting together?”

“Well, mine and Dr. Wells’. And Francine’s.”

Iris gasps. “Dr. Wells! _Mom_!”

“What?” she laughs. “Oh, honey, it was just harmless fun.”

Iris points at the screen. “Mom, there’s a spreadsheet!”

“That was my idea,” Dr. Wells admits. “We thought it prudent, given how many bets there were and how many people were involved.”

Barry looks around at them. “How many bets were there?”

“And more people bet than just you guys?” Iris adds. Henry clears his throat.

“Well, we were talking about it in Jitters. And your friend Tyler said he’d had a bet for years about you two, but he said you wouldn’t get together until Patty left.”

“And Olivia bet that it would take you two way longer than this, but she _did_ give you by the time you were both thirty,” Chesca adds. “And Jay-”

“ _Jay_? She’s on a whole other earth!”

“She emails,” Chesca replies quietly, and Iris glares at everyone.

“I can’t believe you people. Well, except Jesse, he’s an ass,” she adds. He shrugs.

“This is true.”

“What did you bet?” Barry asks glumly.

“I bet that you would think up the most dramatic possible way of saying something to her and then start waxing lyrical about sunshine and love and happiness, but then you’d get interrupted because _everything_ the two of you do is always interrupted by something,” he replies blandly. “Or that you’d get tongue-tied and start rambling nervously at her.” Barry stares at him.

“You have a camera in my apartment, don’t you?”

“I was right. Ha.”

“And,” Chesca adds, “by my calculations, everyone owes everyone else, but Nora, Mama West, and Dr. Wells get the most. Malina, you almost got it, since you predicted they’d kiss on karaoke night, but-”

“Wait,” Iris interrupts, remembering something. “ _Wait_. Is that what you meant when you said that Barry loved me that night? You were trying to win this bet?”

“ _You told her_?” Barry repeats, though he’s blushing. Malina clears her throat.

“K-Kind of? I meant, you know, because you guys have always been best friends.”

Linda taps her chin. “You know, you might be disqualified for this – the rules clearly state that you’re not supposed to inform either party of-”

“THERE WERE RULES?” Iris and Barry demand together. Linda looks at Eddie.

“We may need a ruling on this.”

“Okay, I’ll call Olivia and Freddie.”

“We should probably get Captain Singh-”

“Okay!” Iris declares. She waves her hands around. “This? This is stopping right now. We’re checking Malina’s arm, and Jesse is checking my forehead, and then I’m going to work because if I’m at work I don’t have to think about the fact that I’d like to _murder_ you all.” Chesca opens her mouth to say something, but Iris’ glare shuts her up. Jesse, however, just grins.

“Great! Now we can do this and get back to work. Iris, Mrs. West, you can come into this medbay…”

Wally stands up and gestures to Malina. “Okay, little miss, let’s move it. There’s a kidney transplant with my name on it this afternoon.”

Iris follows Jesse, along with her mother and Dr. Wells, and sits down. “I want to make sure we’re administering these tests properly,” Dr. Wells explains. “You are miraculous, Iris, but you can understand why head injuries are worrisome to me.”

“There’s no sign of infection or swelling,” Jesse says to her and her mother as he examines her. He shines a light in her eyes. “Any dizziness or nausea?”

“Nope.”

“Anything you can’t remember? Any memory blanks?”

“I’m finding it hard pinpointing when my friends started taking bets on my love life-”

“Iris.”

“No, there’s nothing, I’m fine,” she replies. “My head hurts a little, but that should probably wear off soon.”

“It should,” he agrees. “But, Iris, I want you to take it easy from now on. After all the breaches, and training Malina, and all your regular duties, I don’t want you burning yourself out. A crowbar to the head is one thing, but this could have been much worse. Go home, let your mother baby you, take some days off.”

“I second that,” her mother adds.

Iris sighs. “Fine.”

“Really? That’s it? You’re not going to call me an ass and threaten to fire me and wonder why you let me join the team?”

She shrugs. “What’s the use? You do have a point.”

He peers at her. “Is this what happens when you’re all in love and happy? You start being nice to people?”

“You should try it some time.”

Jesse shudders. “Please, if it turns me into you and Barry staring at each other all moony-eyed all the time, count me out.”

“Ah, to be young and naïve,” her mother says fondly, and Dr. Wells just laughs.

“Stupid, too.”

“Hey!”

“Jesse, one day you will fall in love with someone and you’ll be happy to be sappy.”

“I hope not,” he mutters, and then they hear a bored voice.

“Guys, come _on_ ,” Malina calls. “My arm healed up hours ago and I have to get to class. Plus Barry wants to call a meeting.”

“What about?”

“Not sure, but he wants everyone to be there, and we should hurry because we all have to get to work.”

Jesse takes her stitches out, leaving her with her skin perfectly healed if a little sore, and they make their way back into the main room. “What’s the matter, Barry?” his mother asks.

“Well, since Malina was the first person on the scene last night, everyone’s wondering who she is,” he explains. “I’ve gotten about a million messages asking what her name is and where she comes from. So, I was thinking I need to do an interview with her like the ones I used to do for Iris, introducing her to the world.”

“Awesome!” Malina grins. Dr. Wells.

“That is a good idea, Barry,” she tells him. “Is there anything you need from us?”

“Yeah, actually. She needs a name.”

“A name?” Eddie repeats.

“Yeah, unless we’re all going to keep calling her ‘Miss Miracle’s sidekick’.”

“No!” Malina says. “No, let’s not do that.”

“I’m down with that,” Chesca agrees, ripping open a packet of Twizzlers. “Oh! Jesse doesn’t get a say.”

“Hey!” he exclaims. “I haven’t put anything in that jar for days, what’s this for?”

“Dude, you _suck_ at naming things,” Chesca replies.

“I do not.”

“Peekaboo,” Wally, Eddie and Linda say altogether. Jesse scowls at them and Malina shrugs.

“I don’t mind him having some input. He did save my life, after all.”

“Thank you, Malina,” he sniffs. “Nice to know someone appreciates me around here.”

“Alright,” Iris says, seeing that her team is about to descend into an argument. “How about everyone gets a veto on any suggestions, and Malina gets two vetoes because she’s going to be the one carrying the name around, after all.”

“We’re doing vetoes?” Nora asks.

“I had to walk around with the name ‘Blink’ for weeks, so yeah, we’re doing vetoes.”

“Hey!” Barry says indignantly. “I thought that was cute!”

“And I think _you’re_ cute,” she replies simply, “which is why I let it go on for so long.”

“Aw,” Chesca says. “Y’all are adorable. Hey, what about ‘Kid Miracle’?”

“That sounds like a cartoon character,” Francine points outs. “I actually think Iris made us watch that when she was a kid.”

“Baby Miracle?” Barry grins, pinching her cheeks. “Because you’re just so gosh-darn adorable.”

“I’m very aware that all of these names make me sound about four.” She gives Barry a dark look. “And if you pinch my cheeks again, I’m going to break _your_ arm.”

“Don’t break his arm, he’s my ride,” Linda says, and Barry frowns.

“Since when?”

“Since this one just got an emergency surgery and can’t take me to get coffee,” she says, pointing at Wally, who’s looking at his pager.

“I didn’t bring my car; we walked.”

Linda blinks and smiles. “Aw, you guys wanted to do the whole romantic walk with the hand-holding?”

Everyone smiles at that and Barry and Iris glance shyly at each other, but all Jesse says is, “You let a woman who was hit in the head with a crowbar yesterday night _walk_ here?”

“I think,” Francine says quickly, “that it’s high-time we all got to work. Thank you for everything, Jesse.”

“Yeah, thanks West,” Malina adds, fist-bumping Wally. She grabs her bag. “Anyone wanna learn about tort with me?”

“No, I have a meeting with Waller,” Eddie says. “Monthly report.” Iris snaps her fingers.

“That reminds me. Wally and Jesse, you guys need to go see Waller.”

“Why?” Jesse wants to know. “That man makes people disappear for fun, why do we need to see him?”

“Because there are only two medical doctors in the entire world who are authorised to help Malina or me if we’re ever in danger,” Iris points out. “I need the two of you to see Waller and teach his doctors your protocols.”

Jesse looks sceptical. “Do we really need to do that? I don’t trust any other doctor with the two of you apart from Wally.”

“Yes, because what if the two of you are busy and you can’t get to us in time? Or what if you decide to move on from the team, for whatever reason. Not that I’m saying I want that,” Iris adds quickly. “Though if betting pools on who we’re kissing are going to be a thing-”

“Iris.”

“Look, I’d just feel better if more than two doctors knew what was going on with us. It doesn’t have to be now, we can arrange a time with Waller, but I’d like it to be soon, okay?”

“Fine with me,” Wally shrugs. He taps Jesse on the shoulder. “Come on, it’ll be fun. We can spend a whole day telling secret agents what to do.”

“See?” Chesca points out. “Positivity.”

“Exactly,” Iris agrees. “Henry, would you mind setting it up? I think I’ve used up all my Amadeus Waller goodwill for the year.”

Henry agrees and everyone gets ready to leave. Barry walks up to Iris as she sits on one of the tables, looking over some research. “How was it?”

“Good as new,” she replies easily. She adjusts her glasses. “I’ve had much worse, after all. What are you up to now?”

“Well, apparently Linda and I are getting coffee-”

“Lunch,” Linda calls from across the room, “we’re getting lunch, I’m hungry.”

“I’m getting lunch with Linda,” he laughs. “You?”

“Lunch with my mom, and then work. Figure I’d at least try to make Captain Singh not want to kill me.”

Barry sits across from her, straddling the back of a chair. Even at this level, he’s still about her height. “Hey, so I had an idea.”

Iris raises her eyebrows. “Should I be scared? The last one kind of took me by surprise.”

“Ha ha,” he laughs sardonically. “Actually, I was thinking that we go on a date. A real one. Where we both know we’re on it.”

Iris tries to pretend that her heart isn’t racing at the thought of going on an actual date with him. “Oh. S-Sure, yeah, that sounds great. Where?”

“It’s a surprise. But I promise it’ll be fun,” he adds. “And we’re not going to get interrupted, I’ll make sure of it.”

“We’re not going to get interrupted?” Iris repeats. “What, are you taking me to Superwoman’s home planet?”

Barry grins. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it? So, Iris West, would you like to go on a date with me?”

“I would be honoured, Barry Allen.”

Barry nods, still grinning, and steps closer to her. “Okay, well, I’ll call you later. Or – you can come over, if you want. God, I suck at this, are there rules?”

“Don’t look at me, I have no idea,” she laughs.

“Well, actually, I just thought of one thing that I know we’re supposed to be doing.” He leans in to kiss her. “They’re all watching, aren’t they?” he murmurs. Iris’ eyes flicker around the room.

“And pretending not to.”

“Figures.”

Barry drops a sweet kiss on her mouth. “Well, at least they got something out of it. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And Chesca, who has been listening to their entire conversation, is delighted that Barry and Iris are apparently _that_ couple, because Diggle and Theo Queen both owe her fifty dollars.

***

Thankfully for everyone, the next few days pass uneventfully. Jesse and Wally are especially happy about this, since it means that Iris and Malina can both rest. Iris also asks Barry to put out a longer press release exonerating Shawn from what he did and putting the blame solely on Calamity, and Waller told Iris he’s making sure that Shawn gets help. She’s barely listening to him during their conference call, though – she has to meet Barry at her lab for lunch, and she’s been looking forward to it all day.

“God, that was tedious,” Iris yawns, shutting off the computer. “Also, did his voice get scarier?”

Chesca and Linda, who are sitting in the Cortex working on Chesca’s gloves, shrug. “Dude, he’s your boss,” Linda points out.

“Only technically,” Iris replies. She gets up, looking for her stuff. “Have any of you seen my cell? I need to-”

“Call Barry?” Chesca suggests. Iris shrugs.

“Look, the man of my dreams is in love with me, you can make fun of me all you want.”

Linda smiles. “I mean, you two are really cute. And it doesn’t hurt that you guys made me two hundred dollars.”

Iris lets out a breath through her nose. Once everything was squared away, Iris and Barry were not amused to learn that practically everyone, including Captain Singh, Martina Stein, and _Captain Cold_ had made bets on when they would get together. “Well, I’m glad I could be a source of amusement for you. Oh, speaking of which,” Iris adds, turning to them. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Iris, I think the purpose of a secret bet is that we don’t tell the subject of it,” Chesca replies wryly. Iris rolls her eyes.

“No, I mean about Barry. If you all saw that he had feelings for me, why didn’t you tell me about it? It’s not like you guys ever thought I got over him.”

Linda laughs. “Iris, you cannot be serious.”

“What are you talking about?”

It’s Chesca who answers, wheeling across the room on her computer chair. “Well, first of all, Barry is our friend and I wasn’t going to dime him out like that. But honestly, we hoped you would figure it out on your own.”

“How?” Iris demands incredulously. “He never told me anything!”

“He didn’t have to!” Chesca laughs. “ _Everyone_ could see it! Barry gets coffee with you, everyday, when you finish work. He switches shifts with people here – or takes extra ones – just so he can hang out with you. And you really haven’t noticed that every time there’s an emergency to do with you, Barry always gets here first?”

Iris blinks. “I – well, we always…The coffee…” Okay, maybe they _do_ get an awful lot of coffees together, but that was a thing way before her powers. She frowns, remembering. He does tend to hold her chair out for her, though. And pay for everything. And then walk her home afterwards. But that’s always been Barry, he’s always treated her like that. And the shifts – she always just assumed he was helping out the others who had things to do. But wait – no one apart from Linda, Wally and Nora have other obligations. And Barry _is_ always the first one here whenever something happens to her, unless it’s her mother. Iris sits down. “Seriously? How long?”

Linda laughs. “Iris, that boy has had ‘Property of Iris West’ rubber-stamped on his forehead since Christmas at the very at least. And yeah, maybe it’s been more obvious in the last few weeks, but his feelings definitely aren’t new. He’s always adored you – you should hear the way he talks about you when you’re not here. And see the way he looks at you when you are.”

Iris rubs her eyes behind her glasses and Chesca snorts. “See, I told you she had no idea. I was there from the lightning, so I have seen it _all_. I love you guys, but the two of you are the most oblivious people on the planet, and one of you is supposed to be a mind-reader.”

Linda plucks Iris’ cell from underneath a pile of papers. “But still, you guys are so meant to be it hurts. And I think with the shitty time you guys have had, you have some lost time to make up for.”

It’s this Iris is thinking as she waits for Barry in her lab at lunch. She’s never considered the possibility that Barry’s feelings had been inside him for longer than the last few weeks where he’d been looking at her oddly or acting shy around her all of a sudden. But then, she had been completely blindsided by Barry’s speech. Maybe she’s not the only one good at hiding her feelings.

Almost as if she senses him, Iris looks up just as Barry walks in, and she smiles at him, still not quite believing that he’s here to see her because he loves her. “Hey,” he says brightly, sitting across from her. He reaches across to give her a light kiss. “How was your conference call with Waller?”

“Okay,” she shrugs. She accepts the bag of food Barry gives her. “Henry organised that meeting with their agents and Wally and Eddie, so he’s happy about that. I haven’t told him about Superwoman, though.”

“Why not?” Barry asks. Iris shrugs.

“He doesn’t have to know everything. Plus, we haven’t decided on anything yet. The Justice is still just an idea that the Mindscape gave us.” She adjusts her glasses. “Besides, this is a thing that we came up with between the two of us. It hasn’t been like that since we worked together and you didn’t know who I was. I miss it.”

Barry raises his eyebrows. “You mean the part where you tell me what to do because you think I’m going to put myself in danger? Because you still do that.”

“Because you never listen!”

“You put yourself in danger all the time. And, if I recall, you seem to have a certain fondness for getting yourself struck by lightning, seeing that you’ve done it twice.”

“You cannot keep using that, it’s not fair.”

Barry grins. “All’s fair in love and superheroes, sunshine.”

“Jackass.”

“Nerd.”

Iris makes a face at him. “Oh, before I forget, what does Malina want to do for her birthday? I need to make sure everyone’s free.”

Barry thinks for a moment, chewing. “I think she just wants dinner and cake with everyone on the actual day. Henry’s going to barbecue a steak, I think.”

“I thought he wanted to make trout.”

“Mom said no.”

“Of course she did,” she laughs. “Well, I’m making some modifications to her suit for her birthday.”

“I thought that was Chesca’s job.”

“Hey, she’s not the only scientist on the team,” Iris points out. “I build things too, and I was thinking of changing up both of our suits, actually.”

“How?”

“It’s a surprise,” she admits. “In case I can’t make it work.” Barry sighs.

“At least you have something. Honestly, the only thing I can think of is actually giving her a name.”

“Oh, you saw the group chat?”

“I don’t know why we thought it was a good idea to open up suggestions to Team Arrow – ‘The Maroon Miracle’ is not cute.”

Iris laughs. “Honestly, I think it’s just because Olivia like having a ‘The’ in front of her name. But Chesca vetoed that one straight away – you know how she feels about colours in the name.”

Barry pauses. “I cancelled the flower order today.”

Iris nods slowly. “Right, of course. How did that feel?”

“Weird, honestly. It was…Doing that was the only way to remember her, kind of, but now he’s here and it’s like I’m mourning again. Because we _could_ have all those birthdays together.”

Barry looks down at his hands. Iris knows that, even though they’ve worked themselves into their new dynamic with his family, there are still moments where she knows Barry feels left out. Like when Eddie, Henry and Malina are reminiscing about a memory that they share, or when Barry realises that he’s missed another milestone. She reaches across the table and takes her hand in his. “Barry, you can’t dwell on that kind of stuff,” she tells him gently. “It’ll eat you up inside. Malina loves you, and so does Eddie, and so does Henry. They’re your family and you have them now, so you’re going to get the chance to make tons of memories with them.”

Barry nods. “Yeah, you’re right.” Then he brings his hand with hers in it up and presses his lips to it, closing his eyes briefly, which makes Iris melt a little. Okay, a lot. She gives him a helpless smile and he smiles back, and she recognises the look that Linda was talking about. Then his phone beeps and his frowns at it.

“What is it?” Iris asks.

“Some freak weather thing,” Barry explains. “Someone keeps messaging my blog about it. Apparently, there are storm clouds hanging over southside.”

“Storm clouds? It’s spring.”

“Exactly, which is why I was confused. He sent me a picture, actually, and I printed it out in case you guys could look into it.” Barry slides the picture out of his messenger bag and she takes it, holding it up to the window so she can study it. It’s a picture of a field, with storm clouds hovering over a barn, but… “This is weird,” Iris mutters. She steps closer to the window. “It’s a storm, but the clouds are _really_ low, and it’s so…localised. What did your source say?”

Barry comes to stand next to her, iPad in hand. “Apparently, he was just taking a walk when he saw it. Said the cloud came out of nowhere and then disappeared after about a minute.”

“Video?”

Barry shows her the video he got on his iPad. The storm starts over the barn, with the cloud unfurling slowly and then opening up to unleash the rain. Then, seconds after appearing, it slowly fades away. “That…” Iris shakes her head. “What the hell is that?”

“I have no idea,” Barry says.

She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. “I mean, clearly it is a storm cloud, but it’s so small. Obviously localised weather is a natural phenomenon and meteorologically it’s totally possible, but still.”

“You think it’s someone like the Weather Wizard?”

“Maybe,” she admits. “But I saw Chloe Mardon in action, and she did not have anywhere near this much control. But I won’t know anything until I see this person in action.”

“Oh,” Barry says. He takes the print-out from her and puts it down, before sliding his arms around her waist. “Then maybe we can talk about something more fun. Like our date.”

Iris raises an eyebrow. “Right, this mystery date you won’t elaborate on.”

“That’s the one.”

“Barry, seriously,” she laughs. “I have no idea what to wear!”

He shrugs. “You’ll look gorgeous in whatever you wear.”

“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?”

“No can do, Miss West.”

“Will there be dinner?”

He kisses her on the cheek. “Mm. Yes.”

“Dancing?”

He thinks for a moment. “Maybe.”

“How about jumping out of a helicopter while our hair is on fire?”

“You know, I wouldn’t put it past us.”

“Barry!” She pokes him in the chest. “Come on, please?”

But Barry just grins his infuriatingly sexy grin at her. “Sorry. This has to go perfect, and you being surprised is part of it going perfect. You’re going to have to wait for the date activities.”

Iris gives him a look. “Oh, so does that mean we’re going to have to wait for kissing as well? Seeing as that’s also a date activity.”

“No, see, we have to practice that,” he says matter-of-factly. “Perfect, remember?”

“You are so _full of it_ ,” she giggles, but she kisses him anyway. She rests her hands on his shoulders and hums into his mouth, while he draws her closer to him, stroking her jaw with a gentle finger. They’re paying so little attention to anything but themselves that they barely even notice when Nora walks into the room. “Iris, are – oh!”

They break apart with an audible _smack_ and look at her. “Mom!” Barry splutters at the same time Iris says, “Nora!”

“I was just-” Barry stammers, blushing.

“Bringing me lunch,” Iris finishes. “Because it – it’s time…for lunch, and-”

“Iris was hungry, and I knew that-”

“R-Right, he knew that, so he-”

“Brought me lunch.” Iris adjusts her glasses. “So we decided to eat lunch.”

“Yeah, that’s what we did.” Barry clears his throat. “We were…we were eating.”

Nora, who has been getting more and more uncomfortable the entire time while simultaneously trying not to show it, remembers that she hasn’t seen either of them look this guilty since she found out that they drank Great-Uncle Rudy’s whiskey at Christmas. “Iris,” she says, pretending like it hadn’t happened, “you’re with me and Singh today; we’re heading out to the ironworks.”

“Right,” Iris nods. “Sure. That sounds great.”

Nora nods quickly. “Good. Great. I will – I’ll see you both later. Barry, Malina is cooking tonight.”

“Wouldn’t miss it!”

She leaves and Iris deflates. “Wow, that was awkward.”

“Yeah, I figured it might be,” Barry laughs. “But I guess we’re over it now, right? Since we’ve had the awkward moment.”

“Barry. No way are we over it. It’s probably going to get worse.”

He frowns, pushing some hair out of her face. “Why?”

“Because, Barry, you are her only son and I just had my tongue in your mouth. She’s programmed to find that weird. Plus we work together, we’re family…” Iris sighs. “This is a new dynamic, and I don’t want to screw it up.”

“You want me to talk to her?”

But Iris shakes her head. “No, don’t worry about it. I can do it myself. I’m thinking I’m gonna really push the whole ‘I’ve been in love with Barry for as long as I can remember’ angle, so we…what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Barry blinks and then shakes his head. “No, uh, it’s nothing – I guess I’m just not used to you saying stuff like that yet.”

“Oh.” She shrugs. “I mean, it’s true. You want me to stop?”

“No, that’s okay. So, date on Thursday? We’re good?”

Iris smiles up at him. “Yeah, we’re good.”

***

Barry gets to STAR Labs and almost runs into Dr. Wells, who’s walking out of her office. “Barry,” she says, looking slightly distracted. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Uh, how are you?”

“Very well, thank you I – Oh!” she says quickly. “Is Iris with you?”

Barry frowns. “No, she’s at work. Why?”

“I just had a question for her,” she replies quickly. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll resolve it later. Is there anything you need?”

“No, I was just looking for Linda. Dr. Wells, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, fine. Have a good day, Barry.”

Barry watches her leave with a small frown on his face, making a note to ask Iris about it later. When he walks in Linda and Wally in the Cortex, Wally at the terminals and Linda drawing something on the board. They grin at him when he walks in. “Hey, beanpole,” Wally says fondly. “What’s up?”

“Hey, guys. Uh, where is everyone?”

“Chesca’s having lunch with Eddie, Jesse’s giving a seminar at the university, Dr. Wells is in her office, and Henry is…” Wally frowns. “Wait, where’s Henry?”

“Oh, he’s…Huh. I have no idea. That guy is so mysterious,” Linda shrugs. “Anyway, what’s up? I thought Iris was getting lunch with you.”

“No, we got lunch. I actually wanted to talk to you,” Barry admits. He pulls a sheet of paper out of his bag and hands it to her. “I – we’re going on our first date, and I’ve planned it, but I wanted to see what you thought.”

“Aw, you planned the date? That’s so sweet.”

Barry ducks his head shyly. “Yeah. I want it to be special, you know?” And he really, _really_ does. This isn’t just some girl, it’s Iris. He doesn’t ever recall being this excited to date someone, or being this determined that everything should go perfectly. Even when they were just friends he always thought that she deserved the world, and now he gets to be the one to give it to her. He watches nervously as Linda and Wally peruse the list, waiting for their reaction. Wally’s eyes widen. “Dude.”

“What? Is it not enough? You think there should be more?”

“No, I never said that. Is that the menu?”

“Yeah, I thought we could get something to eat.”

“The whole thing is in French, and – _Jesus_ , are they paying you hitman money at that paper?”

Barry laughs. “Yeah, I had to pull some strings and call in some favours. But what do you think? Do you think she’ll like it?” Linda whistles.

“Well, what girl doesn’t like a chocolate fountain and a dinner on a pier and – Barry, am I reading this right? Does this say ‘string quartet’?”

Barry grins. “Yeah! I found this group, and they’re going to play some of her favourite songs. I still have to approve them, but-”

“Barry.” Linda puts it down. "Look, I know how much Iris means to you, and you want your first real date to go well, but don't you think this is a bit...much?"

Barry considers this as he looks at the list he gave her. "It's not that much, is it? I just want it to be special."

"Yeah, but Barry, this is a lot. I mean, the next thing you know you're going to tell me you're planning on getting a plane and writing her name in the sky." Barry doesn't say anything and Linda's eyes widen.

"Barry Allen, you are not."

"...it's a very - it's a SMALL plane."

She sighs, smiling, and Wally chuckles. “Barry, Iris loves you. She has for years. And I know that because before her dad died, everyone used to make jokes about how she was going to marry the skinny white kid who lived a few doors down because you two have always been inseparable. You don’t have to break the bank to impress her.”

“I’m not _breaking the bank_ , and it’s not that much-”

“Barry, there’s a diagram.”

Linda snatches the list back. “There’s a diagram?”

Barry gives them a sheepish look. “Yeah, it’s to go with the map of the city on the back.”

“There’s a _map of the city_?”

“Well, it – the driver needs to know where-”

“Okay, Barry,” Linda interrupts. “Seriously, you do not need to do all this stuff. Keeping it simple always works. I’m sure she’ll have fun just spending the evening with you.”

Barry bites his lip. He never considered that everything he planned would be too _much_. He was just picturing her face when he saw all that she planned. Looking at it objectively, maybe the amount of roses is a little much. But everyone always talks about how much she’s always loved him, and how they could always see it, and that doesn’t even count how much she’s always been there for him. And the fact that he activates her powers and he’s her lightning rod. There’s really no way to overdo it when that’s the person you’re dating, is there? “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Linda says. “Maybe not get rid of _all_ of it – clearly you’re a romantic guy – but, uh, maybe less flowers. And look over the menu. And – no plane, Barry. Trust me.”

Barry nods as she gives the list back to him. “I’ll think about it. Thanks, guys.”

“Wait, we’re not finished,” Wally says. He faces Barry, his face uncharacteristically serious. “Now, Barry, I like you.”

Barry blinks. “I…like you too, Wally. But I’m kind of…trying to date your cousin?”

“Right, my cousin. Which means we need to talk.”

Linda groans. “Oh, God.” Barry looks between the two of them.

“What’s going on?”

“Oh, he’ll tell you,” Linda mutters. “You are so _embarrassing_ , Wally.”

“Like I was saying,” Wally continues, “I like you. You’re a good guy. Iris never…our family left her after Joe died, and you and Nora were there to look after her. And when she got struck by lightning, I saw how much you’ve protected her all these years, and still do.” He takes a deep breath. “With that being said, if I ever find out that you hurt her, that you ever did anything – anything at all – to make her cry, and I will kick your ass. Are we clear?”

Barry blinks again and swallows, while Linda lets out another groan. Wally, however, still looks completely serious. “Uh, we’re clear.”

Wally nods. “Good.”

“Wally?”

“Yeah?”

“You know Francine already beat you to that speech, right? Like, the day after Iris and I had dinner. She mentioned kneecapping me.”

Linda snorts with laughter. “Of course she did.”

Wally waves a hand. “That doesn’t matter. Barry needs to know not to fuck up.”

“Uh, well, if I do ever make Iris cry, you have total permission to kick my ass,” Barry assures him. “But, uh, you know that if I ever made Iris cry, _she_ would kick my ass, right? She could kick both of our asses.”

“I’m not doubting that,” Wally says simply. “Just know that there’s an asskicking with your name on if it that ever happened.”

“Noted. So, are we friends again?”

“That depends, can I get a chocolate fountain?”

Linda hits him and Barry laughs, standing up. “Well, I have to get to work, so I guess I’ll see you guys later?”

“See you. Oh, and Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“Get rid of the string quartet.”

“But-”

“I mean it, Barry.”

***

Iris takes pictures of the shattered glass at the ironworks and then shuts the camera off, looking around. The ironworks had been attacked last year, so she’s stating to think that they have really bad luck. Or maybe it’s just another metahuman. Goodie. She spots Nora finishing a conversation with one of the workers and walks over, pulling her gloves off. “What happened here?”

“No idea,” Nora sighs. She puts her notebook away. “Whoever they were smashed the security cameras.”

“My favourite trick (!) Did they take anything?”

“Apparently, whoever our friend is managed to get away with half a shipment of reinforced titanium.”

Iris stares. “Reinforced – Okay, we’re moving to Gotham. I don’t care if the Joker lives there.”

Nora eyes her. “You sure this doesn’t sound like Toni Woodward?”

“I mean, a psychopath thief with super strength? Toni would be my first guess, but she’s under Waller’s custody now. Besides, she’s already a metal person; what would she want with it?”

“Well, apparently, we have another Cyborg. What?” she adds. “I listen when you kids are talking.”

“Right.” Iris puts her glasses back on. “So, um, can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure, sweetie. What’s up?”

Iris clears her throat. “So, um, I know we…never really talked. About us.”

Nora frowns. “Who’s ‘us’?”

“Me and Barry.”

Nora blinks. “Ahem,” she mutters, avoiding her eyes. “Oh. Right.”

“Right, and today, I just – I know it might be weird, seeing me and Barry, like – k-kiss, or whatever.”

Nora rubs her eyes. “You mean like this conversation?”

Iris laughs nervously. “Huh, yeah, like this conversation. So, I’m just – kind of – giving you a heads up, the next time you see us, we may kiss again in front of you-”

Nora waves her hand. “Okay, Iris-”

“And I just wanna make sure that’s okay with you,” Iris finishes quickly. Nora sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Okay, Iris?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re an adult.”

“This is true.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I love him.”

“So do I.”

“You are not trying to murder me, you do not have a fake name, and you are not annoyingly chipper, so you are already a _vast_ improvement on the last girlfriend. So, you just…you do what you’ve gotta do.”

Iris nods, relieved. “Right, I will – I’ll do that. We’ll do that. I mean-”

“Iris.”

“I’m gonna get my gear now.”

***

“Iris, hold still.”

“But what if-”

“It’s not.”

“Something might-”

“It won’t.”

“But Barry might-”

Linda stops in the act of doing Iris’ hair, coming around to face her. “Iris, if you think for one second that Barry is going to change his mind about this date, you haven’t been paying attention. Which I guess I wouldn’t be surprised at.”

“Hey! That’s…” She sighs. “Look, I’ve been in love with him since forever, and now it’s actually happening, I keep thinking something’s going to ruin it, whether it’s being struck by lightning, or Patty, or memory-wiping guns… Something always ruins it. I’m nervous.”

“I know, honey, but you shouldn’t be,” Linda replies warmly. “Believe me, this is one thing I know you guys are going to ace. Now, he’s going to be here soon and I’m not done, so…”

Iris nods and lets Linda go back to pinning her hair. She’d almost had a panic attack when Singh told her she needed to work late – she still needed to go back to her apartment and get ready – but then Linda said she could bring her stuff over and help her get ready. So now she’s sitting here in her dress (red with flower patterns and black sequins) and jewellery and heels, wondering how the hell she’s going to function on this date. “So,” Linda says, almost too casually, “has he mentioned anything about the date?”

“No, he’s being really mysterious. I have no idea what we’re doing.”

“Oh. Well, it’s probably for the best. It’ll be good for you to be surprised. What about after?”

“After what?”

“The date. Are you going back to his place, or…”

“No!”

“Why not? It’s not like he still lives with his mom.”

This is true. Her conversation with Nora had been a couple of days before, but she still wasn’t totally onboard with Nora seeing them make out. Iris blushes. “Linda, we just started dating. And we haven’t even had that part yet.”

“Hey, whatever you’re comfortable with. Okay, you’re done.”

Iris stands. “Do I look okay?”

“Like a million bucks.”

“Great,” she breathes. “Oh, who’s on duty today?”

“Everyone but you and Barry.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you told us all that if we tried to call you during this date, you were going to dump us on Earth-17 with the Music Meister for a week.”

She rubs her nose. “Right, I did say that. But I didn’t mean it, Linda.”

But her friend just rolls her eyes. “Sure you did. And I don’t blame you. Now, it’s my turn to pick up dinner, so I’ll see you later.”

Iris hugs her goodbye and thanks her for everything, before sitting down at her desk to wait for Barry. She rifles through some of the papers on it, coming across her birthday idea for Malina, pages of diagrams and calculations and studies that she needs to read. She needs to call Dr. West so they can work on it, but it does feel good to have the time to work on something that isn’t a breach or a doppelganger or an immortal magician.

Iris’ phone buzzes and she realises it’s time to meet Barry, so she gets up, smooths her dress, and heads out of her lab. She sees him before he sees her, and she stops to take him in for a moment. He’s wearing a charcoal grey suit that she _knows_ is new, because Barry hates suit shopping so much he usually makes her go with him, and she can tell he’s spent at least fifteen minutes on his hair (something she and Nora have always made fun of him for). He smooths down his suit a couple of times, straightens his tie, checks his watch. Her heart is in her throat for some reason, and she can’t quite believe she’s here. That _they’re_ finally here. There have been countless times where she’s stood in this exact spot, looking at Barry Allen and being unable to take how beautiful he is, how much he means to her, and the fact that she doesn’t know where she’d be without him.

Barry looks up at her right then and his face kind of jolts, and for a minute she has no idea what to think, but then a slow, wondrous smile spreads across his face as he watches her walk down the stairs (and he actually goes to his hair again as if it isn’t already encased in gel), and then waits expectantly, his hands behind his back. She feels like they’re being pulled to one another, and doesn’t notice the walk it takes to get to him because she’s so focused on his face.

“Hi,” he grins.

“Hi,” she replies, trying not to smile too wide. He brings his hand out from behind his back and hands her a single red rose. “I got you this, I thought you would like it.”

“Thank you, I love it.” She looks at him again. “You look very handsome. I like your suit, is it new?”

“Oh, uh – yeah,” he replies. He smooths a hand down it self-consciously and seems to take a breath when he looks at her. “But _you_ look amazing, Iris. Really…really beautiful.”

“Thank you.” She smiles up at him and he smiles back, like they’re both just as nervous as each other and both in on the secret. He looks around.

“So, everyone’s been staring at me for about five minutes. Wanna tell me why that is?”

Iris looks around just in time to see everyone turn around and pretend like they weren’t watching them. She adjusts her glasses. “Oh. Um, well, I might have – told a few people not to give me so much work today because I had a date. With you. I was…kind of excited.”

But Barry just smiles at her. “I’m excited too. So, are you ready?”

He takes her hand and leads her into the elevator. “Yeah, this mystery date. Can I know what we’re doing yet?”

“Right now? We’re going down the elevator.”

She looks up at him. “Barry.”

“Nope.”

“Come on, please?”

He glances her and sighs. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“That – Bambi Eyes thing.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “I don’t do that, everyone always exaggerates.”

“Yes, you do. Your eyes get all big behind your glasses and you bite your lip and – look, just stop it, okay? You’ll see in a minute.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I had no idea I was doing that. Or that it works on you.”

Barry shrugs lightly as the elevator doors open on the ground floor. “It’s always worked on me. Look, we’re here.”

They’re outside, and Barry looks like Christmas came early, but Iris has no idea what’s going on. When she does see it, she lets out a choked gasp, her hand over her mouth. Because sitting in the middle of the street is a horse-drawn carriage, complete with a driver and two horses with sleek ebony coats tied to the mahogany carriage. A wreath of roses shaped like a heart decorates the side of it. Barry’s smile is so wide she thinks it’s going to split his face, and one of the horses neighs and stamps its feet as people walk past and stare at it. A couple are even taking pictures.

“I – Barry,” she manages. She points hesitatingly at the carriage. “Is that…Who is that for?”

“It’s for us. I thought it would be cute, you know, with the horses and the flowers. I was going for the whole Prince Charming thing, you know?” he admits. “It’s kind of become our thing. Since we always talk about it, and you kind of picked me to be your Prince Charming, and what’s more Prince Charming…than a…carriage…” He rubs the back of his head as he takes in her shocked face, and glances at the carriage. “Oh, I – do you hate it?”

“Barry, I-”

“Because I can get rid of it,” he says quickly, waving a hand at the driver. “We can walk, or – I’ll get us a cab-”

“Barry, wait,” she interrupts, stopping him. He pauses, apprehensive, and she lets out a breathy laugh, putting a hand on his arm. “This is perfect, and you are… _so_ sweet, but you didn’t have to do all of this. And you know you’re afraid of horses.”

Barry gives them a shifty look as one of them neighs again. “I know. I just wanted to do something special for you. And I’m freaking out, a little,” he admits, making Iris giggle. “But I’m kind of hoping you would maybe hold my hand?”

He gives her an adorably sheepish grin and she laughs, holding her hand out to him. She laughs even harder when he bows dramatically over her hand and kisses it. “Your chariot awaits, my lady.”

“You are such an _ass_ ,” she replies, but she’s still laughing as he helps her up the steps into the carriage. He settles in next to her on the plush seat as she looks around, taking in the curtains and ornate carvings. “Okay, I have to ask,” she says. “Where in the world did you find a horse-drawn carriage?”

“Well, Missy.”

“Missy?”

“Kinda. Remember when she had me covering all those articles she didn’t want to write last year, like the new sewage system and the environmental budget and the-”

“Escaped jellyfish?” Iris interjects dryly. He laughs.

“Right. Well, one of them was the equestrian history of Central City, including an interview with Gus over there.”

The driver, who is dressed in a jacket with coattails and a tie, turns. “How’re you doing, Barry? And Iris, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Um, great,” Iris replies hesitantly. “Nice to meet you too, Gus.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you. Barry did a pretty great write up for us, so I thought I’d do him a favour.” He nods at Barry. “You’ve got a good guy there. Make sure you hang on to him.”

Iris smiles radiantly up at him. “Don’t worry, I will.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Now, where are we going?”

“We’re getting dinner, Gus,” Barry says, and he turns back to the horses and gestures for them to move. The carriage moves forward with a lurch, before they settle into a smooth pace, the horses’ hooves clip-clopping steadily through the street. Iris looks at Barry.

“Barry, you’re turning out to be pretty miraculous yourself, but I know there’s no way in hell you found a restaurant that validates for two Friesian horses and a carriage.”

Barry feigns confusion. “I…never said we were going to a restaurant. Did I say we were going to a restaurant, Gus?”

“You did not,” he calls back, “say you were going to a restaurant, Barry.”

Iris stares at him. “Barry.”

“Yes?” he answers sweetly.

“Bartholomew Henry Allen, where are you taking me?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“You mean this wasn’t the surprise?”

“This is transportation.”

“ _Barry_ ,” she repeats, and he looks at her, his face falling a little.

“Wait, you’re not mad, are you? Because we can go to a restaurant, if you want…”

“I’m not _mad_ ,” she laughs, surprised. “I’m just curious. Is it close, at least?”

“You’re hungry,” he realises. He points to a cupboard above her head. “This is a pretty long journey, so there are some cookies in there if you want.”

Iris regards him. “Okay, score two for Prince Charming, then.”

He grins at her, and then raises an eyebrow when she doesn’t say anything else. “What?”

She shrugs lightly. “You’re just…really handsome.”

Barry actually blushes, his eyes flickering down to her mouth. The look he gives her afterwards makes her stomach flutter. “Well – uh,” he stammers faintly. “I got a new suit, you know, like I said, because I wanted to-”

Fully aware that he’s going to keep stammering until she stops him, Iris pulls his tie down so she can kiss him. It’s soft and chaste at first, but then she feels his hands on her face and it grows deeper. His mouth is strong and firm and hungry against hers, but still gentle. Iris slides her arms around his neck so he’s filling up all her space with his touch and taste and smell, and he wraps an arm around her waist. By the time they come up for air, they’re panting slightly into each other’s mouths. “Gus?” Barry calls hoarsely.

“Sir?”

Without taking his eyes from Iris, Barry reaches for the lever that will pull the curtains shut. “Keep your eyes on the road for a while, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

***

They do – eventually – stop kissing and enjoy the journey to wherever it is that Barry is taking her. Iris gets used to the fact that she’s in a carriage after a while, but the novelty never quite wears off. Maybe it’s because of the horses, neighing when they come to a particularly sudden stop, or the fact that people keep stopping to take pictures of them. But it’s probably mostly because she’s on a date with Barry Allen, and he got her an actual horse-drawn carriage.

“…so I’m going with the angle that we need to hold our heroes accountable, and that we all have a responsibility to keep the city safe, whether as a masked superhero, or a reporter, or a civilian,” he finishes. Iris sits back on the seat.

“And Superwoman?”

“Haven’t told anyone about her yet,” he admits. “Just us, right?”

“Right.”

One of the horses lets out a long neigh and Barry pales. Iris lets out a small giggle. “Bar, seriously, why did you get this when the mere mention of a horse creeps you out?”

“Because you like them,” he replies swiftly, though he’s still eyeing the horses like they’re going to sprout wings. “They’re okay, aren’t they, Gus?”

“They’re fine, Barry,” he calls back, a laugh in his voice. “Would you relax and enjoy your date?”

“Yeah, Barry, relax and enjoy your date. Although,” she adds, looking out of the small window, “I hope we don’t hit traffic with this thing. We could end up being the most hated people in Central City.”

Barry shrugs. “We’re not going to hit traffic.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I checked which of the roads in this city are hit the worst with rush hour traffic at this time of night, and picked a route to dinner that would avoid it.” At her surprised look, he shrugs again. “We’ve had way too many obstacles and false starts and bad timing, Iris. There’s no way in hell I was going to let anything screw us up. So, uh, are you okay with this? Are you having fun?”

Iris frowns slightly. “Of course I am, Barry. This is amazing.” Barry sighs in relief.

“Good, great. Now, tell me about this thing you’re doing with your suit? You seemed really excited about it.”

Iris blinks, still reeling from exactly how much effort Barry put into this date. “Well, I was thinking about our suits,” she says. “And how every time there’s danger, I have to go to STAR Labs to pick it up. We’ve been fine so far, but I’m not The Flash – it takes me a second to get into, and that’s not helped by the fact that I don’t have it on me all the time.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like you can carry it around in your gym bag,” he points out. “What if someone takes it? Then it’s like ‘yoga pants, gym shoes…Miss Miracle suit?’”

“But maybe I can,” she counters, “just not in such an obvious place.”

He shakes his head. “You’re going to have to explain that one, sunshine.”

“Well, it’s all theoretical,” she begins, and Barry can tell she’s about to launch into some giant science explanation simply from the way her eyes light up, “of course, and it might not work, but…you know, when I teleport, I don’t just disappear completely, right? I mean, obviously, I do disappear, but I don’t _disappear_ disappear – I don’t, like, fade from existence or anything. And Dr. Wells and I were talking about it, and we figured out that when I teleport – or she does it, or Malina, or Jay – we all exist in a sort of compressed form that isn’t on the same plane as this earth.”

“The Mindscape?”

“Right!” she grins, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Because we’re connected to it, a compressed, corporeal form of our bodies exists there for maybe a nanosecond before we appear where we originally wanted to go. So instead of my apartment, STAR Labs, crime scene, it’s my apartment, Mindscape, STAR Labs, Mindscape again, and _then_ crime scene.”

“But only for a second,” he says, and she nods.

“Right, only for a second. But I was thinking, what if we could find a way to keep the suit permanently in the Mindscape until we needed it, and find a way to pull it out of there when the time came. We could channel the connection into an inanimate object, like something you’d carry around with you on a daily basis, and then we could tap into our connection to the Mindscape to get it out. So if this thing with Superwoman did work out and I was over there for a meeting and a giant shark attacked, I could have my suit to hand.”

Barry stares at her. He’s always known Iris was intelligent, but what she was talking about… “Iris, that’s incredible.”

“I – well, if we can pull it off, then yeah.”

“You’ll pull it off,” he says confidently. “You are the person who closed all those breaches, after all.”

Iris adjusts her glasses, blushing. “Yeah, well…So, that’s what we’re working on. It means I have to do a lot of patrols so we can look at the telemetry of the suit, and we’re using up all the prototypes so we need keep needing to build more, and…” She pauses, hesitating.

“And what?”

“I might have to go back into the Mindscape. Maybe,” she adds, when he visibly pales.

“W-What?” he splutters. “Go _back_? Why?”

“We’re trying to figure out the best way to harness it,” she explains, “to make the getting the suit part easier. I haven’t talked to Dr. Wells about it yet, but I need to figure out whether that could be a solution.”

“But…” Barry hesitates, thinking of that awful time when he thought that Iris was dead, that Colin had killed her, and that she was never coming back to him. When he speaks the next time, his voice comes out small. “You almost died the last time.”

“That’s because I was hit by lightning,” she points out. “This time I’m trying to go by myself. Barry,” she says, taking his hand, “if – _if_ – I go, I will be fine. Wanna know why?”

“Why?”

She takes his hand. “Because I have this thing called a…lightning rod? And they’re pretty useful when you get stuck in metaphysical entities.” Iris smiles warmly at him and he smiles back, before kissing her hand again.

“’Kay,” he says softly. Gus whistles and they look up.

“We’ve reached our destination,” he says cheerfully, and Barry nods before turning to Iris.

“Ready?”

“It would help if I knew what I was ready for…”

“You’ll see in a minute,” he promises, and helps her out of the carriage. Iris goes up to the horses, stroking their sleek coats, and takes in their surroundings. They’re on a waterfront, but not one she’s ever been to before, and the road beyond them is obscured by trees. In fact, she has no idea where she is.

“Okay, this isn’t the part where you both kidnap me, is it?”

“Nope,” Barry laughs. He turns to Gus. “We’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

“Yes, sir,” he nods. He tips his hat at Iris. “Have fun, you two.”

They wave him goodbye, watching as he disappears around the corner, and Iris has finally lost all of her patience. “Barry, you tell me what’s going on this minute.”

“I will tell you what’s going on _exactly_ this minute,” he replies. He takes her hand and leads her across the winding stone path, which leads towards the trees. He keeps her hand firmly in his, and she thinks she can feel his pulse. Is it her, or is Barry about ten times more nervous than usual? But then, she can hardly talk, since she spent the whole day trying to think up ways to not make herself sound like an idiot on this date.

“Okay,” Barry says finally. “We’re here.”

Iris knows that Central City is surrounded by water, and knows that Barry knows it too – after all, he used to take flowers to the waterfront for his sister’s birthday. But she’s never been to this one, she didn’t know there was a boathouse restaurant on the pier, and she _definitely_ didn’t know that this many roses were in Central City. Or that you could decorate the entire side of a building with them.

“Barry,” she breathes. “You didn’t.”

“I thought it would be nice,” he says immediately, “if it were just the two of us, you know? Because the last time we kept getting interrupted. And I spoke to the chef and the manager, and we’ll be the only ones here all night, so we’re good.”

Iris stares at him. “We’re… going to be the only ones?”

“I mean, I have to talk about the restaurant on my Twitter and I have to review it for the paper, so I hope the lamb chops really are as good as he said they are, but, uh, yeah. Us and the chef and some waiters.”

Iris looks out onto the water, speechless. It’s a near-perfect night, with still waters and a crisp breeze, and the sky is still a little bright even though the sun set about an hour ago. “Iris?” Barry asks quietly. “Do you like it?”

She doesn’t answer for a moment. “Every time,” she replies finally, “ _every time_ I think that this enough. That I cannot love you more, that it would be impossible. And then you do _this_.” She shakes her head. “I love it, Barry, but not – nowhere _near_ as much as I love you.”

That wondrous smile is back on Barry’s face. “I love you, too. So, uh, you wanna eat?”

Barry leads her through the restaurant and out onto the upper deck, which overlooks the bay and the lower deck of the restaurant. There’s even a little swing bench seat overlooking the water. A couple of waiters arrive to serve them wine and fresh bread. “Wait, don’t we get menus?” she asks.

“I got us the chef’s special,” he explains, “and I had them make something special for dessert. Hold on, the menu is here somewhere…”

“It’s all in French!”

“Yeah, but it all sounds good – I just had them make your favourites. No idea what it means, though – I took German, remember?”

Iris peruses the menu, trying to scrounge up some of her high school French to understand it. “… _poulet_. That’s chicken, we’re having chicken?”

Barry shrugs. “Sure. And remember, we have to review the lamb chops.”

“Barry, I am a metahuman. Believe me, we will be reviewing _everything_ on this menu.”

It should be weirder, she thinks. She and Barry have an entirely new equilibrium, one where he kisses her goodbye and they hold hands and she can say ‘I love you’ whenever she wants to, and she doesn’t have to be afraid of the answer. But then she realises about halfway through the meal that of course it’s normal – this is just always what they were supposed to be. Honestly, she never should have doubted it.

“So the old DA’s coming back,” Iris continues as the waiter tops off her wine. Barry raises an eyebrow

“They picked a new guy already?”

“No, it’s the old one. Horton.”

“Oh, he’s done with his sabbatical?”

“Mm, and apparently, the only guy willing to take the job.” Barry laughs.

“Well, the last guy is about to get sent up on some pretty spectacular fraud charges, and the guy before him…” They don’t need to finish that thought. Iris thinks for a moment.

“You know, if he’s coming back, that means he’ll be on Lucy Coolidge’s case with me. It’ll be good working with the head prosecutor, especially since it’s such a big case.”

“Lucy Coolidge – that’s Heatmonger, right?”

“Don’t remind me,” Iris mutters, and Barry chuckles. “You know Chesca was texting me the next day demanding to know why ‘Discount Heatwave’ named herself?”

“Hey, she was off-duty and I was having dinner with the office – Twitter picked the name and then it stuck. I couldn’t change it when I wrote the article, it would have confused everyone.” He pauses. “Now, what are we giving the shrimp?”

“Nine.”

“Really? That’s higher than the smoked salmon.”

“It’s the sauce! I might have to mind-control the chef and make him tell me what it is. Not a fan of this garlic bread, though,” she adds, somewhat sadly. Barry frowns.

“But you love garlic bread.”

“Not this garlic bread. Too much butter, and it’s way too soggy.”

“Do you want more?” He looks around quickly. “The waiter just left, but I can call him back so they can make you some…”

“Barry,” she laughs. “It’s just bread, I’ll get over it. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he promises. “I’m fine as long as you are. So, tell me more about Coolidge. Malina went out you that day, right?”

“Malina and I had a lot of fun with her,” she muses. “And now I get to testify in court about it, and I _hate_ doing that.”

“What? But testifying always looks like so much fun on TV.”

“For Harvey and Mike, maybe. But I’m the one who actually has to make the case for them, and I don’t have a snarky redheaded assistant to help me or any witty one-liners to make the jury fall in love with me.”

“I doubt that, but I can’t say I’d want any competition,” he replies easily, and grins when Iris blushes. “I’m sure you’ll be great. And if not, that’s what mind control powers are-”

“Bartholomew.”

“Kidding!”

They continue the meal like that, revelling in the sight of the moon on the still water and enjoying the music. Iris does notice that Barry seems slightly nervous, but then this is a new dynamic for them, and while she’s always known about and understood her feelings, Barry has only just coming to terms with his. Or, according to Linda and Chesca, has only come to terms with them in the last couple of months. Maybe he’s more nervous about their new dynamic than he let on.

Iris’ eyes widen when the desserts arrive, with the waiters placing something that looks more like art than it does food in front of her. “Wait…Are these brownies?”

“French Silk Brownies,” Barry explains, as the waiter puts his own dessert in front of him. “It’s like a combination of chocolate fudge brownies and French silk pie, which is like this chocolate mousse thing with vanilla and cream. Chef’s really proud of them.”

They’re certainly very tempting, perfectly baked with whipped cream on a few of them and shavings of chocolate dusted over the top. She lifts up the little menu card. “Wow, and they made it eggless? That must’ve been hard.”

“The chef is a genius,” Barry admits. He rubs the back of his head. “Um, the chocolate is Swiss, which is nice, right?”

“I’m sure it’ll be great, Barry.” She squeezes his hand. “Really, this whole date has been amazing.”

“Good, great. I’m glad you like everything.”

“So, what did you get?”

“Some summer fruit thing,” he says dismissively. He picks up the menu card and peers at it. “I think it’s a – Brulé? Am I saying that right?”

“That sounds about right, I – Barry, these are incredible,” Iris interrupts herself mid-sentence when she takes a bite of the brownie. “Okay, I am _kidnapping_ that chef.”

Barry grins and starts eating his dessert. “Brulé is the one they make with a flamethrower, right?”

Iris giggles. “Not a _flamethrower_ , Barry. It’s a butane torch – we use them in STAR Labs.”

Barry thinks for a moment, still eating. “I’m going to tell everyone they made mine with a flamethrower. It’s really good, though.” He clears his throat and Iris frowns.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I think I just swallowed a big cherry or something.” He waves a hand. “I’m fine.”

Iris grabs the notecard. “Cherries? I didn’t know they were in season yet.”

Barry scratches his neck absently and she stares at him. “Barry, your neck is all red.”

“Wh – _ahem_ – What?”

“Yeah, it looks like a rash. What is _in_ your dessert?” she mutters. “ _Cerises_ – cherries, right. _Myrtilles_ …um, blackberries? No, blueberries. And _fraises_? What are – oh, God, strawberries! Barry, you’re allergic!”

Barry’s now struggling to breathe, and his face is flushed. “Well, that would explain why my… throat is – closing up,” he replies faintly. Iris gestures frantically to the waiters inside the restaurant, who all come running outside. “What’s the matter with him?” one of them asks as Iris starts loosening Barry’s tie so he can breathe properly.

“He ate a strawberry,” she replies tersely. “He’s allergic.”

Another waiter stares. “So why did he eat them?”

“It was in the dessert – he didn’t know!”

“But why didn’t he read the-”

“I’m sorry but I – _really_ can’t – breathe…” Barry interrupts weakly. Iris turns back to them.

“Get me a first aid kit.”

One of them wrings his hands. “Should we not take him to a hospital?”

“He doesn’t have time.”

“Mademoiselle, I really think-”

“Look, I work for the police and he is reviewing your restaurant, do you really want the impression you leave us to be ‘customer choked on a strawberry and we took too long to help?’. First aid kit, with an Epipen – _move_!”

There must be something in Iris’ voice that makes them snap to attention, because they all run back to the restaurant as quickly as they can. This has happened enough times that Iris knows exactly what to. She unbuttons the top of his shirt and takes off his tie, before wrapping some ice in a cloth napkin and pressing it to his forehead to keep him cool. Then she rubs his back, making soothing noises as she waits for them to get back.

“Iris,” he gets out, his voice rough, but she stops him.

“Just hang on, okay? They’ll be back in a minute.”

Just as she’s speaking, one of them comes back, first aid kit in hand. Iris retrieves the EpiPen, sticks it in Barry’s thigh, and waits. After a couple of seconds, Barry starts breathing normally again, and Iris lets out a sigh of relief. “Could we have some water and more ice?”

They nod and scurry away, no doubt more than a little freaked out by her dropping the fact that she works for the CCPD into it, but she could help it. She helps Barry onto the bench – mostly so he can get away from his dessert – and rubs his back some more. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs lightly. “Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I should have read the menu. Or googled it, or whatever.”

“It’s okay,” she laughs. “It was an easy mistake to make.”

Barry nods again, avoiding her eyes, and then closes his eyes and sighs. “I’m…sorry, Iris.”

“What on earth are you sorry for? I think Nora said that the strawberry allergy actually runs on _both_ sides of your family, so…”

“No,” he says quietly. He removes the napkin from his head, running his hand through his hair. “I just – I really wanted this date to be perfect for you.”

She frowns. “It _was_ perfect, Barry. With the food and the roses and the _horse-drawn carriage_. Did you forget that part?”

“Yeah, but then I ruined it. I wasn’t supposed to be an idiot and have an allergic reaction to the damn strawberries. I was supposed to be more… Prince Charming-like. You’ve always loved me, and I – well, I fall in love with you more everyday – but I wanted to be the person who went all out for you for a change. I wanted to be worthy of being your lightning rod, the person you always come home to, because you’ve always looked at me that way. I just – I wanted to be worthy of that look.”

Iris’ brow furrows deeper. “I – Barry, what _look_?”

And Barry smiles helplessly, because Iris West has always looked at him like he’s the most wonderful thing to grace the earth, and it’s always made him feel at home. The most beautiful part is that she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. “The look you’re giving me right now.”

“I’m not – this is just my face, Barry.”

“Yeah, but-”

“Barry,” she interrupts. She grabs his hands. “Listen to me, okay? I have loved you for years. I loved you on the day we met, with the cashews, I loved you when we were teenagers when you were with Becky and I was with Brad but _we_ were the ones who danced at Prom together, and I loved you all the times I came to visit you at college. I will always love you, so you don’t need to do all of this to be ‘worthy’ of me, or whatever. I mean, I’m not saying no to any of it,” she adds, making him laugh, “but I was always just impressed with Barry Allen. He’s pretty sweet. Cute, too.”

He just takes her in with a smile on his face, and marvels at how the person he’s always thought would make someone the happiest guy in the world wants to be with him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she replies simply. “And Barry, I am serious, please don’t think you have to do this for every date we have. I do not want to have to take my boyfriend to the emergency room every time we have dinner.”

He stares at her. “What?” she asks. “Barry – wait, are you getting a fever again? I think there’s another EpiPen-”

“No, ah, no. That’s just the first time you’ve…called me your boyfriend.”

Iris’ eyes widen. “Oh, well, I just thought – we don’t have to-”

“No, hold on,” he says determinedly. “I can at least do this properly.”

Iris watches – half in interest, half in worry – as Barry goes back to the table and retrieves the rose he got for her, and then comes back, offering her the rose again. “Iris West,” he says seriously, and her heart flutters a little because she’s imagined them in exactly this position since she was little, only they were older and her had a ring instead of a rose, and this used to be a thing that distracted her during history class, not a thing that’s real and happening in front of her.

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

Iris smiles. “Yes, Barry, I will be your girlfriend.”

He grins and kisses her lightly. “You know, I can’t wait to tell my best friend about you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty much the coolest girl in the world.”

“That cool? I’d love to meet her.”

Barry grins and is about to say something else, but then one of the waiters walks past with the remains of his dessert, and he turns a little green. “Do you think Gus would mind parking the carriage in the hospital parking lot?” he asks.

Iris giggles.

***

“A string quartet? _Really_ , Barry?”

“I thought it would be romantic!”

“It would have been! I’m just – where did you find one?”

Barry shrugs, smiling. “Central City’s Philharmonic is a small but respected institution. I actually kind of had fun writing about that one.”

“And Linda made you get rid of it?”

“Yeah, and the – you know what? Maybe it’s best if we just leave it there. I can surprise you next time.”

Iris shrugs. “Or I could just get Wally to tell me.”

After the incident with the strawberry Barry had to go to the hospital, but once they checked him out he was free to go. Of course, they ran straight into Wally, who was there to start the night shift, and he spilled on pretty much everything Barry had been planning to do until Barry stopped him. After that they went for ice-cream, and now they’re just walking randomly through the city, hands entwined, Iris having just finished (her third; the vendor thinks they’re weird) just happy to be in each other’s company. “Everyone’s going to know about it by tomorrow,” he sighs, and she shakes her head.

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell Linda not to tell anyone. And tell Gus I said thank you, the horses were very well-behaved.”

“Are you sure? Because Clovis kept looking at me funny.”

“Because you kept looking at _her_ funny.”

“What was with all the shifting and stamping feet?”

“Maybe she was freaked out by the guy in the suit that kept staring at her. She was probably more freaked out by you, to be honest.”

“Did she tell you that?” he mutters, and she laughs again. A crisp breeze picks up and she steps closer to his arm. “Are you cold?”

“Just a little,” she admits. “There isn’t really a jacket to go with this dress.”

“Hold on.” Barry shrugs off his jacket.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine,” he replies, draping it around her shoulders, and she beams up at him. “God, you look cute in anything, don’t you? And it helps that you’re like four feet tall.”

“Shut _up_ , Bartholomew,” she mutters, shoving him, but he just pulls her back to his side, looping their arms together, and kisses her hand. Eventually they wander around to her apartment, and Barry walks her to her front door.

“…I’m sorry, Snart and Rory got captured by Rasputin?” Barry repeats. Iris frowns briefly, trying to recount what exactly Jax had told her when she called.

“No, I think Jax said he reminded them of Rasputin, but he was just a regular old mad scientist. In the middle of Siberia. Who…wanted to turn Jax and Professor Stein into nuclear bombs.”

Barry stares at her. “Remind me to never get on the Waverider.”

They come to a stop outside of her door. “Well, there’s no way in hell that I’m getting on that thing unless Snart and Rory keep their guns at home,” she replies. “So, um, I had a great time tonight.”

He smiles down at her, his eyes crinkling. Damn it, his smile should be illegal. “Me too.”

“The carriage was great,” she continues, feeling herself start to ramble but not sure she can make herself stop, “and the food was great. Especially the brownies, that silk pie thing was great – I mean, I like yours better, you put gummy worms in them-”

Thankfully, Barry just takes her face in his hands and kisses her, stopping her words. It’s slow, this kiss, like he’s exploring more than anything else, capturing her top lip and then her bottom one. “Sorry,” he says quietly. “But you know the prince usually kisses the princess at the end of the movie, right?”

Iris wraps her arms around his neck. “Well, that was a pretty short kiss, you sure you want to end the movie like that?”

“Your wish is my command, my lady.”

He kisses her again and Iris thinks, of all the weird and wonderful things that have happened to her over the years, Barry Allen is the biggest miracle.

***

“This,” Linda laughs the next day at STAR Labs, “is glorious.”

“I didn’t even see it,” Iris mutters, looking at the screen. “I mean, where could it have come from?”

“Of course you didn’t see it,” Chesca laughs. “You and Barry were staring at each other like the dorks that you are.”

Iris rubs her eyes. The thing with being a superhero is that you always think that you’re the one everyone is looking at. It’s hard, when you’re the one with the powers that everyone looks up to, to remember that when you take it off, you’re just a normal civilian. Or, in her case, a normal CSI. She isn’t well-known outside of the Central City Police Department or the district attorney’s office. Dr. Barry Allen, however? Completely different story. One of the fiercest reporters at CCPN, the city’s foremost expert on metahuman crime and, most importantly, the only one person trusted to write about Miss Miracle, not to mention her new sidekick. Plus, he and Clark Kent had had a Twitter exchange that sent everyone into an excited meltdown a few days ago. It’s safe to say that Barry is pretty well-known.

Which is why there is a picture of him on his date with ‘long-time best friend, Iris West, twenty-six, CSI for CCPD’ on Twitter.

In the carriage.

When she’d woken up this morning, she’d been tagged on Twitter by dozens of people she didn’t even know. Given that she only followed some celebrities she liked and some accounts that tweeted science jokes, she rarely used the app, and she had to put on her glasses and read them several times to figure out what it was.

“’OMG, is that Barry Allens new gf?’” Linda reads. “And then four of the shocked emoji faces. Pulitzer-prize winning journalism, let me tell you.”

Chesca laughs, scrolling. “I can’t believe someone took a picture of you guys on your date and put it on Twitter. And then someone else wrote a whole article about it.”

“It’s not like it’s a bad picture,” Linda says, and she’s right. While Iris can’t remember the picture being taken, she remembers when it was taken – Iris was telling him a story about how one of the prototypes they were using to build the ring ended up on Lian Yu (“Waller was _pissed_ ”), and she let out a snort that made him laugh. In the picture, they were just looking at each other and smiling contentedly. “But are you okay with this?”

She shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Not to you, maybe, but you guys are inspiring some real debate. There are people who are jealous of you, some who are jealous of him, and…well, this guy just wants you both.”

“Let freedom reign,” Chesca nods. “But are you sure? I didn’t peg you guys to be the kind that liked all that attention.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I get more comments as Miss Miracle, and besides, pretty soon there’ll be some big prosecution or Liv will buy a company and then everyone will forget.”

“That you guys are all cute on Twitter?” Malina says, appearing out of nowhere, and Linda jumps.

“I am so not used to the fact that there are two of you doing that now.” Iris frowns.

“How did you hear that when you weren’t even here?”

“Oh, I was at the elevator; teleporting was quicker.” She offers a packet to them. “Pizza pocket?”

“Mal, those are Jesse’s,” Iris says. “Am I going to have to start labelling those?”

But Malina shrugs. “He lets me.”

“I’ll bet he does,” Linda mutters, but no one hears her.

“What?” Chesca demands. “He never lets me, why does he let you?”

“I ask.”

“I ask!”

“Yes,” Iris points out. “After you’ve already eaten three and are working on more.”

“Semantics!”

“Anyway, what are you guys doing here? I thought you all had work.”

Iris hesitates. They did – they’d all just snuck here on their lunch break to see whether they could work on the suit. “Iris wanted to check out your dad’s new security protocols,” Linda says quickly, and Malina nods.

“Okay, cool. He’s really proud of them, you know.”

“Where is he? I wanted to ask about what the trackers he put in the keycards.”

“Not sure. We were supposed to have lunch, but he had to rush off. Hey, where are we with that metal meta? I was reading about that Woodward girl, could it be her?”

Iris shakes her head, leading Malina to her desk. Whoever it was had attacked something else, a chemical facility – but this time left some clues about who he was. Iris pulls out some pictures. “First of all, it’s not a normal human. This is blurry, but you see how she’s standing? She’s not standing like the metal is a natural part that comes out when she wants to – she’s too stiff. She looks half-robot.”

Malina takes the picture from her. “Like Cyborg?”

“Maybe,” Iris admits. “But Cyborg never broke into facilities, did she? Besides, we managed to get some more evidence of where she attacked. See these walls and doors? They were cut smooth, like with a knife – Woodward liked to use her hands. My guess is that whatever this person is, they’ve got blades in their arms or hands for easy access.”

Malina whistles. “Not in Kansas anymore, are we?”

“We should be fine. Hey, does anyone know whether Wally and Jesse are ready for their thing with Waller yet? It’s tomorrow.”

“I think they are,” Linda replies. “Jesse’s still annoyed that he has to go in the first place, but he’s prepared a presentation at least. I can’t wait to see his face when that armoured car pulls up to take him away.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Malina says, yawning. “They’re not that bad once you get used to the idea that they’re essentially responsible for your safety and you have no idea where you’re going.”

Everyone stares at her. “I’ll word it better than that,” she promises. “Duh.”

“Thanks. Hey, since you’re here, want to get some training in, Baby Miracle?”

“Are we going with that?”

“I don’t know, it’s growing on me.”

***

Barry is apologetic when he finds out, but Iris assures him that it really isn’t a big deal. He looks up from where he’s stirring sauce on the stove. “Are you sure? I don’t know why I didn’t think that would happen.”

“Barry, it’s so not a big deal,” she promises. “I actually think it’s kinda funny. Do you know who wrote it?”

He rolls his eyes and makes an irritated noise. “The Central City Citizen,” he mutters, going back to his sauce. Iris tries not to giggle, because she knows how much Barry and Scott hate their rival. “Got some snotty email from one of them telling me how cute the carriage idea was, which – if their idea of scooping us is taking a picture from Twitter and writing some nothing piece on it, then they’re not a real paper. Because we would not write about one of their reporters going on a date, horse-drawn carriage or not, because we actually like real news.”

“You’re so hot when you’re mad about news,” she replies, and he laughs, shaking his head.

“Well I must be sexy as hell right now, sunshine. They didn’t call you or anything, did they?”

“No, and even if they did I would handle it. Besides, it’s a cute picture. My grandmother likes your suit, by the way.”

“Tell her I said thanks.”

“Are you okay with the whole city knowing that we’re dating?”

Barry shrugs. “Of course I am. I don’t mind if the whole world knows. Okay, this should be perfect…” He walks over to her and puts a wooden spoon with sauce on it in her mouth. Since she had most of the afternoon off and Barry had the day off, she’d elected to spend it with him, since she’d be pulling an all-nighter today.

“Barry this is the third meal you’ve made today, and while my metabolism and I appreciate all the food, I don’t see what the obsession is.”

“The obsession,” he replies, “is that it’s my turn to make dinner on Sunday, and I want to win.”

“Win against who?”

“Eddie and Malina, duh. Eddie learned how to make Sri Lankan food _in_ Sri Lanka.”

“Wasn’t he undercover as a drug smuggler?”

“That’s not the point – the point is the food was amazing. Now, how’s the sauce?”

Iris sighs, thinking. “Not so much pepper, but basically there. And honestly, you three are all the same – it’s like you were actually raised together.”

“We’re not that bad.”

“Barry, we were playing Monopoly a few days ago and I actually had to separate you and Eddie.”

“He cheats!”

“He does not cheat – _Malina_ cheats, which is why I disqualified her.”

Barry smiles fondly. “I was…thinking of taking her to the bay. Not where we had our date, the other one. With the place with the flowers.”

“Oh,” Iris says. She takes in the stillness of his shoulders, the way he’s stirring, and realises that he must have been thinking about this all day. She gets the urge to go and hug him. “Do you know what you’re going to say?”

“Not yet,” he admits. “But it just seems…weird not telling her about it, you know? Like lying.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really. But thank you,” he adds. He nods at her papers, which are spread out over the kitchen counter. Not wanting to be unprepared for when she met Superwoman – which she’s still not over, thanks – Iris elected to try and prepare somewhat for what she was going to say. “How’s that going?”

“Okay,” she replies, looking at her notes. “So, my first thing is that Superwoman stays out of Central and I stay out of Metropolis on a regular basis, because that blurs the lines of responsibility. I don’t want people thinking Superwoman is going to start hanging around here.”

“Good idea,” Barry agrees. He makes her try some of the bread. “Butter?”

“Maybe a little. The next thing is that we need to design some sort of communication system, because I doubt I’m going to be able to just text her whenever I want. And it’ll have to include you and Clark, because we’re probably going to need you to get information out to people quickly.”

“Always happy to help,” he replies easily. “What else?”

“Well, we’ll need a base of operations. Somewhere neutral, because I doubt she’d want Chesca and Linda and Jesse and everyone to know her real identity. But…” she trails off, biting her lip, and Barry comes to sit in front of her. “What is it?”

“Well, I was thinking I could use that big hangar that we own, but that’s West Coast, and Superwoman is East Coast. And this is supposed to be the Justice League, right? So I was thinking we could pick it based on who else is in it. You can’t have a league with just two people.”

Barry nods slowly. “You’re right. But don’t forget, you can _start_ a league with two people. It’s okay to go slow and figure that other stuff out later.”

“You’re right,” she agrees. He kisses her on the forehead and gets on with his cooking. “What do you think, Gideon? Who else do you think’ll join our team?”

Gideon bursts out of her phone, his blue visage hovering over the screen. “I can’t tell you that.”

“You don’t tell me anything.”

“Now, Iris, that isn’t true. I reminded you when Eddie’s birthday was.”

“I mean fun stuff. You can’t tell me anything about the Justice League?”

He thinks for a moment. “I hope you like fish.”

He disappears after that and Barry points a spatula at her phone. “What’s with him?”

“Ignore him, he’s weird. The other day I suggested ‘Impulse’ as a name for Malina, since, you know-”

“It fits.”

“Right, and he told me it was taken. When I asked him who it was taken by, he pretended his power cells were depleted and went to sleep. I can’t believe I created something so frustrating, and I still don’t know how.”

Barry laughs, glancing at her. There’s something so natural about Iris just hanging out in his apartment, her working and him cooking, like all the nights they spent together growing up. He wonders whether E52 is this happy right now. “Hey, Gideon can communicate with the other earths, right?”

“Yeah,” Iris says absently, looking through her papers. “Why?”

“No reason. Hey, stop that a second.” He grabs his phone and walks up to her, wrapping her arms around her from behind. “What are you doing?” she asks.

“Taking a selfie that we’re actually aware of.”

“Barry!” she giggles. “Since when did you become a ‘take selfies with my girlfriend’ guy?”

“Since you became my girlfriend.”

Iris laughs again and they take the picture, and she snaps her fingers. “Hey, how was lunch with your mom?”

He frowns. “When?”

“Yesterday, she told me she couldn’t have lunch at the precinct because she was having lunch with you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Iris, I spent lunch trying to negotiate with the old DA’s legal counsel. Are you sure she mentioned me?”

She thinks for a moment. “You know, Captain Singh was yelling a lot, maybe I misheard. Or I wasn’t listening, I zone out when I’m hungry.”

“That’s my sunshine.”

She makes face at him, and then an alarm goes off on her phone. “Okay, I have to be at STAR Labs in five minutes.”

Barry pouts at her. “I’ll probably be back at some point during the night to eat all your bagels again, Barry.”

She kisses him goodbye and leaves, and he grabs his phone and navigates to the app that brings Gideon up. “Barry,” he says pleasantly. “How are you?”

“Good. Hey, can you send a picture to someone for me?”

“Of course. Who?”

“Earth-52 Iris.”

There’s a mechanical whirring and then a message box opens up so he can send the picture. He looks at it for a moment, smiling. Iris is leaning back into him, her hands resting on his where they’re wrapped around her waist, smiling contentedly into the camera. He hopes E52 Iris likes it, and starts to type out a message. “ _Hey_ , _have you met my girlfriend_?”

***

“Jesse-”

“…any superheroics under any-”

“Jesse-”

“Circumstances, or I will have you on bedrest until we get another president-”

Wally stares at him in disbelief. “How are you like this twenty-four hours a day?”

“It’s a gift,” Iris mutters. She looks at the armoured cars that are sitting outside of Jitters, inconspicuous this early in the morning. “Jesse, Eddie and Henry are both trained in first-aid, and Malina and I are both self-healing.”

He doesn’t look too happy about this, but the agents that are ready to take them away are giving her an impatient look that she finds all too familiar. “Dude, seriously, quit worrying. You’ll be back – what, tomorrow morning?”

“Yes, we will, if I haven’t murdered him yet,” Wally mutters. “Come on, Dr. Asshole, roadtrip time.”

Iris watches them leave with a small smile on her face, before heading back into Jitters for her coffee before work. It’s not just being a superhero, she’s finding. It’s making sure the schedule makes sense so people can make their shifts, helping Chesca, helping Malina, putting in and signing off on orders for new equipment, making sure they can hand their patents in on time… But still, she’s enjoying it. She finally feels like she has some balance in her life, even though despite everything, she’s still having nightmares. There are always times when the darkness becomes so overwhelming that it threatens to consume her, so she’s always grateful when she’s feeling as light as she is.

Despite Jesse’s unpleasant way of expressing himself, she knows that he’s just worried about the two of them. He has seen her die, after all. So she decides to do exactly as he says. She goes to work, looks at some cases, puts in some orders to Queen Consolidated for more equipment for the suit idea, has lunch with her mom. She even remembers that she’s supposed to pick up the popcorn and Twizzlers for her movie night with Barry, and that’s what she’s doing when it happens.

Iris doesn’t notice it at first, because the alarm on her phone has been quiet all day – everyone’s off-duty. Sometimes it’s like that, and she just lets the police handle things.

Not this time.

This time, she gets an alert that says a metal woman is attacking the social services building, a large cluster of buildings gathered around each other. She’s about to double back to get her suit when she actually sees a video of her and recoils – she has metal spikes coming out of her shoulder, and as she watches, one of them shoots off her body and embeds itself in the nearest wall. The concrete actually shudders, little cracks spiralling out into the wall.

“Gideon,” she says immediately, and he pops out of her watch. Even in the dark, she can see his expression is set in a disapproving frown.

“Iris.”

“Tell me where it is.”

“Iris, you know what Jesse said.”

“I don’t care what Jesse said – those people could get hurt!”

“But-”

“Tell me where that place is or I’m disconnecting you from HBO.”

He hesitates and then tells her; Iris doesn’t even think, just moves, and then she’s standing in the middle of the chaos. People are running away from the building as fast as they can, trying to avoid the metal spikes as she shoots them. Each one lands with a sickening crunch and is followed by more screaming. Iris is thankful that it’s so dark, since no one can see her face without her mask. Without missing a beat, she teleports right next to her, grabs the woman, and blinks away. They land in an abandoned street but the woman wrenches away from her. Iris leaps to her feet. _Damn it, damn it, damn it_ …

“Who are you?” Iris demands, her eyes tracking those deadly blades. They glint malevolently in the moonlight, casting light on the rest of her body. She’d been right – the bottom half of her body was human, but the top…

“They never had you on my world,” the woman grins cruelly in a face half robot. Iris starts.

“You’re from another earth.” Iris cracks her knuckles, and feels electricity snapping through them. “Well, I’m sorry, but your vacation is over.”

“Please. I came here to escape Superboy – I don’t think a tiny woman in Converses is going to stop me.”

“Metallo,” Iris breathes. Kaden had told her about her, a human modified with alien technology that made her a metal body and – and there was something else…

“You know me,” Metallo smiles happily, teeth glinting. She puffs out her chest and, too late, Iris sees the large green object sitting in the middle of it – a Kryptonite heart, capable of destroying anything it touches with powerful blasts of energy. It explodes outwards with a crack, sending Iris spinning back into a wall as it slams into her. She blinks, dazed, and barely manages to scramble out of the way when Metallo swipes at her again, leaving gashes on her arms. Blood seeps through her sleeves immediately, and she grits her teeth as her healing gets to work. “Superboy wouldn’t leave me alone on my earth,” Metallo muses. “So perhaps I can rule on this one.”

Iris freezes her arm in place when she comes for her again, before swinging a punch directly to her face – and it doesn’t work. Her fist glances off what feels like stone – _that must be the reinforced titanium_ , she thinks – and she lets out a cry of pain. Thankfully she ducks the next swing, but she’s so disoriented that the next one gets her in the stomach, leaving a wound that she can feel, and she collapses. And then Metallo looks her right in the eye, grins, and shoves a metal spike in her leg.

The pain is so blinding that she can’t breathe, but something, maybe the Mindscape or instinct or whatever, in her catches that Metallo is lunging for her again, so she brings her hands up. Mustering up the last vestiges of energy she has, she sends a surge of electricity through her body and into Metallo. Her hands glow white right before she feels the pain, and the full blast knocks her away from Iris. She slams into a car and the alarm starts to wail, a shrill siren that seems to sound in time with Iris’ heart. But Iris is spent, broken, as she watches Metallo rise, slowly, and limp away.

***

“So she really just smiled all the time?”

Barry smiles. “Yes, Patty – or Thalia – was very smiley.”

“Hiding a whole lotta crazy,” his sister mutters, and Barry shrugs.

“Can’t disagree with you there. Now, did you find it? I have pretty extensive files.”

“Yes,” she says, taking out a file that’s marked as summer of the previous year. Malina wants to go through all Barry’s files as well as the ones at STAR Labs to get a fuller picture, so she came into his study about two hours ago. She looks up at him slowly, blue eyes suspicious. “Hey, are you trying to get rid of me?”

Barry sits at his desk and pulls up Pizza Hut’s webside. “Kinda.”

“What? Why – oh. Iris. Are you guys having a date?”

“Movie night,” he says. He glances at his watch. “She’s late, though, she was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. Should I call her?”

“You can give it a few minutes.”

“She’s not on duty, right? That’s what everyone agreed until Jesse and Wally got back.”

“Relax, she’s probably on her way.” Then she puts the files down and sits, cross-legged, in his armchair. “Ooh, is this what happens when you go all Protective Barry? Or Scary Barry?”

He frowns. “I’m not – what is that?”

“You know, when Iris is in danger or hurt or upset, and that huge vein pops in your forehead. Like that time you punched out that guy in high school.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mom told me it took three of the football team’s linebackers and the principal to get you off him.”

Barry folds his arms as he remembers Lance Burke. “He deserved it.”

“See? Scary Barry. Anyway,” Malina continues, “she’s probably on her way. I know how much she enjoys hanging out with you, even though you’re kinda lame.”

“Love you too, sis.”

***

Iris gasps and shakes with the pain, her vision blurring and her head pounding. Blood, warm and sticky and smelling like metal, pours from the wound in her leg, the slashes on her arms, and the wound she’s holding in her side. Her healing stopped working when she got stabbed - the attacks came quick after that and her body was working overtime trying to tend to all the injuries. Every time she breathes, she can feel the pain from the broken ribs she has - she felt the crack when she hit the ground. She looks down at her leg, the piece of metal piercing her calf, and tries calm the nausea that’s roiling within her in addition to the blinding pain.

 _Barry_.

Somehow, she finds it in herself to teleport away from the scene and recognises the inside of Barry’s kitchen. She sags against the door, heaving, trying to conjure up some energy to call for Barry, or her mother, or anyone, but she can’t. As soon as she stands the world tips and she stumbles, has to grip the table for support with arms that are shaking so badly she wonders if she has nerve damage.

_B-Barry…_

Iris takes a step on her one good leg but that’s it, her body gives out and she collapses, letting out a little cry of pain. She stares up at the lights, the pretty ones she made Barry get, breathing shallowly, shivering violently, feeling the energy leach out of her along with the blood that is slowly pooling around her on the floor. Someone comes into the room from the study, not seeing her lying next to the kitchen counter at first.

“Oh, you’re here,” the woman says. Iris knows that voice, but she’s too tired to decipher who it is. “I knew you were just late. Barry’s been waiting for you, he -  _oh my god_! IRIS!”

Iris opens her mouth as the woman crouches next to her, wanting, oddly, to tell her not to get too close because she’ll get blood on her jeans. She’s familiar, basically family, she knows, but her vision is blurring and it’s like she can’t make her brain work long enough to figure out who it is. The woman is talking, saying something important, she’s sure, but everything hurts and she’s beginning to let go. She opens her mouth again, and this time the words come out. “G-Get,” she rasps, swallowing painfully. “ _Get Barry_.”

Then Iris passes out, but not before she hears, “Barry! BARRY!”

***

The thing that should have tipped him off was Malina’s voice.

He’s standing by the window, trying Iris’ cell. His sister wandered off in search of the bathroom and a gnawing feeling in his gut made him get out his phone. The thing is, he knows he’s protective, almost to a fault and especially over Iris, and he has to remind himself that she has superpowers.

“Barry! BARRY!”

Malina has never sounded like that before. And when he gets to the kitchen, he sees why.

When Iris broke her arm in the car accident, Barry didn’t sleep for a week. Not just because he thought it was his fault, and because he always promised he would always protect her, but because he’s just never been able to see Iris in pain. It awakens a deep terror in him that he never feels with anything else. So seeing her unconscious and still and bleeding out onto his kitchen floor feels like he’s been stabbed through the chest. For a second he doesn’t process it, like it’s happening to someone else…but then he sees how much blood there is, and he remembers the last time this happened, with the jellyfish tentacle, poisoning her from the inside, and how _small_ she is…He races over to her side and his legs almost give out when he sees her whole body.

Blood stains all of her clothes, from cuts on her arms to a wound in her side that he can see because her jacket is ripped, _all_ of her clothes are ripped, and there’s blood in her hair, _God_ , what… “Her leg,” he manages, once he sees it. “What the hell is in her leg?”

Malina, who had been frantically trying to wake her up, seems to notice it for the first time. A thin metal claw is sticking out of Iris’ left calf, wickedly sharp and stained red. He drops to his knees and crouches over her, his hands shaking as he tries to feel for a pulse. “Iris? Iris, come on, can you hear me? Iris – what happened to her?” he demands, his voice raw. He’s trying to ignore how cold and clammy her skin feels underneath his fingers.

“I-I don’t know,” Malina say, her voice shaking. Iris’ blood is on her jeans and he swallows. “She just – appeared here, and she was talking, and she said to get you, and then she-”

Malina chokes on the last word, unable to continue, and Barry tries harder, trying to ignore the gnawing dread in him. “Iris? Iris, come on, please not now, not like this, _please not like this_ …” Because this feels like some kind of cruel joke, like punishment for not loving her soon enough, that as soon as they are allowed to have each other the universe has decided to take it away. “Gideon!” he demands. “Gideon, I know you’re here, what the hell happened?”

Gideon bursts out of her watch, and Barry tries to ignore the blood on her wrist. “What happened?” he practically growls.

“She went after that metahuman,” Gideon says, and even he looks guilty. “Well, not – I think she’s an alien, but he had these metal spikes, and-”

“Barry, she’s been stabbed at least once, and there are cuts all over her body,” Malina says, checking her over, and Barry swears the blood is leaking faster now. “And she might have a concussion.”

His whole world is spinning before his eyes, because this is _nothing_ like the last time. He was in STAR Labs before, and Iris didn’t have a metal spike in her leg, and there was nowhere _near_ this much blood. “Call Eddie,” he demands, turning back to Iris. “And Henry.”

“Barry, they won’t get here in time,” Malina disagrees. “She’s losing a lot of blood, and her healing has stopped completely.”

Barry’s heart twists. “We can t-take – we can take her to a hospital-”

“She won’t survive the drive unless we stop the bleeding. Look, I-” she cuts herself off. “I could do it.”

“What?”

“I’m not as trained as they are, but I’ve had to stuff like this before, and – Barry, we don’t have a choice. If she were a normal human, the amount of blood loss would have killed her by now.”

Barry nods helplessly – what choice does he have? He looks at Iris, wills himself to stay calm for her. “Okay. Okay, I – Gideon, tell Jesse and Wally they need to get here, _fast_.”

“But Waller-”

“Waller can go to hell! Tell them that they need to get back home, right now. Malina, what do we need to do?”

Malina swallows a couple of times, and he looks away from Iris. “It’s gonna be okay,” he promises. “We can do this. We can save her.”

She nods. “We need to stop the bleeding, and we need bandages. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but-”

“I can help with that,” Gideon says. There’s a brief flash of light, and he starts to recite her injuries. “Concussion, lacerations on the arms, legs and torso, stab wound to the lower abdomen, and severe stab wound to the triceps surae.” Malina blinks.

“Her triceps – that’ll take hours to heal even with her powers!”

“Then we need to work fast, right?” Barry asks. She nods.

“Get her to the couch – I’ll get the bandages.”

Barry lifts her – gently, as gently as he can, trying to ignore how limp she is – and carries her over to the couch, wincing when the motion shifts the spike in her leg and the fact that blood immediately seeps into the fabric. Malina returns with bandages and antiseptic, and a part of him hopes that this will be enough, but he’s smart enough to know that these injuries are far more complicated. Iris looks like she’s sleeping, and he kind of hopes she doesn’t wake up until it’s over. “What do you need me to do?”

“Just makes sure she’s…breathing.”

The minutes tick by slowly, Barry kneeling next to her and holding her wrist – still too light – counting her pulse in his head, _1-2_ , _1-2_ , _1-2_. It’s weak and rapid, but the important thing is that it’s _there_. Malina works as quickly as she can, cleaning and dressing, wrapping the wounds in gauze and bandages. Iris is still unconscious, though her skin has warmed up some. Finally, Malina comes to her leg, and the spike sticking out of it. “I have to take it out,” she whispers.

“ _What_? But shouldn’t we – wait, or-”

“Barry, I’ve stopped a lot of the bleeding and she’s getting her energy back, which means she’s healing again. And if she heals around the spike, she could have permanent nerve damage.”

He glances at Iris. The pain will most certainly wake her up. His voice comes out wobbly. “We can’t give her anything? Nothing at all?”

“Barry, our metabolism will burn through everything but that painkiller that Colin synthesised.”

He rubs his face. “Can’t you go to STAR Labs and get it for her?”

“It’s too complicated to administer – if I do it wrong I’ll stop her heart.”

“ _Take it out_ ,” Iris gasps hoarsely.

Barry looks at her and exhales in relief. Her eyes are bright with pain, mouth drawn with discomfort, but she’s here. “Hey,” he says softly. He kisses her on the forehead. “You’re going to be fine, okay? I promise.”

“Sorry, Bar,” she whispers. He strokes her hair.

“Sorry for what, sunshine?”

“I know I shouldn’t have gone after her, but – there were all these… p-people, and-”

“It’s okay,” he assures her. “It’s okay, Iris, nobody’s mad at you. Do you know who it was?”

“M-Metallo.”

Barry frowns. “From Kaden’s earth?” She nods, but Malina interrupts them.

“Iris, this is going to hurt,” she says. “A lot.” Iris exhales slowly.

“I know. But you’re right, it needs to come out.”

Barry kneels next to her again, taking both of her hands in his. “I’m here, okay? I’m right here, you’re going to be fine.”

Iris closes her eyes again. “Do it.”

The scream that’s ripped from Iris is one of the worst sounds he’s ever heard, followed closely by her choked sobs as she tries to breathe through the pain. “I’m sorry,” Malina says quietly as she bandages her leg. “Sorry, I’m sorry, Iris, I’m sorry…”

It gets worse, with Iris letting out a pained gasp or holding back another scream, and eventually she just starts crying silently, tears leaking out of her eyes. Barry holds her through the whole thing until she passes out again, exhausted. They wait for hours as Malina cleans up, and then they hear a knock at the door.

“Jesse,” Barry says, and Malina gets up to answer it. He looks haggard, worried – no doubt exactly what Barry looks like right now. He marches straight over to Iris and stumbles, too shocked for a snarky reply. “I have a stretcher,” he says quietly. “We need to get her to STAR Labs right now. She isn’t out of the woods yet, Barry,” he adds when he sees Barry’s face. “She’s close, but I need to operate on her to make sure there’s no damage to her bones or organs.”

It’s late, so no one sees them, and Barry holds Iris’ hand the whole time they’re driving. Wally is already there, Jesse says, and Dr. Wells, preparing a medbay, and then they’re wheeling Iris into the operating room. Jesse stops him when he tries to follow. “You can’t go-”

“I’m not leaving her.”

“Barry-”

“ _I’m not leaving her_.”

He sighs. “I know you want to be in there, but not only can I not have you in there when I’m operating, but it’s not going to be something you can watch.”

He folds his arms. “How do you know that?”

“Barry, I have to gives her at least a dozen stiches, all over her body. I have to open her up to make sure she doesn’t have internal bleeding. I need to set her ribs so they heal properly, because four of them are broken and they might have punctured a lung. And that spike? It hit a bone in her leg, so I have to rebreak and then set that part of her leg so she doesn’t have any trouble walking, not to mention check for any nerve damage.” He shakes his head. “I am not telling you this as her doctor, Barry, I am telling you this as your friend – you do not want to be in that room when this is happening.”

Barry runs a hand through his hair and Malina wraps her arms around herself. “I don’t want her to be alone,” he whispers. “She’s probably scared, and-”

“She won’t be alone, she’ll have us. And I’ll give you updates.” He turns to Malina. “You might have saved her life, you know.”

She nods, shy for once, and he squares his shoulders. “I’ll – _we_ will save her.”

Jesse disappears into the room and Barry’s grateful for his never-ending confidence. Malina touches his arm. “Barry?”

“We need to tell Kaden that an alien from his earth got through the breach,” he says quietly. “So, um – Chesca, we need Chesca, I don’t think Gideon has a system set up with Kaden yet. Henry and need to get the scene and make sure that none of her blood is still there, because someone could use it to identify her. We should get food, for when she wakes up, and…And I need to call her mom, and our mom…”

He closes his eyes at this part, at waking up Francine and telling her that Iris is in this horrible shape. Malina squeezes his arm. “You call her mom. I can get the food and call everyone else. Okay?”

Barry nods numbly and she surprises him by hugging her. “She’s gonna be okay, Barry.”

All he can do is nod.

***

Barry wakes up the next morning with someone running a hand through his hair.

It’s soft and he kind of wants to stay there for a while, but then he remembers the last night, and he sits up suddenly. He’s half-lying on a hospital bed, one arm thrown over the covers, the other holding someone’s hand.

“Hey, you,” Iris says softly, still stroking his hair. He blinks at her, and the events of the last night come in quick succession – finding her in his kitchen, and then patching her up as best they could before they could get her to STAR Labs. Then everything passed by in a wave of people arriving and doing things, whether it was Linda and Chesca with the breaches, Henry going to make sure Iris’ blood wasn’t anywhere on the scene, and Eddie putting out an alert for Metallo. But then there was him and his mother and Francine, sitting around waiting while everyone operated on her. Dr. Wells came out to give them updates, and Wally came out to hug Francine because it was so hard to operate on his cousin.

They finally wheeled her out a few hours later, unconscious and covered in bandages. “She’s fine,” Jesse had said. “Her leg will take a few days to heal, and she’s not going to be running around after any aliens soon with that concussion, but she’s fine.”

Francine had hugged Jesse, who was too tired and surprised to do anything but hug her back. She, Barry and his mother had refused to leave, and Dr. Wells had insisted that Wally and Jesse go home to sleep as well. “Her healing will take care of the rest,” she’d said firmly.

So all three of them stayed in her room, Nora and Francine on beds, Barry on a chair by Iris’ bed. At some point, he doesn’t remember when, he showered and got into the fresh clothes that Henry got him. Iris had a bandage around her abdomen, her leg was in a cast, and there were Band-Aids and stitches everywhere. She almost looked like she had in the coma, and Barry remembers that he’d held her hand to reassure himself that she was still breathing. That must have been how he feel asleep. Now he kisses her hand softly, relieved to find her pulse steady and strong. “Hey. Where’s your-”

“They went out to get food and a change of clothes,” she replies, and Barry frowns. “I’ve been awake for about an hour, Barry, and they didn’t want to wake you.”

“Oh. How’re you feeling?”

“Everything hurts,” she replies, “but I’m okay. You?”

“I’m okay now that you are.”

Iris’ other hand stills in his hair and she bites her lip. “Sorry I scared you.”

“It’s not your fault, Iris. It’s not like you could have left all those people to die.” He shrugs. “You’re a superhero. It’s your job.”

Iris looks strangely sad at this, and she rubs her nose. “I – look, Barry, can we talk?”

“Of – Of course,” he says, surprised. She takes a deep breath, grabbing his hands.

“I love you, Barry. Sometimes I don’t think you’ll ever know how much. That I’ll never get a chance to tell you how much. But I do. I always will. And I will always do everything in my power to come back to you.” She pauses. “But, Barry, this is going to happen again.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I am going to cancel dates and run out on dinners, and – and I’m going to show up in your apartment, bleeding or broken or both, because an alien has made it through a breach or a jellyfish has attacked or something worse than Calamity is after me. Sometimes it will be better,” she adds with a hopeful smile. “Sometimes it’ll be about the same, and sometimes it will be worse. My life isn’t always mine, it hasn’t been since the coma, and I need to be honest with everyone in my life because it will be a part of _their_ lives too.”

“Okay,” Barry says slowly. “Still not getting where you’re going with this, Iris.”

She glances down at her hands. “It’s hard enough being around me, but being with me is even harder. It’s more nights like this, not less, having to share me with _everyone_ , and not knowing where I am all the time. And I guess I was just so happy to get to have you that I didn’t realise what a huge thing it is, being with someone like me, and how hard it would be for you. And I love that you worry about me and want to keep me safe, but I can’t ask you to do that without you knowing what you’re getting into.” Iris rubs her eyes behind her glasses. “So – so if you want to take some time, to figure out what all of this means-”

“Wait, _what_?” Barry splutters, realising what she’s saying. “I don’t want to take time. Why would I do that?”

“I told you, being with me is a lot, and it’s not fair to you to be so involved without knowing what you’re getting into.”

“I’m the one who decides what’s fair to me, Iris,” he says firmly. “And I know what I’m getting into.”

“Your life is going to change, a lot.”

“I don’t care.”

“Something much worse than this could happen. It probably will.”

“Don’t care.”

“Barry-”

“Iris.” He tilts her chin up to him. “I. Don’t. Care.” She sighs.

“How can you say that?” She waves a hand at the room, at herself, at the two of them. “After everything that happened last night, how can you be so okay with it?”

“I’m okay with it,” he replies, “because I love you. Iris, I have watched you die sixty-eight times. I have watched practically every meta in this city try to murder you countless times.” He closes his eyes briefly. “And in these last few months, where I realised how I felt about you, I was always terrified that something would take you away from me, and then you’d never get to know, that I’d never get to tell you. And now you know, and I have never been happier in my whole life, so if you think for one second I’m going to take any more space from you than I already have, Iris West, you have lost your mind.”

Iris doesn’t look convinced. “Are you sure? Because-”

Barry doesn’t let her finish and kisses her, feeling her exhale into his mouth and pull him closer to her. It’s slow and warm, and Barry cups her cheek so she’s steady. Then he takes her wrist and guides it to his chest, right over his heart, where it’s beating at a mile a minute. “Still wanna ask me if I’m sure?”

“I…I guess not,” she whispers, and he grins.

“Thought so.”

“Oh, shut up.”

He grabs her hand again. “I meant that, Iris. I would rather have and you face the possibility of losing you than not have you at all.”

Iris smiles at him, and the glances at the door. “Oh, heads up. Our moms are here.”

About five seconds later both of them walk in, their faces lighting up when they see that Iris is brighter than she was when they left. “I’m fine,” she assures them after they hug her. “Really, I’ve died twice before, this is cake. Speaking of, did you guys get pancakes?”

“Oh, that’s my girl,” her mother smiles, hugging her again. “Also, you’re grounded.”

“Mom, I’m not a baby.”

“You’re my baby.”

“Besides, it’s not like you can move,” Barry points out. She shoves him – or she tries to; since she can’t move, she completely misses. He grins, taking the food his mother gives him. “Ha.”

“That’s not – wait, what are Linda and Chesca doing here? And…Henry and Eddie”

“How do you know that?” Barry wants to know. She tips her head to the side.

“I can hear their thoughts. Guess my powers weren’t affected at all.”

In the next moment, something flies straight at Iris and gloms onto her. “Lin – Linda,” Iris says painfully. “Come on, broken bones, _broken bones_.”

“I’m gonna kill you once you’re better,” Linda says, looking her up and down. Chesca scoffs.

“Save a piece for me,” Chesca adds. “I’d like to get a hold of Miss ‘No I’m Not Going to Do Any Superheroics Without Any Backup or Medical Assurance, Except for the Fact That I Totally Am’.”

“We’re very glad you’re alright, Iris,” Henry says sincerely, and she grins.

“I’m pretty jazzed about that myself, actually. And – uh-oh.”

“What?” Barry asks. Iris lies back in her bed, covering her face with her hands. “Jesse’s here.”

“Oh, this’ll be good,” Eddie mutters, and he’s right, because Jesse practically bursts through the door, followed by Wally and Malina, and points at her.

“ _You had one job_.”

“Hi Jesse,” Iris smiles sheepishly.

“Do not ‘Hi Jesse’ me. Have you lost your mind? We agreed that you wouldn’t do anything while we were gone!”

“That’s true.”

“And yet I get here in the middle of the night and you have four broken ribs, two stab wounds, and a concussion that a football player would be proud of!”

“Oops.”

“ _Oops_?!”

“What Jesse means,” Wally says, “is that we’re happy you’re okay, Iris.”

“Thanks. And thank you, everyone, for being there. I don’t really remember it apart from Jesse telling me that if I didn’t wake up he was going to kill me-”

“Still might,” he mutters.

“So I appreciate it. Now we just need to figure out how to get Metallo.”

Jesse stares at her. “Were you not listening when I told you about what happened to you?”

“Jesse-”

“You are not doing anything super for the next month-”

“Jesse, we agreed a week,” Wally points out.

“Malina, if she so much as _looks_ at her suit, tackle her-”

“You’re on duty full-time until she heals up,” Wally frowns. “You are very dramatic today.”

Iris pushes some hair behind her ear. “Jesse?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he says grumpily, which makes everyone laugh. They agree, since Chesca and Linda managed to get in contact with Kaden, that he would be the one apprehending Metallo. Everyone seems okay with this, and then they all head off to work or school or wherever they need to be. “I’m coming to take you home as soon as Wally and Jesse say you’re allowed,” her mother promises, kissing her on the forehead. “Stay here and get some rest, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Iris says obediently, and everyone but Chesca, Jesse, Barry and Malina leave. Iris lies back on her pillows. “You know, this actually proves my point.”

Jesse looks at her like she’s lost her mind. “What point would that be?”

“That everyone needs to be medically trained.”

“Only you would feel the need to make a metal spike being shoved in your chest about you proving a point.”

“Oh, Iris, before I forget, work called,” Chesca says. “Dr. Asshole gave them a doctor’s note to excuse you for the next few days, but Singh still wants to see how you are.”

“I might as well call her now, it’s not like I have anything to do,” she shrugs, grabbing her cell and dialling the number. “…Hi, Captain. Yes, it’s Iris. I’m fine, I just got into a little accident…I did what?” At this, she glares at Jesse, who looks pleased for the first time that day. “Yes, it is quite painful, dropping a…coffee table on your foot. Yes, I also wish I wasn’t so clumsy.” Barry, Malina and Chesca are trying to contain their laughter, and Jesse just grins. “Of course. Uh-huh. Thanks, Captain. Bye.”

“It was Wally’s idea.”

“I’m going to murder you.”

“I admit, I didn’t say no.”

“A coffee table?” she demands. “Were you trying to make me sound like a cartoon character? Who drops a coffee table on their foot?”

“Iris West,” he answers, and Iris throws a pillow at him. Chesca clears her throat.

“And on that note, why don’t we go get your medical records so we can explain things to you.”

“I’m gonna go get some work from my apartment,” Barry adds, standing up. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

He kisses her goodbye and the others leave, and Iris is left with Malina awkwardly sitting on the bed. “You okay, Mal?”

“Yeah,” she replies quietly. “So – um. How’s your leg?”

Iris shrugs at the huge cast surrounding her lower leg. “It’s been better, but I’ll survive. So,” she continues, “I hear you kind of saved my life.”

Malina makes a face. “No, Wally and Jesse did that. And Dr. Wells.”

“Dr. Wells?”

“Yeah, Jesse said he was a big help. Said it was like she was reading his mind in that surgery; she gave him everything he need.. But are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, really. And there’s no reason to be scared, Malina.”

“How do you know I’m scared?”

“Because I _am_ a mind-reader.” Iris sits up. “You’re worried that this might happen to you.”

She presses her lips together. “You’ve never seemed small to me, you know. I know we always make fun of your height, but I never really thought of you as anything but this person with a big heart and powers. Until last night.”

Iris nods. “Well, heroes fall, Malina. But they get back up again. And sometimes, heroes are the ones who help patch up their friends when they’re in danger. Heroes come in more than one size.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. “You know, I can see why he loves you so much.”

Iris thinks of Barry, of his unwavering faith in her and love for her, and smiles. “Well, I’m very lucky.”

***

Luckily for Iris her foot does indeed heal within a few days, but she still has to pretend that she’s injured when she gets to CCPD a few days later. Kaden has come to collect Metallo (the fight was embarrassingly short), and Barry wrote an article about Miss Miracle’s occasional ally so that people wouldn’t be alarmed. Now, with the threat gone, they can concentrate on more pressing matters – like Malina’s birthday.

Or, more specifically, her presents.

“They look small,” Barry says. Iris sighs.

“Of course they’re _small_ , Bar, they’re supposed to be inconspicuous. She puts the box in her bag. “Besides, this is hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and countless hours of research, not to mention hiding them at work so she doesn’t find them. Now, do you have your present for her?”

“It’s in my car,” he answers. “I’ll give it to her…after.”

Iris smiles at him and squeezes his hand, before turning to the door and groaning. “Ugh, not the crutches.”

“You have an image to uphold, West.”

“But I don’t even need them! I’ll probably end up tripping.”

He regards her for a moment, before bending down and picking her up. “Barry!” she laughs. “What are you doing?”

“Your foot is injured, Iris, and walking down the stairs with your crutches is hard for you,” he says seriously, walking towards the door with her in his arms. He grabs her crutches on the way out, and she grins at him.

“Well, Barry Allen, how very ‘Prince Charming’ of you.”

“It helps that you’re pint-sized.”

“You are _so lucky_ you’re cute, and that I have to pretend I can’t walk, jackass.”

“Nerd.”

Her mother is waiting in the lobby for them when they arrive, talking to a man in a suit. “Are you alright, Iris?”

“Yeah, my foot was just twinging a little,” she replies as Barry sets her down. “But I’m fine. Who’s – oh, DA Horton! You’re back!”

Cecil Horton is tall and broad with brown skin and a weathered, friendly face. Iris hasn’t seen him since before she went into the coma. “I am,” he says. “Thought I would get back into the swing of things, especially after Barry’s article. Which was very well-written, by the way.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Iris, I look forward to working with you on the Coolidge case,” he continues. “I was just telling your mother how meticulous you can be.”

“It’s always good to hear that about your kid,” her mother smiles.

“Call me Cecil.”

“Only if you call me Francine.”

“Francine,” he says kindly. “Anyway, I should let you go, apparently I have to clean up the corruption in my old office.”

“Just reporting the truth, sir,” Barry grins, and he wishes them all goodbye.

“He’s nice,” her mother says fondly, and Iris snorts as she gets her crutches together.

“He’s nice until he wants a dozen pictures to prove that the arsonist wore a size ten. Okay, so mom and I are going home to get the mac n cheese, Chess and Linda are at your house decorating, and Jesse’s getting the cake.”

“Jesse?” her mother repeats.

“Yeah, he’s being really nice lately,” Barry muses. “Wonder why.”

Iris, who has her suspicions, shrugs. “No idea.”

***

“This is a weird birthday present, Barry.”

“I haven’t given it to you yet,” he points out. Malina sits next to him on the edge, and they look out onto the water. It’s a warm day, it usually is on Malina’s birthday, but she’s never usually next to him on her birthday. “How was your day?”

“Okay,” she shrugs. “Couldn’t wait to hang out with you guys. It’s always more fun when you can show your powers off, you know?”

“It’s like that with family.”

“So, what did you want to give me in private? You sounded all serious on the phone.”

“Right.” He takes a deep breath. “So it…When you died, Iris gave me this idea to sort of some here and… to you. Just about life, and stuff. And I would drop these flowers in the pier, one for each year of your birthday. I always kept one,” he adds, bringing out a little book, “just to remember. And you’re here now, so I don’t need to do it this year. But I figure I’d give you the book.”

Malina’s eyes fill with tears, and Barry’s do to. “I know you’ve felt like you weren’t a part of the family. But you were. Maybe not the biggest part – but an important one.”

Malina looks through the book, at each flower that represents how important she was to them. “You know,” she sniffles, smiling. “Maybe you’re not _totally_ lame.”

“Love you too, sis.”

***

“Chesca, stop that.”

“They’re good!”

“There won’t be enough for everyone else!”

“Who cares?”

“I _will_ separate you two,” Iris mutters, coming up behind them at the food table. Back at the Allen house, Henry is frying steaks and burgers to go with the mac n cheese, pasta, enchiladas, and all the cake. Iris, at least, is grateful that she doesn’t have to pretend she can’t walk. And honestly, though this is completely bizarre, she would not change her family for the world. She’s about to head to Henry for another burger when someone taps her on the arm. “Iris?”

“Dr. Wells, what’s up?”

She leads them inside. “I have to show you something,” she says quietly. “I’m not – Iris, I have no idea what this means, but…” She lifts her hand, frowns – and a spark of blue lightning crackles around her fist.

“Helena-”

“I don’t _know_ , Iris” she says desperately, clenching her fists. “I don’t know what to do, or how it happened…”

“Have you told Jesse?”

“I don’t want to scare him.”

“Okay. Okay, we’ll figure it out. But do you not want your powers back?”

She hunches her shoulders. “These powers made me Calamity, Iris.”

“You’re a different person now, Helena.”

“Perhaps. But let’s concentrate on Malina first.”

They go back outside and it’s clear that Malina wants to open her presents. “Okay, I’m going first, since this is from all of us.” He retrieves a flat present from the pile. “This isn’t official,” he warns her, “because we still have to do the interview.”

Malina pauses in the act of eating her cake. “What interview?”

“The interview with Central City’s newest miracleworker…say hello to Little Miss Miracle.”

Barry pulls out the cardboard, which is a mock-up of a front-page article with Malina in her suit, looking over the city. It took him days to find a picture that fit. Malina’s eyes widen. “I get a name?”

“Yeah, and you better like it,” Linda adds. “’Cause we voted.”

“And you’re going to interview me?”

“As soon as you do something cool,” Barry grins. “So get to work, Little Miss Miracle.”

“Which brings me to my gift,” Iris says, pulling a box out of her pocket. “Could you guys all move a sec?”

They all sweep the sides of the garden, and Iris slips the ring on the fourth finger of her right hand, punching it out. She concentrates, just like she and Linda did in the test runs, and feels the ring hum. Then everyone gasps as her suit explodes out of it and she teleports, appearing into it at the other end of the garden. “It’s a work in progress,” she admits. “My clothes keep ending up in the library.”

“T-That’s mine?” Malina breathes.

“Oh, no. This is mine. _This_ ,” she adds, pulling out the other ring, “is yours.”

Malina squeals and hugs her, and then gets to work figuring out how to use it. Barry comes to sit next to her and she leans in to him; his arm comes up to wrap around her waist. “I’m glad you picked me,” he says quietly. “After…everything.”

“Well, I told you,” she says simply. “It’s always been you, Barry.”

And everyone is so busy watching Malina they don’t even notice that Barry and Iris are only noticing each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next one:  
> Iris holds the phone to her ear while Barry presses his forehead to her collarbone, muttering about being cockbocked by his own doppelganger. "What can I do for you, Flash?" Iris frowns. "Wait - Barry, wait. Calm down. Now start from the beginning, and go slowly. Tell me again, what...exactly is 'Flashpoint'?"


	35. Your Electric Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry and Iris would REALLY like some alone time. Family, friends, and Flashpointing speedsters have other ideas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW  
> I get quite self-conscious about these, so I'd appreciate feedback. Hope you like it! Chapter title taken from 'Electric Love' by BØRNS

 

“ _…this reporter bears no ill will towards Miss Miracle. Indeed, our professional relationship would be in trouble if I did – not to mention the fact that getting kidnapped would be a lot more dangerous if I didn’t have the Golden Grace on speed dial. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that she could, if left unchecked, become powerful enough to wipe out this entire city, and if we do not make sure that we are constantly watching to make sure our hero remains one. That Miss Miracle has elected to protect our city does not mean that she should be alone in doing it. We all have to play our part in being Central City’s heroes, and that way we all truly be safe_.”

Barry watches nervously as Erica chews on her pen, having just read the last part of his article. Next to him, Wendy seems a little less nervous, even though she did help him with a lot of the arguments. Barry supposes that writing about all the crime that happens in Gotham makes you a little harder than everyone else. Finally, Erica puts the article down. “It’s brilliant.”

He lets out a sigh of relief. “Really?”

“It’s exactly the kind of thing we need after the last few months, and honestly, it’s some of your best writing.”

Barry rubs the back of his head. “Well, Wendy helped me with a lot of the arguments.”

“I made the article a little more cynical,” she admits. “But he did most of it himself.”

“Well, the two of you can work that out with legal, but well done,” Erica says. “Send this off to the printer and it’ll be the headliner for the features, so – Oy.” She groans when she looks at her phone. “Missy is going to give me more grey hairs than my damn kids.”

“What’s with her?” Wendy asks. Barry chuckles.

“It’s Pulitzer season, so Missy is even more insufferable than usual.”

“I genuinely think she’s going to eat an intern,” Erica mutters. She stands. “I’ll deal with her, but well done, you two. You did great with this.”

Barry smiles proudly as she leaves, and Wendy breathes a sigh of relief. “Wow, thank God she liked it.”

“You didn’t even seem nervous!”

“Barry, I have literally been held up by the Ventriloquist. Although,” she adds as they walk out of the office, “Missy really could give her a run for her money.”

Barry makes a noise in agreement. He hasn’t exactly been pushing for anything to be considered for a Pulitzer, since he’s only been working here for a year and he’s not sure he’s written anything worthy of being considered. “Thanks for agreeing to do this, by the way,” he adds. “I know we didn’t exactly get off to the best start.”

But she just waves a hand. “Forget about it, Barry. I’ve had way more awkward things happen at work. Ever been bribed by one of the Joker’s henchwomen on a coffee run?”

“I cannot say that I have,” he chuckles.

“Anyway, I had fun,” she continues. “And even if I didn’t-”

“Wendy!” someone calls. “Phone for you!”

She rolls her eyes. “Duty calls. I’ll see you later.”

“Don’t forget we have go up to legal,” he reminds her, and she nods before walking off. Even though it had been _slightly_ awkward when they had first started writing the article given that Barry accidentally asked her on a date (something that Henry still finds funny even though it was weeks ago), they’d had fun writing it. Wendy did have some good anecdotes on what happened when they let people with power run amok, and Barry had his own personal experience with when Iris had been hit by Rainbow Raider and then attacked him and Patty. Still, he’s looking forward to writing about something else, whether it’s the partnership between Miss Miracle and the newly-named Little Miss Miracle, the fact that people are particularly interested in having Olivia Queen run for mayor later in the year, or the weird appearances of a strange figure in green in Coast City.

Even as he heads upstairs to go sign the release for the article, he gets another message on his blog about it. This time it’s a grainy picture of a figure mid-flight, surrounded by strange green light. Everyone had thought it was Iris at first, but Barry knew even before asking her that the green was darker than the sparks that exploded whenever Iris did something. Still, it was all the way in Coast City, and since he was still the go-to person on the DA case, not to mention all the work he had to do helping the team, he’s more than a little busy. In fact, he can’t remember the last time he had a night off.

Iris is also thinking of the team as she heads to CCPN to meet Barry for lunch. They seem to be going nicely (though Iris is suspecting the sky is going to fall at any moment since they’ve had so much peace). Not like it’s been _boring_ , since they’ve pretty much had a couple of villains every week since Iris got stabbed in the leg by Metallo, and Iris has been training Malina each time they get together, as well as working on Chesca’s powers, but nothing they can’t handle. That is, apart from Dr. Wells’ power.

She still doesn’t want to tell anyone about it, fearing that it would make anyone afraid of her again. And it’s true, there’s something about the fact that the woman who – for all intents and purposes – murdered her father getting powers again that terrifies Iris, but she knows the whole truth behind it. It had been Colin, not her. But still, she can’t push her. Iris told her that she would support her in whatever decision she made, and for right now, that is keeping it to herself.

Iris pushes the door to CCPN and looks around for Barry, before concluding that he must be in his office. As she’s making her way across the room, greeting all the people who recognise her because of Barry, she almost runs straight into Missy. “Um,” she says, adjusting her glasses as the woman scowls at her phone. “Hi, Ms Bridge.”

“Good, I need one of – Oh,” she says when she recognises her. “You’re not an intern.”

“Not to my knowledge,” Iris agrees.

“Hmph. I think those people are hiding from me and I need some research done. If you’re looking for Allen, he’s probably in his office.”

“Right,” she says, relieved. “Thanks. Um, have a nice day.”

“You as well, Iris,” she drawls, walking off, and Iris blinks at her back. That is the first time in almost a year the woman has called her by her name. Shaking her head, she slips into Barry’s office and dumps her bag on the sofa. They’re supposed to be heading over to the precinct for lunch – Barry needs a recorded statement from Captain Singh about something, and since they’ve barely had any time to themselves lately, he decided to come and spend lunch with her. She pokes around his desk absently, stopping when she comes to a collection of pictures in a frame. There are several – a big group photo from when they all went to play Laser Tag a couple of a weeks ago (Iris had to separate Barry and Eddie, again, Linda had to help this time, and there’s still some disagreement on which team won), a picture of his family at dinner, and then one of her, with a Miss Miracle plushie toy sitting next to it with an arm draped over the edge.

Iris frowns, studying it. They’ve been dating for almost a month, but she has no idea when Barry took that picture or when he put it on his desk. Granted, she’s rarely in his office – he usually meets her outside – but still. She’s laughing at something, smiling happily into the camera with a cup of tea in her hands. Iris recognises her mother’s sofa and her favourite fluffy socks, but that could be any night from the past month. Or any night since her mother was released, really. Just as she lifts it to study it further, a knock on the door interrupts her.

“Barry, you – Oh, I’m sorry,” Wendy says immediately when she sees Iris sitting at the desk. “Sorry, I was looking for Barry.”

“So was I,” Iris laughs, putting the picture down. She’s never actually met Wendy before, only seen her that time Jake pointed her out. Of course, she knows that Barry went on a date with her by accident – and looking back on it, she knows the reason he was so happy about it failing so spectacularly badly was because he was already in love with _her_.  “I’m sorry, we’ve never met before,” she says out loud, holding her hand out. “I’m Iris West, Barry’s…well, his Iris. I don’t know if he’s mentioned me.”

“Please, Barry talks about you all the time,” she smiles back. “Wendy Margolis, it’s nice to meet you. You probably recognise me as the person who keeps emailing him with corrections. I can’t imagine I was popular.”

“More popular than Missy.”

“Who isn’t?” Wendy laughs.

“Wendy, Legal’s looking for you,” Barry’s voice comes from outside, and then his expression brightens when he sees Iris. He glances at his watch. “Hey! Is it one thirty already?”

“It is. You guys been having a rough morning?”

“If hiding all the interns from Missy counts as a rough morning,” Barry says. He walks forward and kisses her lightly, cupping her cheek. “Wendy, have you met my girlfriend?”

“We were just getting acquainted,” she replies. “It’s nice to put a face to the cutest nerd Barry knows.”

Iris smacks Barry lightly on the shoulder. “I can’t believe you tell people that!”

“What? It’s true,” he shrugs. “Besides ‘most beautiful nerd I know’ is too much of a mouthful.”

Iris rolls her eyes and Barry grins at her, before turning back to his colleague. “Wendy, Legal just wants you to sign the release and then we’ll be good to go. Oh, and avoid Missy at all costs, she’s wearing the Evil Eye today.”

“Noted. It was nice to meet you, Iris,” she adds, and Iris smiles back at her.

“You too.” As Wendy shuts the door, Iris feels Barry pull her into an embrace, tilting his face up to him as he kisses her. “Hi,” he grins against her lips.

“Hi,” she breathes back. “How’s your day?”

“My will to live escaped about two hours after coffee,” he replies, rubbing his eyes. Iris manoeuvres him into his chair and settles on his desk across from him. “So there’s that.”

“You have been working really hard, Bar,” she points out. She takes his faces in her hands and he closes his eyes, sighing, and smiles lazily. Iris kisses him lightly on the forehead. “Seriously, have you gone to bed before midnight at any point during the last two weeks?”

“Probably not. But I’m fine, really. We’ve handed the article in and I think I only have a couple shifts with the team this week.”

“How did that happen?”

“Jesse owes me a shift after I covered for him so he could give that conference,” he replies. At her frown, he pokes her lightly on the nose. “You know, I should make you worry about me more often. It’s like you get even cuter.”

“Oh, ha ha,” she mutters, making him grin wider. “So, I had a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Where did you get this from?” she asks, handing him the photo frame. He takes it, frowning briefly.

“Oh, I asked your mom for that,” he replies. “I think it was from Thanksgiving. You know, right before you had to go deal with Connie and Sam and the Lazarus Pit.”

“Oh, God,” Iris groans, remembering. “This is exactly why I don’t deal with all that exorcism stuff. Is Connie still in hell?”

“No, I think she’s out,” Barry replies. Josephine Constantine, much to Iris’ continued frustration and amusement, is an exorcist (“Petty Drabbler in the Dark Arts,” she’d always told Iris, “I’m getting new cards made.”) that tends to show up in Star City whenever she wants, and Olivia usually calls her in to help. “She sent Freddie and Olivia that engagement present, remember?”

“What, the cursed statue that used to belong to Tutankhamun?”

Barry thinks for a moment. “She says she un-cursed it.”

Iris laughs, leaning over to grab some M&Ms from his desk. Freddie had finally asked Olivia to marry him a couple of weeks ago, much to everyone’s relief. Barry looks up at her as she rubs her eyes. “You okay?”

“Mm? Oh, yeah, just a little lightheaded. Didn’t have a big enough breakfast.”

He regards her for a minute, before pulling an energy bar out of his desk drawer; he’s taken to keeping a few there because Iris is always so hungry. “Just until we get food,” he says. She grins and gives him a light kiss. “My hero.”

“I’ll just turn off my computer and then we can go,” he promises, and she nods. While Barry is getting his stuff together, someone else knocks on the door. “Barry?”

“Hey, Scott,” he says. “What’s up?”

Scott shuts the door behind him. “I just wanted to say well done about your article – Wendy told me about it. Hey, Iris.”

“Scott,” she greets him. “Why do you look so freaked?”

“I’m hiding from Missy,” he explains, and Barry nods.

“Good idea – I think she’s giving up with the interns and trying to make the staff writers do her work.”

Iris shakes her head, still chewing. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about, she was nice to me just now.”

Barry raises an eyebrow. “She was?”

“Yes! She called me by my name and everything. My real name, not Rose or Daffodil or Petunia.”

At this, Scott turns an amused look to Barry. “Is that so? Why do you think that is, Barry?”

Barry, remembering how he’d basically demanded that Missy call Iris by her name several weeks ago, shrugs and avoids his eyes. “Ahem, I-I don’t know. Maybe she’s bored of making fun of people.”

“Missy?” Scott and Iris say together, and Barry makes a noncommittal noise.

“So, anyway, we have to go,” he continues quickly, ignoring Scott’s smile. “I have that interview with the captain, so I’ll see you later.”

Iris throws her wrapper in the trash and slips her hand easily into Barry’s as they walk outside to CCPD. “Oh, and Jesse finally cleared me,” she tells him. “I am officially recovered from being shish-kebabed by Metallo. I mean, he would have cleared me sooner but he’s an ass-”

“He was worried about you! So was Wally, and so was I.”

“But I was _fine_. He put me on bedrest for a whole day after I went after Shade, and there was barely anything wrong with me.”

Barry gives her an amused smile. “Iris, you pushed yourself so hard you tore a muscle. If he _didn’t_ put you on bedrest your mother would have killed him.”

“You’re just happy because you got to boss me around all day.”

“Yes,” he says immediately. “Yes, I was.”

***

“I cannot believe,” Iris grumbles, arms folded, “that you’re all doing this to me.”

Barry, who’s at the kitchen counter making lunch, laughs. “We’re not doing anything to you, Iris. You’ve been limping for a week and Wally says that your muscle has been tearing for days.”

Iris glares at her foot, raised and on ice atop Barry’s coffee table. She does admit that her foot had been aching before she went out on patrol the night before, and when she got back it was bruised and swollen, not even going down the next morning. She’d expected Jesse or Wally to give her some painkillers, not refuse to let her do anything for twenty-four hours.

Then she looks up at Barry, who is dutifully making pasta and preparing her painkillers, and bites her lip. He’d taken the day off to look after her, which made her feel guilty as well as ridiculous. She picks at the material on the new couch. She doesn’t know how it happened since she’d had to spend a few days at STAR Labs, but Barry told her that Eddie managed to get Barry a new couch after she’d bled all over his. Then Malina cleaned up the blood she’d left on the floor before he got home “Sorry you had to miss work,” she tells him quietly. “I know how busy you guys are.”

“I don’t mind,” he says as he grates the cheese. “I can work in the study anyway.”

“And I’m sorry about your couch. And the floor. And your clothes.”

At this he turns to her, frowning. “Iris, you’re not feeling guilty about that, are you? It’s not like it’s your fault Metallo attacked you.”

She shrugs and he comes to sit next to her, setting the tray on the table. “Iris, you love me, right?”

“Of course.”

“And I’m an important part of your life.”

Iris smiles at him. “The best part.”

Barry blushes a little at that, and glances at his hands. “Well, you’re the best part of mine as well,” he says. “Miss Miracle is a part of my life, like you said, it’s a small price to pay for having you in my life. So you don’t need to apologise.”

Iris leans forward to kiss him and then starts on her food, and his phone buzzes. He grins when he recognises the odd pattern of numbers and symbols that Chesca showed him means a message is coming from another earth, and opens it up. E52 Iris is sitting on his doppelganger’s lap, her arm looped around his neck and his wrapped around her waist. And they do indeed look as happy as his Iris and himself does (although he still thinks no one has ever made anyone as happy as Iris makes him). _She’s a cutie!_ , the caption says. _Have you met my boyfriend? (Glad we kept the promise)_.

_Me too_ , he sends back.

“What’s that?” Iris asks around a mouthful of pasta, and Barry pockets his phone.

“I’ll tell you later,” he promises. “I wanted to ask you something about that, actually.”

Iris swallows. “Sure, what?”

“Why did you come…here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Not that I didn’t want you here,” he says quickly. He hesitates, struggling for the right words. “I guess I mean – when you were injured, you could have gone straight to STAR Labs, or found Wally and Jesse at Waller’s place. You could have even gone to Olivia’s – she’s trained in this stuff. But you came here. And I’m – I’m just me. I didn’t really do anything to help.”

Iris puts her pasta down. “Barry, you got Malina to help me, you called everyone back to the city, told Chesca and Linda to get Kaden, told Eddie to get my blood off the street, you called my mom, and you stayed there until I woke up. Having someone keep a clear head and remember all that stuff when things like this happen is the only reason I can do any of this. And besides, that’s not even it.”

“What is it?”

“Barry, I wasn’t thinking about anything other than getting to safety,” she says simply. “And I never feel safer than when I’m with you.”

***

But now Iris is fine and healed up, which is why she’s fine to go on-duty tonight after work. They arrive in Iris’ lab with their lunch and spread it over her desk. “How’s the case with Coolidge coming?” Barry asks, and Iris sighs.

“Okay, I think,” she says. “It’s complicated, because she uses a different method of heating than Heatwave did, and it’s much harder to explain to a jury. Which makes me have to explain everything in detail so everyone gets it, but that’ll make it too long, and the DA says it turns everyone off…it’s like a balancing act.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

“Yeah, it’ll just take some work. Iris West, saving the world one toxicology report at the time.” She flips her hair out of her face and sits on the table across from him so she can eat her grapes. Barry’s eyes flicker down to her boots and back up again, and he swallows. She’s wearing one of those form-fitting dresses again, which are always awful for his concentration. “So, what story do you think you’re going with next?” she asks.

“Real world or impossible?”

“Impossible.”

“Well, I was thinking of looking into that weather thing, with the storm clouds? It kind of feels like a meta, but I’m not sure where to start.”

Iris nods, crossing her legs. Every time she wears those damn boots he all he can think about is taking them off and wrapping her legs around him. “Yeah, I thought that too,” she agrees. “It happened again last week, didn’t it? One time is weird, but twice is a coincidence, and your blog says it’s been going on for a while.”

“Exactly,” he points out. “I was talking to Chesca, and she thinks that it’s another meta or someone who’s using technology to manipulate the weather.” He pauses to drink some water. “But then she also said that the tech that you would need for that much power would be astronomical, so unless Olivia or Bree Wayne is controlling the weather, it’s probably a meta.”

Iris nods, popping a grape into her mouth. “Right, but I’m just trying to figure out what they want,” she continues. She licks the grape juice off her fingers and he feels his skin tingling as he stares at her mouth, which is distractingly kissable and incredibly unfair. “What, are they trying to make it snow in April? And why wait until no one – Barry? Are you listening to me?”

He blinks and looks up at her. “I – Sorry, what?” She smiles sympathetically at him.

“Wow, Bar, you must be exhausted. You looked all spaced out.” She comes and sits in his lap, crossing her legs, and strokes his hair. “Promise me you’ll get some sleep tonight, okay?”

“I promise,” he replies. She kisses him, softly at first, but then she pulls at his collar and loops her arms around his neck. He pulls her against his chest, biting her lower lip, and grins when she lets out a soft moan. Barry curses the fact that they’re in her office because at this point he just wants to lift her up and pin her to her desk-

“Your mom’s coming,” she whispers, breaking away from him, and he stares dazedly at her as she stands before hearing his mother’s heels in the hallway. She walks in with a harried look on her face that clears as soon as she sees Barry. “Great, you’re both here. I wanted to ask you something.”

“Mom, is everything okay?”

She sighs, rubbing her face. “Not exactly. I have to replace Perez at a conference in Coast City on Thursday, but I don’t want to leave Malina by herself. She’s stressed out because of her exams and it’s making her sleep all spotty, like Iris with her nightmares. I was hoping you would stay with her, Barry.”

Barry glances at Iris. “Oh. Yeah, I can, it’s just – that’s our one-month anniversary. But it’s fine,” he adds quickly. “I can be there.”

“We both will,” Iris promises. “I know how to deal with those, and you’re right – she shouldn’t be alone. She could hurt herself.”

“Great,” Nora sighs in relief. “Good. Oh, Iris, the DA wants to have a meeting with you at lunch on Thursday.”

“Cool, thanks for telling me. Hey, what’s happening to Henry? Does she not want to stay with him?”

“You know what he’s like,” Barry laughs, before his mother can answer. “He’s probably not going to be on the continent on Thursday, much less Central City.”

Nora nods. “Yes, probably. I have to go, but thank you both.”

They watch her leave and Barry turns back to Iris. “I’m sorry, Iris-”

“Barry, it’s fine,” she laughs. “You know we were always much better at staying in than going out anyway.”

He grins as she settles in his lap again. “Are you just saying that because the premiere of _Game of Thrones_ is on Thursday?”

“…no.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, fine, I want to see some dragons and blood,” Iris says as Barry laughs. “Sue me.”

“You’re so cute when you’re nerdy, sunshine. But you’re right, we can just do something at mom’s until Malina gets back. I wouldn’t want to miss the anniversary of our first kiss.”

“Wait, is this the first first kiss or the second first kiss?”

“The one in my apartment.”

“So the second?”

He frowns. “I…guess? God, you metas make everything complicated.”

“Shut up!” she laughs, hitting him, and he laughs with her. “Oh, and I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did you remember?”

Barry pauses in the act of kissing her hand. “Remember what?”

“Our first first kiss. I didn’t tell you, I don’t think,” she muses. She leans back to her desk to pop a couple of grapes in her mouth. “And the only other person who could have was Eddie, but since he was trying to murder everyone that day I don’t think he was paying that much attention to us kissing.”

Barry swallows. He’s not entirely sure about how Iris will feel about the explanation that he made out with her doppelganger and _that’s_ how he remembered their kiss. “Well,” he begins. “It’s a really funny story, actually.”

She swallows her fruit. “It is?”

“Yeah! It’s hilarious and you’ll – laugh, and…um…” Iris narrows her eyes at him.

“Bartholomew?”

“Okay, so that sounds like I’m in trouble.”

“You might be.”

“Um.”

She grabs his chin. “Bartholomew.”

“I-”

“Iris – Oh, sorry,” someone says. When he looks up Barry recognises one of the cops. Iris removes her hand.

“What’s up, Alex?” she asks.

“The Captain says she’s ready for that interview, but it needs to be now because she has a meeting later,” she explains. Barry clears his throat.

“Wow, I guess I have to go…” he says, getting up and gathering up his things. Tiny and adorable as she is, Iris still scares him sometimes.

“Wait, Barry-”

He kisses her quickly. “Call you later, love you!”

***

STAR Labs is mostly empty when Iris arrives there at the end of the day looking for Chesca. That’s on purpose – they arranged this meeting so that it would just be her, Chesca, and Dr. Wells. Linda and Wally are at work, Malina’s out, Jesse is giving a conference, and Eddie is on a mission. Barry is still working, and for whatever reason is studiously ignoring her attempts to bring up what freaked him out about remembering their kiss by talking about their anniversary. She’s cooking and then they’ll hang out, like they always do, but it’s still a dream come true for her.

Iris finds Chesca in the main Cortex, twirling a screwdriver around in her hands. She looks up when Iris enters. “Hey, Bambi Eyes, what’s up?”

“Not much, you? This place is still pretty neat, so I’m guessing Jesse is still at his conference.”

She shakes her head. “He’s at home. He offered to come in to help me with work, but Dr. Wells doesn’t want him to know yet, so…”

“You’re right,” a voice says from behind them. Dr. Wells is standing behind them, her hands knotting together in front of her. “I do not.” Iris puts her bag down.

“Dr. Wells,” she says. She glances at Chesca. “Are you sure about this? Because you don’t have to-”

“Quite sure,” she replies quietly. “Thank you for coming. And for not…telling anyone.”

Chesca shrugs. “Anything for you, Dr. W. Are you ready?”

“I am.”

She retrieves something from her workstation, and Iris sees that they are the bracelets that she and Chesca have been working on for the past few weeks. Iris has given several blood samples and studied her own medical records, while Chesca did the majority of the building. The result is sitting in Chesca’s palm, small and silver and inconspicuous apart from the blue glow that comes from the inside ring. “They fit around your wrist, like this,” Chesca says, slipping them around her wrists. “They’re on all the time, but you’ll need to charge them when they run out – there’ll be a red flashing light, like this. If they start to malfunction I can fix them.”

Dr. Wells nods quickly, twisting her wrists around to test them. “Good. Thank you, Chesca, you have no idea how much I appreciate this.”

“Of course,” she replies, and then Iris sighs.

“Dr. Wells, you don’t have to do this. Your powers, they’re not-”

“Iris,” she interrupts calmly. “I am always grateful for the faith that the two of you have in me. Truly, I don’t know where I’d be without it. But I do have to do this.”

“Your powers don’t make you evil,” she insists. Chesca nods.

“And Jesse wouldn’t care about-”

“Jesse is the reason I’m doing this,” she interrupts, and then her face softens. “When he knew me, when his uncle was alive, I was normal. I was Aunt Helena who showed him how to use a Bunsen Burner and gave him my old journals. I was safe.” She looks at her hands, and Iris knows she’s thinking of all the people those hands have killed, even though it hadn’t been her in control of herself. “I know what you’re thinking – that it wasn’t my fault. But I saw myself do those things, hurt those people and hurt _you_ , Iris, even if I couldn’t stop it. I do not want to be in the position where that could happen again.”

Her voice is firm, her eyes steely, and Iris knows they won’t be persuading her to change her mind. Not any time soon, anyway. “Alright,” she says finally. “Tell us if anything goes wrong with the cuffs.”

“I will,” she says evenly. “Thank you, again.”

And she leaves as quickly and quietly as she came. Chesca slumps in her chair and Iris massages her temples. “Wow. It just never ends for her, does it?”

“How did her powers come back?” Chesca asks. “I thought they left when Colin stole them.”

“So did I,” Iris sighs. “After Calamity attacked me, my powers didn’t _disappear_ , exactly, but I was too shaken to access them for about a week. It was like I had a mental block, but I never felt like my powers were _gone_.”

“And Terrence is dead and he’s her lightning rod, right?” Chesca adds. “I know Barry’s like triple A batteries for your powers, so wouldn’t it work the same for her?”

“I have no idea – I don’t know that much about it yet. I might got to Earth-2 to ask Jay.” Iris perches on the table. “I just can’t imagine what it must be like for her, to remember everything she did even though she wasn’t able to stop it.”

“ _Could_ she have stopped it?” Chesca ventures. Iris looks at her and she sighs. “Look, I’m not saying she would have wanted to do any of this on purpose, but was it possible?”

“I don’t think so. I read through Colin’s files and watched his videos, and the way our mind control works is that it takes control of our central nervous system through the electricity in us. When he used tachyons to mimic it, he was doing the same thing. I mean, how do you overcome your own brain?”

“Right,” she replies. She hesitates. “How are they? The…videos, and stuff.”

Iris shakes her head. “He has video footage of nearly every moment of my life from the past three years. Chess, he even has video of the night I was struck by lightning.”

“How is he?”

Iris recalls the last meeting she had with Waller. “Still crazy. Still wants me dead.”

“Are you okay?”

“Most of the time.” Sometimes it’s like she still feels his eyes on her. She shakes her head. “Anyway, Linda and Wally will be here soon for their shift. Get out of here – don’t you have a date with Eddie tonight?”

“I do.” She pauses, biting her lip. “I think…I think I’m going to tell him I love him.”

Iris’ eyes widen. “Chess! That’s great! Tonight?”

“Maybe,” she says shyly. “I don’t know, every time I think about him I want to just…like, vibe to every corner of the universe, you know?”

“I know. I’m so happy for you!” she squeals, hugging her. “Call me to tell me how it goes, okay?”

“What if it goes badly?”

“Well, it can’t go any worse than you telling him, him moving in with an assassin, and then being dragged up and down the city by a psychopathic metahuman for Christmas, so you’re already beating me.”

***

Francine West has gotten used to many things over the months since she came out of prison. There’s an IHOP in the plaza. They have a Black President. There is a woman who runs around in tights saving the world who calls herself Superwoman. But the one thing she cannot get used to?

Her daughter’s new appetite.

“Iris,” she says, half-laughing and half-concerned, “are you alright?”

Iris swallows the bite of baguette she just took. “Sure, mom. Why?”

“Because that’s your third sandwich and we still have dessert coming.”

Iris shrugs. “Oh, well, I only had one lunch today, so I’m kinda peckish.”

“Peckish,” she smiles, shaking her head. “Are you sure you don’t want to slow down, at least?”

“I’m fine, mom,” she laughs. “Come on, I want to hear about your day.”

Though it takes a lot, running Team Miracle and having her job and the fact that her and Barry are a couple, she never sacrifices her time with her mother. Even if it is quick meetings at Jitters before she has to meet Barry for their anniversary dinner soon. “Well, that trip to go to that Clark Kent conference has gotten everyone very excited,” she says. “You should see the amount of articles we’re having to edit. He’s very inspiring.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Mm, and I’ve also been getting a lot of people asking about the fact that my daughter is dating Dr. Barry Allen.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “God, don’t remind me. He loves it when people call him that.”

“Well, they’re trying to see if I can get him to come in and talk to everyone,” she continues as the waitress brings their Danishes. “Especially about that mysterious green thing that’s flying around Coast City.”

“Good luck, because he has no idea what’s up with it,” she points out. “None of us do. I might take Malina out to investigate with him, actually, if we get some time next week.”

“That’s good, so – Iris, honestly, don’t you have dinner with Barry later? Are you sure you should be eating that much cake?”

Iris snaps her fingers. “You’re right, thank you. I have to pick up the dessert on the way to his mom’s.”

“That’s not what…” she sighs, smiling. “I’m glad you’re happy, sweetheart.”

Iris grins. “Me too. And that isn’t even that – Oh! Mr Horton, how are you?”

The DA gives them both a warm smile as he walks up to them. Iris is so busy with the last of her cake she doesn’t notice him lingering on her mother. “Very well, Miss West. Francine,” he greets her.

“Cecil,” she nods back. Iris looks up at him.

“Did I forget something in the meeting today?”

“No, not to my knowledge. I just saw you and your mother and I wanted to congratulate her on the latest issue of the community college’s paper,” he replies. Her mother beams, surprised.

“You read it?”

“I always try to keep abreast of the latest news, whether it’s from CCPN or anywhere else.”

“Hear that, mom?” Iris grins. “You’ve got a fan. Just don’t expect her to get everyone to write nice things about you in the paper, Mr Horton. Journalistic integrity and all that.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. But I get the feeling your mother isn’t the kind of woman to compromise her morals.”

“That’s a very high compliment, Cecil.”

He smiles and nods. “Anyway, I should let you get back to your lunch.”

They wish him goodbye and Iris turns back to her cake. “He’s nice.”

“Yes,” her mother agrees, looking after him, “he is. Oh! Your dress for Olivia’s engagement party came to the house, do you want me to bring it by?”

“I’ll pick it up during dinner. Honestly, I’m still surprised she let Dig and Freddie talk her into having one.”

“How exactly do you know Olivia Queen, again?”

“We…work together, on occasion.”

Her mother raises an eyebrow. “Iris, do I want to know?”

Iris makes a face. “Probably not.”

“Thought so.”

***

“…so no one actually knows anything apart from the fact that it’s not you,” Barry finishes as they clear the table. They manoeuvre around the candles that Iris lit before she got there, clearing away the leftover chicken and dessert dishes. Neither of them thought it odd that they’d had their anniversary dinner in Nora’s house. They’d had so many moments in this house together that this just feels like another in a long list.

The house is warm but not too stuffy, since Barry has opened the windows against the April evening. Iris is full and content, not just because of the meal, but because she’s finally getting used to their new equilibrium and the way that Barry looks at her – namely, that it’s not going to stop any time soon. She knows it’s not the wine that’s making her feel all happy drunk – it’s just him. He’s handsome in a grey shirt with the top button undone and his hair neatly styled, and that smile that makes her world spin. And there’s something different about tonight as well, in the way that he’s looking at her and lingering on her. She noticed it a few days ago, actually, when she went to his office.

“Well, there can only be one Golden Grace,” she tells him as he joins her on the couch. “So don’t go getting any ideas, Allen.”

He chuckles as he pours their wine for them. “Never. I’m a one-miracle man, Iris.”

“Cute,” she replies. He hands her one of the glasses. “This is really nice, you know. I know you feel bad about having to do this here, but I like it.”

“Going out is so much better than staying in, her admits.” He looks up at her and that wondrous smile is back on his face again. “So, Iris West, happy one-month anniversary of our first second kiss.”

Iris puts a hand over her mouth. “Second first kiss, Bar.” He sighs, shaking his head.

“See, I think I need more sleep. It’s a good thing we didn’t go out – I probably would have ordered strawberries and then poisoned myself.”

They clink their glasses together and drink. “And at least we know no one’s going to put _this_ date on Twitter,” she giggles. She drinks the rest of the wine, not noticing that Barry is looking at her, and puts the glass on the table. His eyes rove over her face, like he’s seeing her for the first time and wants to commit her face to memory, and he takes a deep breath. Her eyes lock with his and she smiles, a little uncertainly. “What?”

Barry’s breath catches in his throat and he licks his lips, his cheeks colouring, and he looks at his lap, shaking his head. “I just…” He looks back at her, and that look is on his face again, like he’s never seen her before and he’s amazed by what he’s seeing. His brow furrows briefly. “When the hell did you get to be so beautiful, Iris? How did I…never notice?”

It takes everything in Iris not to melt right through the couch. She takes the glass from him and puts it on the table next to hers. “Well, you have free reign to notice me now, Barry Allen.”

He gives her a lopsided grin as she leans into kiss him; he meets her halfway in a brief kiss that sets her heart racing. She lets out a soft sigh and then kisses him again, gasping when she feels his hand on the inside of her thigh, sliding down it to part her legs; it makes sparks shoot up and down her body. She grabs a fistful of his shirt and pulls her down on top of him, still kissing him, and he insinuates himself between her legs. He tastes like the wine they just had and his mouth is hot and hungry as he grips the armrest above her head. His hand leaves her thigh and flutters uncertainly near her waist, just underneath her blouse.

“Iris,” he whispers between kisses, his voice low and rough and shaking, just a little. “I want…C-Can I…”

Iris opens her eyes. He’s breathing into her mouth so all she can smell is wine, wine and him, sending her thoughts spinning. His green eyes are full of want but also uncertainty as they search her own, and it occurs to her that he’s just as nervous as she is at all this boundary-pushing.

“It’s fine, Barry,” she promises, and her voice is shaking a little as well. He swallows.

“’Kay,” he gets out. “If – If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

He slides a hand to her waist and hip and pulls her up into the hard press of his body and she hums into his mouth, making him grin. “And you can – um, if you want…”

“I want,” she says. “If _you’re_ sure.”

He breaks away and brushes his lips with hers, his tongue darting out to graze her bottom lip. “Very sure.”

Iris slides one of her hands down to his collar and slowly undoes his buttons, feeling the planes of his chest hot underneath her fingers as she rakes her hands up it. Barry lets out a choked moan and kisses her harder, so thoroughly he’s shifting her glasses with his nose, slipping a hand underneath her blouse and grazing his fingers across her back. She arches into him and his kisses are bruising now, barely giving her time to catch her breath, and she fists one of her hands in his hair. He whispers her name once, like it’s being pulled out of him against his will, and-

Iris feels the foreign thoughts enter the vicinity before the key turns in the lock, and breaks away from him. “Barry,” she says quickly. He blinks at her, dazed and aroused, and licks his lips.

“What? What is it?”

“Your sister,” she replies, pushing at his shoulders. “She’s here.”

His eyes widen and he pulls away from her (Iris has no time to wonder why he’s grabbing a cushion and putting it in his lap; she has to get the wine away and replaces it with some beers), and she blows out the candles. Then she sits up and straightens her clothes just as Malina opens the door. Barry still looks flushed and her lipstick is all over his mouth, swollen from the kissing, and she gestures for him to wipe it. Malina breezes in and slams the door, sighing in relief.

“Oh, thank God,” she says. “It’s only nine fifty; that means I have time for food. Hey, guys.”

“Hey, Mal,” Barry says, his voice still a little strangled. “You’re back.”

“The library walls were closing in on me,” she replies, hanging up her jacket and bag. “Besides, there are more important things to worry about than contract law.”

“Oh, yeah?” Iris asks, distracted. She’s still thinking about Barry’s hands on her skin. “Ahem, like what?”

“Duh, like Melisandre bringing Jon Snow back from the dead?” She kicks her shoes off. “I can’t wait! And I need to find out where Drogon took Daenerys. OH! If Sansa doesn’t kill Ramsay Bolton this season, I’m rioting. You guys were going to watch it, right? You don’t mind if I join you?”

Barry and Iris share a look, Barry’s more apologetic than anything. “No,” Iris replies. “No, we don’t mind. Right, Barry?”

“Don’t mind at all,” he agrees. Malina sighs, relieved.

“Great. Because I was really stressed out because of school, and Jesse says that I need to do something to relax me before bed. Last week I had an anxiety nightmare so bad I almost knocked myself out with a snowglobe.”

“I used to get those,” Barry tells her. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

“I appreciate you guys being here,” she says sincerely. She looks around. “Do you know if we have any food?”

“There’s some stuff in the fri-” Barry starts, and Malina is gone and back inside three seconds, a steaming box of pizza in her hands. “Seemed quicker,” she shrugs. She settles back between them. “Want some?”

“No, we – already ate,” Iris replies, turning on the television. Malina glances at her brother, who’s opening his beer. “What are you doing with that pillow?”

Barry glances at Iris – who in that moment realises exactly what it’s doing there. “Um,” he stutters. “Just, you know…nothing.”

But then the music starts and Malina claps her hands together, not noticing that Barry and Iris are both blushing furiously.

***

“Do you have to do that?”

Eddie looks up from the desk across from Barry’s, where he’s dismantling and reassembling a gun. “What?”

“ _That_. Do you know how terrifying it is, trying to write reports while you’re playing with your Glock?”

“This is a Beretta.”

Barry stares at him. “That is not even close to the point.”

Eddie laughs. “Well, you’re the one who wanted my help writing the report to Waller, and this is what I do on my day off.”

“Only because I’m pretty sure Iris is going to murder your boss one day because _she’s_ sick of writing them.”

Most of them have the day off today, which is why Jesse, Chesca and Dr. Wells aren’t here either. Iris is on a case uptown with his mother, and Eddie took a break from not being an insurance salesman so he could help Barry with this report. “I still don’t know why we have to hand these in,” Barry continues, turning back to his computer. “It’s always the same thing – ‘Miss Miracle defeated a metahuman. Miss Miracle and Little Miss Miracle defeated a metahuman. Nobody believes that Eddie is a spy, even though he can speak 17 languages and knows how to kill you with his pinky finger’.”

“Index finger.”

“Once again, missing the point.”

Eddie shrugs, going back to cleaning his gun. “Well, yeah, it’s boring, but it’s so we can keep abreast of things. There are a lot of cases that we go through that even the slightest hint in a faraway report somewhere else could help. Like, Superwoman, for example. Right now, according to the bulletin I got this week, she’s having some problems with some sort of alien that’s attacking people, but she can’t see it – every time she gets to the scene, she’s too late. But if we have accounts of things going on in different places, we might have some clues.” He peers over Barry’s shoulder. “I think you’re doing pretty well. Just make sure not to send him your hotel arrangements for the Queen Suites,” he adds, and Barry laughs.

“Right. Well, you know Iris and I are going to see Hamilton, and Olivia’s the one who got us the tickets and the hotel, so…”

“I know,” he replies. “How are things with you and Iris, by the way? You guys seem really happy.”

Barry smiles. Ever since they got together he’s felt like he finally has his feet on solid ground. Little things, like her texting him a joke in the middle of the day or visiting her at work or even sitting around when they’re both on duty, are the best parts of his day. And despite the fact that absolutely everything in the universe is conspiring to keep them from having some alone time (even if last night hadn’t really been Malina’s fault), he would not change anything that’s happened to get them to this point. “We are. What about you and Chesca? I can’t imagine you thought this is where your life would end up. Like I thought you’d expect to be running around on Westminster Bridge shooting out helicopters.”

“Not all spies are James Bond, Barry.”

“Still.”

Eddie doesn’t reply for a moment. “You’re right,” he says finally. “I didn’t expect this at all. It’s like…You spend your whole life with Waller and the agency, and you don’t think you’re going to get anything else. At the very most a job like mine when you’re ready to retire so they can still call you when they need you. And with a name like Thawne, you pretty much expect everyone to hate your guts for life.”

“Or Zolomon or Carliss or…” Barry frowns. “Savitar? Was that it?”

Eddie shudders. “Don’t even talk about her. The stories I’ve heard…Anyway, I’ve pretty much spent my whole life wearing a mask and pretending to be someone else for a living. And then when Colin kidnapped me when I came to look for Mal and made me Cobalt Blue, it was like I could be myself. Chesca talked to me like I was a person even though she couldn’t see me. So I guess you could say I’m happy too.”

Barry grins. “Sounds like you’re in love, dude.”

Eddie stares at him. “I – What? We haven’t…said that, yet.”

“Take it from a guy who was oblivious to his own feelings for years,” he laughs, slapping him on the shoulder. “You’re in love. You should tell her.” Eddie runs a hand through his hair, his face a mask of panic.

“I can’t do that!”

“Eddie, you stopped Harley Quinn from killing a senator when he escaped last week. You can do this.” He pauses. “Just, uh, don’t stall, okay? Just tell her, and don’t let anything interrupt you.”

He frowns. “Don’t let anything interrupt us?”

“Trust me.”

***

The next few days pass in a blur of work and family dinners and superheroing. Barry finds that Superwoman genuinely is having problems with some alien thing, as Clark emails him on Saturday about it. He assures him, however, that the meeting between Superwoman and Miss Miracle will indeed take place. _She’s very excited about it_ , he wrote in the email. _She thinks it could be the start of something incredible_. Iris is excited as well – when he can see her and she isn’t running around after whatever criminal happens to be taking up all their time. In fact, they’re both so busy that he doesn’t even see her until the following Saturday afternoon, and even then it’s for Miss Miracle stuff. It’s her favourite kind of Saturday, though, slow and lazy and quiet, with only the sounds of Barry’s iPod and the traffic way below to keep them company.

“…and that concludes interview number 657 between Dr. Barry Allen and Miss Miracle,” Barry concludes, turning off the tape recorder. Iris reaches up and takes her mask off, automatically turning off the voice-distorter, and puts her glasses back on.

“You know, I still don’t know why we have to record those,” she says as Barry’s packs up his notebook. He walks off towards his office.

“Standards and practices, sunshine,” he calls. “I’ll transcribe it later, but I have to prove the interview took place. But you have your distorter, so they won’t know it’s you. This is mostly for Legal.”

Iris folds her arms. “Oh, yeah? And what would Legal say when they find out that the guy giving the interview likes to make out with his subject?”

“What Miss Miracle does on her own time is none of the public’s concern.”

Barry grins at her and she rolls her eyes, smiling despite herself. Honestly, she thought she would get used to Barry’s charm since she started dating him, but no dice. She still thinks all his corny jokes are funny and his smile disarms her without warning on a regular basis. “Anyway, what were people expecting me to say?” she asks, reaching for some water on his breakfast bar. “’I hated the article and the next time Barry Allen gets in trouble, he better call the Green Arrow’?”

“Well, people need to know what you have to say,” he points out. “Since I talk about you, and all. So it’s good that people know you think it’s a good idea to have people call you out if you ever mess up. So now I can send that to Missy for approval.”

“You know who’s going to love it? My mom’s writers,” she tells him. He moves around and gets something from the pantry.

“Really?”

“Yeah, they’re all totally in love with you and want you to come visit.”

“Well, that could be fun. I’ve read that paper; there are some really good writers there. Your mom’s doing a great job with that.”

“Yeah, that’s what the DA said. He’s nice.”

“Uh-huh,” Barry says evenly, and her gaze slides to him.

“What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Barry says innocently.

“I have known you your whole life; of course it means something. Is the DA not being nice?”

Barry sighs, laughing. “He’s being nice,” he tells her, “because he likes your mother.”

Iris stares. “He what?”

“I noticed weeks ago. So did mom, actually. He’s always calling her Francine and telling mom to say he said hello and stuff.” At her surprised look, he raises his eyebrows. “What? You think your mom’s not one for dating?”

“Of course my mom could date whoever she wanted, and he should be so lucky.” She sits down. “I just…never thought about it. Seeing her with someone that’s not my dad.”

He sits across from her. “Are you okay with that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? But I’ll have to do a background check on him first.”

“A what?”

“A thorough one. Maybe I’ll get Freddie to do it. And check his finances. Is he divorced?”

“Iris,” Barry laughs. “You know you don’t actually know whether your mother likes him, right?”

Iris considers this as Barry gets up. “Hm. Well, just in case. Maybe it will get Freddie’s mind off the fact that he has to introduce his very Jewish family to Olivia Queen, former hard drinking party girl for the engagement party. Anyway, I’m hungry, is our food here yet?”

“Patience,” he says, sitting on the arm of the couch. He opens whatever he took from the pantry, and Iris sees that it’s a tin of cashew nuts. “Want one?”

“No, and – Barry, I still have no idea why you think that’s funny,” she tells him as he starts throwing them in the air and catching them with his mouth. “You literally almost died the first time I saw you doing that.”

“But I didn’t,” he points out, before catching another. “And I’m a grownup now, Iris. I can handle it.”

“Whatever,” she says, taking off her glasses to clean them. “And Malina does it too, she – Barry?”

She breaks off when she hears a choking noise and sees that Barry’s face has gone red. She leaps off the chair and runs towards him. “Barry!” She sits him down as he struggles to breathe. “Look, hold still…” Then he grins at her.

“Sike.”

“You – _God_ , you’re a jackass!” Iris punches him in the shoulder and he laughs, his eyes crinkling, and she hits him again.

“Iris – _Iris_ -”

“I can’t _believe_ – Oh, wait, Barry, come on, _don’t_ -”

Barry jabs her in the ribs and tickles her, grinning as she collapses into helpless laughter. “Take it back!”

“No, I won’t – _Barry_!”

“All you have to do is take it back…”

Iris shoves him on the couch so she’s on top of him, but by this point he’s laughing so hard he’s stopped tickling her anyway. She flicks his nose, still laughing. “I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“ _Ass_.”

The laughing subsides and fades away until they’re just staring at each other. Barry’s eyes flicker down to her lips and her heartbeat quickens. They hadn’t really talked about being interrupted the last time, but with most of them busy, they have very little chance of being interrupted now. But before she can consider anymore or even ask anything, Barry surges up to kiss her, his hands cupping her face. He coaxes her mouth open immediately and her hands ghost up his chest so she can feel his heart beating. Barry’s hands quest greedily down her sides until he’s thumbing her blouse, hesitating, but when she bites his bottom lip he must have his answer, because he pulls her top off without hesitation and throws it behind him before kissing her again.

Iris pushes at his shoulders and he goes, lying flat on the couch and looking up at her with his chest heaving. She manoeuvres herself so her knees are bracketing his hips and bends to kiss him again, slow and methodical and making him whimper into her mouth. She feels him growl in his chest and he fastens one hand in her hair as she presses against him. “Are you…” he breathes, running a hand up her leg. “Is this…”

“I told you it was fine, Barry.”

“I know. Just…checking.”

“It’s okay. Asking’s sexy.”

He smiles up at her, all adorable wonder. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she grins back. He kisses her again and it’s like liquid fire setting her nerves sparking – it’s like she can feel electric shocks burst through her. She slips her hands underneath his shirt and revels in the gasp it brings out of him when she runs her hands up his abdomen. Then she lifts a hand and raises it above his chest and his buttons start undoing themselves. Barry starts. “Iris, what-”

“Superpowers, Bar.”

“You’re amazing,” he says simply, making her melt. She pauses when she hears his phone start ringing but he just kisses her again. “Ignore it,” he whispers, “they’ll go away.”

Every nerve in her body is on fire where Barry is touching her and she wants more, and her hands seem to move down to his belt of their own accord while still undoing his shirt buttons with her mind. “Whoa,” he gasps. “Iris, that feels amazing.”

“What does?” she asks, because it’s all working for her, really. Another spark trips through her and _wow_ , Barry Allen is apparently no joke.

“The sparks, how are you-”

“OW!”

Iris leaps back with a startled yelp, shaking her wrist. Barry stares up at her, concerned. “Iris? What is it?”

“I think my watch is broken,” she mutters, staring at it. It had shocked her but didn’t appear to be damaged in any way. “But I don’t-”

Then Gideon pops out of it. “Hello, Miss West.”

“Gideon? What the hell is going on?”

“I have been trying to contact you for quite some time. Your cellphone was unresponsive, and you ignored Mr. Allen’s, which I now see is because of your…activities,” he replies, looking acutely uncomfortable. He looks at Barry, who doesn’t look too impressed himself. “Mr. Allen.”

“Gideon.”

“Gideon,” Iris practically growls, also looking at Barry, who is half-naked underneath her with his hair all messy and his hands still on her hips, “the world had literally better be ending. I mean it.”

“Well, you could say that.”

“Why did you call me?”

“Well…Barry.”

She rubs her temple. “What?”

“Excuse me, I mean Earth-52 Barry.”

Iris sits back. “The Flash? What’s going on? What happened?”

“Something catastrophic, from the sounds of it. He wants to talk to you.”

At this Barry’s phone lights up again and she recognises that the number is from another earth. Sighing, she grabs the phone. “Thanks, Gideon.”

“Of course. My apologies again,” he adds awkwardly, before disappearing. Iris holds the phone to her ear and Barry presses his forehead to her collarbone, muttering about being cockblocked by his own doppelganger. She strokes his hair softly.

“What can I do for you, Flash?” Then she frowns. “Wait – Barry, wait. Calm down. Now, start from the beginning, and go slowly. What… _exactly_ is Flashpoint?” He tells her. “Barry Allen, you did WHAT? How – look, I’ll be there as soon as I can, you just – do not do anything else. Do not touch _anything else_.  I don’t care if you got rid of the Dominators already and – Julian? Who the hell-” She sighs. “I’ll be there, I promise. We’ll fix it.” She hangs up and Barry gives her a hopeful look.

“Is there any chance that his problem is that he really wants Big Belly Burger from our earth?”

“Barry, I am so sorry,” she says, putting her hand on his face. “But this thing…”

“’Flashpoint’?”

“It is not a problem that I can leave him to deal with by himself,” she says. Really, she’s barely wrapping her head around it herself. She gives Barry a regretful look as he starts buttoning his shirt back up. “I really am sorry.”

“It’s fine, Iris,” he says. “You’re always up for helping people. I can’t complain when it’s one of the reasons I love you.”

Iris gives him a sad smile and then kisses him lightly. “I love you too.”

Barry swallows. “Hurry back, okay?”

“I will. Promise.”

***

Dr. Wells finds her pacing in the Cortex several minutes later, checking her watch and her phone. “Iris? What’s going on?”

“I’m waiting for Chesca,” she says. “The Flash needs my help. I need to get to Earth-52 but the breach isn’t stable enough, so I need her to open another one.”

Dr. Wells regards her for a moment before pushing some hair out of her face. “Iris, are you forgetting that there’s someone else who can move between earths?”

“Who?”

“Me. And you.”

“What? I can do that?”

“That’s how I moved all of Colin’s victims.” She shrugs lightly. “It’s like normal teleportation, except it takes longer and you have to concentrate more because you’re not used to it.” She pauses. “Think of something that happened to you when you were last there. The sound, the smell, the feel of the room, what it looked like.”

The moment that comes to mind is when she saw The Flash as Barry for the first time, because she felt like she’d been looking into a weird mirror. “I’ve…I’ve got it.”

“Good. Now, go. If you end up in the wrong place, come back home and we can try again.” She moves to the terminals. “I can tell Chesca where you’ve gone.”

Iris looks at her for a second. “See?”

“What is it?”

“You can use your powers for good. I’m not saying to have to,” she adds, “but you were always a great teacher, Helena.”

Iris turns away from her then and takes a deep breath, concentrating. She’s right, it takes longer – there’s darkness and shifting and a feeling of being _thrown_ somewhere, but then she’s standing in a breach room. She doesn’t know if it’s worked until she hears, “Iris?”

E52 Barry stands up, smiling in relief, and she walks towards him with her hands outstretched. “Hi,” she says warmly, wrapping her arms around him, her voice filled with relief because despite everything, she really is happy to see him.

“Hi,” he replies. Then she hits him.

“Why in the name of Batgirl’s left asscheek didn’t you call me before now?” she demands. “Another _timeline_ , Barry, really?”

“Sorry,” he says quietly, rubbing the back of his head. “I wasn’t sure whether I should bother you. But – are you okay? Is Colin gone?”

“He’s taken care of,” she replies. “What about you? What happened to Zoom?”

A shadow passes over his face, but before he can reply, his phone buzzes. “Julian,” he mutters. “I – do you want to come to work with me? I need to take care of something. Iris is with Linda in Coast City,” he explains, “so we’re fine. You just need to change and get rid of the glasses.”

“Right,” Iris agrees, looking down at her suit. “Give me a second.”

E52 Barry is uncharacteristically quiet as they walk, giving Iris time to piece together her thoughts. All she knows is that Barry went back in time, saved his mother, and then undid it, which made things change. Since then there have been changes, but she doesn’t know them all, or why he did it. Or what Savitar has to do with anything. “So Caitlin is Killer Frost now?”

“Sometimes,” he sighs. “We’re still figuring that part out. That’s why we’re here, actually.”

“Yeah, this Julian guy – what’s up with him?”

“He’s another change from Flashpoint; he works with me. Caitlin kind of…lost it and attacked him, and I gave up my job to protect her so he wouldn’t turn her in.”

Iris stops in the middle of the precinct. “That son of a bitch.”

“Iris, you don’t even know him.”

“I said what I said. Where is he? You want me to take away his memory? Because I can do that.”

E52 Barry laughs, though there’s some sadness in it. “No. I appreciate it, though. I just have to sign some stuff and then we can talk. Oh,” he adds. “Iris and I – my Iris – are a couple now, so I may hold your hand, if that’s okay.”

Iris smiles up at him as they walk up the stairs. “That’s okay. Barry and I are together now, too. So, Julian. Which one is he?”

E52 Barry points to a blonde man in a waistcoat, who’s reading something. “You work with Draco Malfoy?” Iris hisses, and he tries not to laugh. He clears his throat.

 “Julian,” E52 Barry says in a bored voice, and he turns.

“Allen,” he says in a British accent. He looks at her. “Iris.”

She folds her arms. “Draco.”

“What? Did you just call me ‘Draco’?”

“No, why would I do that? Your name is Julian.”

He stares at her for a moment and then shrugs. “Good to see you can keep your word, Allen.”

“I’m just signing some cases over to you,” he says. “No need to rub it in.”

Iris slips her hand into E52 Barry’s and glares at Julian, daring him to say anything back. “Yes, well,” he sniffs, “do it and go. I have work to be getting on with.”

Iris resists the urge to smack him, but a pot of ink does spill all over his suit as they’re leaving. She looks back at him and he’s glaring at E52 Barry’s back – and Iris feels a flash of something that makes her blood run cold. “We can go,” E52 Barry continues, not noticing. “You want some food? We can stop by Jitters.”

“I think we’re going to need it.”

When they get back to STAR Labs the whole place is deserted, and E52 Barry seems to fold in on himself as he leads her to the secret room where his Gideon used to be. Iris stares at him. With Zoom there was a kind of determined stubbornness, even though there was a darkness in him that she’d been worried about. But now he just seems beaten down. “Barry?”

“It…Please don’t be too mad, okay?” he asks quietly. “Or – be mad, it doesn’t matter. A few months ago I went back in time and saved my mother, and then came back to the present. I locked up the Reverse-Flash and lived my life with my parents and my job and…and you. Well, _my_ you.” He swallows painfully, and his voice shakes when it comes out. “But everything was – was _wrong_ , and Joe was miserable and Wally was dying and none of us were even friends. So I went back and I thought I could fix it, but nothing’s the same anymore.”

Iris shakes her head. “Barry, I get that, but what possessed you to go back in time in the first place? With everything you told me about the timeline and how fragile it was, and how Dr. Wells told you that if you averted one tragedy you just moved it to someone else, how could you do it anyway?”

Barry looks like a kicked puppy and she’s sorry, but for the little time she knew him, he _never_ seemed this reckless or selfish. He swallows. “M-My dad – died,” he replies, not looking at her. “He was murdered by Zoom.”

Iris feels like the entire world has stopped. “Oh God. Oh, Barry, I’m sorry – what-”

“He kidnapped him and took him to my old house,” he says. She has never heard her own Barry sound this broken, much less a new one. “Said he wanted me to experience tragedy so I could be like him. Killed him in the same spot Reverse-Flash did my mom.”

She sees it then, maybe because he’s vulnerable, but the thoughts are flashing through his mind and Iris sees them too.

_Barry, don’t let him touch you!_

_Mom – MOM!_

_Barry, whatever happens, you have made me the happiest-_

_No, Jay, come on…_

_I want to hear you say it._

_…I need you to kill my mother._

Oh, _God_ … Iris feels his pain, too, and she feels that it’s as familiar to him as his own breathing, that he thinks about this all the time. She sees Nora and Henry killed, over and over, so vivid that when she opens her eyes she’s surprised she isn’t in the Allen living room watching it happen. “So you went back to save her?”

“I just wanted the pain to stop, Iris,” he whispers. “When the real turned out to be my dad’s doppelganger, I felt like the universe was laughing at me. Because I didn’t save my mother, so the Reverse-Flash caused all these problems, and he killed Eddie, which opened a breach, and then Zoom came through, and-”

“Barry-”

“And every time I tried to fix it, it just came back _worse_ ,” he whispers. “Iris and Joe weren’t speaking, and I killed Cisco’s brother and Caitlin’s Killer Frost and baby Sara doesn’t exist, and they’ve forgiven me but – something happens to Iris. The article with ‘Iris West-Allen’ doesn’t have her name on it anymore-”

“Barry,” she says firmly. He looks up at her with the most devastated expression on his face. “Look – I…You know what you did. You made a mistake, a big one, but you cannot take the blame for everything that’s happened.”

“Because it’s not my fault, even though I did this?”

“It might not be!” she points out. She comes to sit next to him. “Look, Barry, speed is your thing. My thing is probability, and I am telling you, any number of things could have caused those changes. I can use the Mindscape to predict the future, but it’s not certain – it’s never certain. Caitlin could have had the meta gene in her from the beginning, and Dante could have been destined to die anyway.”

“That’s what Iris said.”

“Iris West being right shouldn’t be a surprise to you,” she jokes, nudging him. “And that other stuff…Look, I know what I said before, but we have these powers and we affect people. We have to accept that. When you saved Cisco the first time you time-travelled, did you consider that someone else died in his place? Or when Vandal Savage killed everyone and you time-travelled, some other group of people died instead?”

He gives her a sad smile. “That’s not making me feel any better, Iris.”

“It’s not supposed to make you feel better, doofus, it’s supposed to give you some perspective. Everything that we do, and not just metas, affects everyone else, positive or negative. All of us have caused bad in someone else’s life because of something we did. Are you always gonna take the blame because something you did means something bad for someone else somewhere along the line? You did these things, and I’m not going to absolve you of blame, but I’m not going to let you wallow in it, either. And you know Iris and I have the face for TV – she’s probably in broadcast journalism or something.”

E52 Barry looks at her for a second and then squeezes her hand. “Thanks.”

“I am still mad at you,” she promises, “for not calling me.”

“I don’t really like burdening Iris with this stuff,” he admits. “It’s a lot for one person and she doesn’t deserve it. Neither do you.” He sighs. “Sometimes I wish I could be better for her, you know? Lighter. She says she doesn’t mind, but…”

“I know what you mean,” she admits. “Barry is so understanding that I’m afraid he’s going to resent me one day or something. I wish I could be simpler. Anyway,” she says, shaking her head, “I get the feeling that’s not why you called me here, if you already talked to Iris about it and everyone’s already forgiven you.”

He stands and pulls her to her feet. “You’re right. I need you to check something for me… Harry says that what I did only affected us, but the changes are so random and severe I’m not sure. I need you to check the other earths and see if anything has changed.”

Iris nods. “I can do that; Gideon can take care of that in no time. You coming with, or…”

“Ah, no,” he admits. “I said everyone forgave me and I think they have, but I don’t think the Legends would appreciate me running off to 51 earths after the time-travelling.”

Iris raises an eyebrow. “The time-travelling superheroes with a historian from 1942 on the team gave you a lecture about time-travel? Do you have that saying about pots and kettles on your earth?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Hmph. If you say so.” She looks at her watch. “Alright, I’d better get going. If I start tonight I can get you an answer back by the morning.”

“Thanks again for everything, Iris,” he says. “Really.”

“You know I’d do anything for you, she says, and then remembers something. “Barry.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t trust Julian.”

E52 Barry’s eyes grow shadowed. “Iris said that, too.”

“And…” She bites her lip.

“What is it, Iris?”

“I like your Caitlin. But Killer Frost is not a thing that you guys should take lightly. And I don’t know what you meant when you said she lost it, but Colin _always_ knew what he was doing. So be careful, okay?”

E52 Barry considers this. “I will. Promise. C’mere.” He pulls her into a hug. “I’m really happy for you and your Barry. And t-tell my mom I said hi. I know we’ve never met, but-”

“I’ll tell her,” she promises. “I’m happy for you guys too. Is my dad…”

“He’s great. I think he’s finally used to me and Iris kissing,” E52 Barry chuckles. “I’ll give him your love. Until next time, Miss Miracle.”

“Take care, Flash.”

Iris doesn’t go home immediately. She gets to STAR Labs and wonders. Wonders about what would have happened if her mother died a scant year after being released from prison, and whether she would have done what E52 Barry did.

And she realises she would have wrecked every life around her to stop that pain from consuming her.

***

When Barry glances at the clock for the fifth time during dinner, his mother sighs. “Barry, would you calm down? She’s probably fine.”

“Yeah,” Malina agrees, sipping her water. “You know Iris is the best person to have around in a crisis.”

“Right,” he nods. “Sorry. What were we talking about?”

He listens as Henry launches into a detailed explanation of his trip to London. Or half-listens – his mind is still on Iris. Apart from the fact that they were interrupted _again_ (seriously, he’s going to get a complex), he’s worried about what the hell Flashpoint is. He hates it when she’s gone without backup, much less to an earth where she’s already died once. However, almost as if she can sense him worrying, she appears in the dining room, looking slightly disoriented. And then without so much as a hello, she hugs Nora and then Henry, wrapping her arms tightly around them. “Okay,” Henry says uncertainly, patting her on the back. “What brought this on?”

“Nothing,” she replies. “I’m just glad to see you guys. Did I miss dinner?”

Iris comes to sit next to Barry and she kisses him hello. “Iris?” he asks at the look in her eyes. _I’ll tell you later_.

‘Later’ is afterwards, when Eddie is clearing the table and Malina speeds upstairs to get her ring. She tells him about evil speedsters and alternate timelines and suddenly he understands why she’d hugged his parents like that. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I’m gonna grab Mal and go – I figure we can get some earth-hopping practice in. And I’m sorry-”

“It’s okay. Go save the world.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. He frowns. Iris looks preoccupied with something. He tilts her chin up.

“Iris?”

“I’m fine,” she says quickly as Mal comes back down. She kisses him on the cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

If he’s expecting a quiet Sunday, however, he’s mistaken.

Iris and Mal are gone for the whole night, the morning and the afternoon. Chesca keeps him updated, but he knows he won’t feel better until she’s safe in his arms again. That’s when a weird alarm goes off. He and Chesca frown at each other. “What’s that one? Is that Iris’ mom’s alarm?”

“No, that one hooks up to her phone as well; she’d have come back. It’s… God, it’s Olivia. Liv?”

“Chesca,” she says tiredly over the intercom. “Is Iris there? I have something that belongs to her.”

“She’s…busy,” Barry says. “What’s going on?”

“You guys better get over here.”

Barry and Chesca share a look. “Do _you_ have any idea what’s going on?” he asks.

“Your guess is as good as mine, beanpole.”

They call Linda and Wally to hold down the fort and Chesca opens up a portal to the Foundry to find Olivia dressed in her Green Arrow outfit looking at video footage of a prison, Freddie tapping keys at the computer. There’s a woman tied up, hanging upside down with long auburn hair swinging in the air. “Liv, what the hell is going on? Who’s that?”

“You tell me,” she says tightly. “She burst in here and said she was an alien-”

“Not an alien-” the woman calls over the intercom.

“And your girlfriend knows all the aliens-”

“My girlfriend knows _one_ alien-”

“ _Not an alien_ -”

“Did you get the antique place settings we sent, Freddie?” Chesca asks.

“We did, thanks.”

“Look!” the woman shouts. “I’m not an alien – I have alien technology. I came here looking for the Green Arrow.”

“Why?” Olivia snaps.

“Because, Olivia, I have reason to believe that one of my enemies is attacking you.”

They freeze. “How do you know my name?” Olivia growls.

“That alien technology I have is pretty nifty.”

“Barry,” Freddie says, tapping at the keys. A video of the woman breaking in comes up, and Barry sees she’s dressed in green and black with an odd symbol on her chest – a circle with horizontal lines on the top and bottom. “Recognise that?”

“Never seen it before.”

“Barry?” she repeats. “Barry Allen?”

Barry swallows. “Uh, yeah. Who are you?”

“Not important. Is Iris with you? I need to talk to Miss Miracle anyway.”

Barry starts. “How the hell does she know Iris’ name?” Chesca demands. Olivia reaches for her arrows but Freddie stops her. “Look, let’s just see what she wants before we shoot.”

They head down to the prison, and Barry sees she’s also wearing a black mask. “Took you long enough,” she mutters. “Did you bring food?”

“First things first,” Chesca mutters. She grabs her arm and closes her eyes briefly, and then steps back, surprised. “She’s right. Not an alien.”

“Of course I’m not an alien.”

“Then who are you and what are you doing here?”

“I came to warn you. I’m part of a…let’s call it an army, and I’m trying to stop someone called Sinestro. She’s an alien that uses rings to control people and get them to cause mayhem. Believe me, not what you want in your fair city.”

“And you came here because?” Olivia demands.

“Because, Ms Queen,” she drawls, “Miss Miracle, Little Miss Miracle, and the Green Arrow all started wearing rings in the last month. And unless you’re all engaged-”

“I’m engaged.”

“Mazel tov,” she says swiftly, “I’m entitled to my suspicions.”

Barry folds his arms. “Well, those rings aren’t from Sin – Si-”

“Sinestro,” she supplies. He shrugs.

“Right. Iris built them. And who are you, anyway? Why should we trust you?”

“Sorry, the whole getting strung up like a Christmas turkey sort of ruins your manners,” she says sarcastically. “My name is Hallie Jordan, though most people call me Hal. Or the Green Lantern. Your pick.”

***

“The Green Lantern,” Iris repeats. “For real?”

Barry shrugs. The whole story is still unbelievable to him, even a few hours later. Iris puts down her tea and runs a hand through her hair. “And she knows who I am?”

“She’s the only one,” he promises. “Apparently she used her alien technology to scan us all and that’s how she found out. I don’t know, Iris, she seems legit. A little crazy and Liv already wants to shoot her, but legit.”

She rubs her eyes. “I really kind of just want to deal with this tomorrow.” She’d gotten back a few hours ago after finding that nothing had changed on the other earths due to Flashpoint, but she still couldn’t escape that nagging feeling about what she would have done in E52’s place. Barry notices. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. Well, she will be. “Thanks for taking care of stuff here.”

“What are superhero sidekick boyfriends for?” he asks lightly. He kisses her, his hand lightly stroking her jaw, and feels something like sparks dance through him. “Iris?” he whispers hoarsely.

Iris is biting her lip, and then she reaches up, using his shoulders to steady herself, and kisses him. That electricity is back and then their kisses are hard and bruising. She locks her arms around his neck and he walks her back to his kitchen counter, briefly pausing before he bends down and lifts her. Iris wraps her legs around his waist and doesn’t let go when he places her on the counter, her hand scraping up his neck and through his hair. Then she remembers something and pats at his jeans.

“Iris, what-”

“Shush and don’t stop.” She finds what she’s looking for – his cell – and tries to concentrate while Barry kisses a wet path down her neck. “Hi – Mal? It’s Iris. Yeah, no, fine, I just wanted to let you know I’m busy for the next hour. _Two_ ,” she corrects herself when Barry starts kissing down her chest. “Yeah. I just wanted to let you know, so if you call – don’t,” she adds as he gets down on his knees and lifts a leg over his shoulder. “Because I’m – busy,” she gasps. “Uh-huh. Yeah. So…” she trails off as the pressure builds from what Barry’s doing between her legs, radiating out and making her toes curl. “You know what? Don’t call until tomorrow, I’m taking the night off.”

When Barry’s finished and she’s come down from the high, she yanks him up by his collar and kisses him deeply. “Nicely done.”

“You too. Pre-emptive strike – why didn’t I think of that?”

Barry presses his lips against hers again and she stops him. “Barry – Bar?”

“Y-Yes?” he whispers.

“Not that this isn’t amazing. But I don’t want to do it on the counter the first time. Not with – not with you.”

Barry pulls away from her and then kisses her very sweetly, before helping her off the counter and leading her to his room. Iris is certain he can hear her heart beating as they face each other. She takes a deep breath and walks towards him first, unbuttoning his shirt slowly with fingers that kind of tremble because she’s wanted this for as long as she can remember. But he’s patient when he looks at her and it just makes her want him more. Then it’s his turn and he takes off her blouse, and they take turns like that until they’re left staring at each other.

Iris _thinks_ she moves first, but she isn’t sure – all she knows is that they’re a tangle of kisses and limbs and hunger for each other. They collapse on the bed, him on top of her, and Barry pulls her legs up around him and she digs her nails into his back. Then he pulls back from all the bruising kisses and stares at her, searching her face. “What?” she asks softly.

“Your glasses. I…” he swallows and blushes, which makes her love him even more. “I know you have to take them off. But I want you to see me.”

Iris smiles tenderly up at him and reaches up to touch his face. “I’ve always been able to see you, Bar.”

He smiles, full of love, and presses his forehead against hers, before carefully removing her glasses and folding them up, placing them on the side. Then he manoeuvres himself to her entrance, and then her back is arching and his whispering her name as he enters her. It takes a while to adjusts, but then he moves gently at first to test how it feels, and she nods to let him know it’s okay, and they find a rhythm.

Iris keeps her arms locked around him and Barry never lets her go once, supporting her neck through the whole, even when his thrusts get faster and wilder and he’s shouting her name and she’s digging her nails into his back, and no matter how many miracles she's performed or how much electricity beats through her on a daily basis, she knows this is what lightning feels like. They pretty much reach their peak together, climaxing and then coming down from it until the until the only sound is their harsh breathing.

Barry rolls over, sweaty and satisfied and exhausted, and then pulls her into his body. She closes her eyes against him and is perfectly content to stay here like this for the rest of her life. She’s pretty sure their hearts are beating in tandem. “Iris?” he murmurs into her hair eventually.

“Yeah?”

“We’re not ruling out the kitchen counter, are we?”

She elbows him and he grins, and they don't let go of each other for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next one:  
> "Iris West," Clark says, "meet Lois Lane."  
> (Hee).


	36. The Room Where It Happens: Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Click-boom then it happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this is incredibly long.

Barry wakes up alone.

He notices immediately, because he specifically remembers falling asleep with Iris in his arms, their legs tangled together and his nose buried in her hair. In fact, he’d been planning to wake her up by tickling her, but when he rolls over, his bed his empty.

“Iris?” he murmurs groggily, feeling around his bed, but he only feels the sheets. His stomach plummets automatically, because it’s never good when a girl leaves before you wake up after staying the night. But Iris would never leave like that, would she? He sits up fully, looking around, and then spots a Post-It on her pillow.

_Had to go – building fire. Be back soon._

_Love you_

_Iris x_

His face clears in understanding just as his phone starts beeping with about a million Miss Miracle alerts, confirming that she showed up to a fire downtown. When he locates his boxers and pulls them on before turning on the television in his room, he sees Iris flying around with a fire hose aimed at a building that’s on fire, intercut with shots of her flying in and out of the building. His heart swells with pride as he watches her, and then he turns off the television, yawning, and gets back into bed. If anything goes wrong, there’s a special alarm on his phone that will tell him. Besides, he kind of just wants to think about last night with Iris.

Barry doesn’t think he’s ever been more nervous in his whole life than he was last night. Ever since Iris told him how she felt about him, it took him a while to come to terms with the fact that she wanted him like that, but in the last few months he had to come to terms with the fact that he also wanted _her_ like that. She’s always been his best friend and it had been a big step for them, so even though he’d been hit with this overwhelming feeling of _want_ every time he saw her recently, he was terrified that it wouldn’t work between them, and they’d be ruined forever. He shouldn’t have worried, though.

The first time he kissed her it felt like he finally understood what kissing was supposed to be like, why people wrote songs about it and obsessed over it and never got enough of it. He has to admit he’s felt a little overwhelmed with the prospect of being Iris’ lightning rod, of being the reason that she can do all these miraculous things. But if he makes her feel even a fraction of how he felt last night, when he was holding her and kissing her and telling her how much he loved her, then he’s no longer surprised. Because Iris West may be Central City’s miracle, but the most miraculous thing about her is that, with every look, with every touch, with every kiss, she makes him feel like he’s made of pure lightning.

***

Iris flashes back into Barry’s lounge, rubbing her eyes. Her limbs are aching and her eyes are watering from the smoke, and really, anything that takes her out of the arms of Barry Allen isn’t something she’s too fond of, but that’s what happens when you’re a superhero. She’d been dozing with Barry’s arms around her, trying to figure out how to tell Barry that as hungry as she was all the time, if he was going to make love to her like that every night, he was going to have to provide her with a three-course breakfast afterwards, when her phone buzzed with an alert. Thankfully it hadn’t woken him up, and she’d eased herself out of his arms, tried to ignore the sight of him with his face soft from sleep, and been on her way.

He’s still asleep when she slips back into his room, his back rising and falling as he breathes. She takes off her ring and the suit disappears off her skin (and she’s thankful once again that she stuck with all the research that went into it), leaving her in the T-Shirt and yoga pants she slipped on before she left. She strips down into her underwear and climbs back into bed with him, trying not to wake him up. She’s back under the covers in a second, and turns away from him to put her glasses on the side when Barry’s arm wraps around her and yanks her to him, pulling a squeal of surprise out of her as he buries his nose in her hair.

“I – Good morning, Barry,” she giggles warmly. He snuffles into her neck and makes a noise in his throat.

“What was that?”

Iris feels him kiss her neck softly. “I woke up and you were gone,” he mumbles.

“Sorry.” She wraps her arms around his and kisses it. “Had to go save the world and stuff.”

“Is that why your hair smells like smoke?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “And why I’m all sweaty. Look, I’ll get out and shower, I don’t want to make your sheets all gross-”

“Don’t you dare move, West,” he growls. She turns in his arms so she’s facing him. “Besides, I like your gross.”

Iris laughs again. “You’re so corny.”

“You know you love it.”

“True,” she admits. She looks up at him, green eyes soft and crinkled as he smiles down at her, and her heart skips a beat. Barry takes a deep breath, marvelling at her, and they’re lying there grinning like idiots at each other, as if they have the world’s best secret between them. Iris shifts up to kiss him and he makes a contended noise, sighing into her mouth. “I love you,” she whispers. He strokes a finger down her cheek.

“I love you too,” he replies. “Last night was…that was okay for you, right? Because I know you – waited, for a long time, for me, and-”

“Barry,” she laughs. She puts a hand on his face. “I have loved you for years. I have waited for you for years. And I am telling you that you were worth the wait. Every hour and every minute of waiting.”

He blushes – honestly, how is he this nervous around _her_? – and smiles. “’Kay. So were you.” He kisses her again, and she pulls closer to him. Barry slides his hand down her neck and over her shoulder, moving down her arm until- “ _Ow_ ,” Iris winces, pulling away from him. Barry frowns.

“Iris?”

“Sorry,” she says. She pokes gingerly at the spot he was touching – it’s raised and thick, an angry red line that curves around her shoulder. “Caught some glass as I was coming out of a window. The bleeding’s stopped, thank God, but I haven’t eaten anything and I sort of…used up all my energy last night, so it should be healed in a few hours after I get some protein in me.”

Barry regards her for a moment, not saying anything, and she smiles. “Barry, really, I’m fine. This happens all the time – you don’t have to worry.”

Barry’s eyes widen. “Oh, no, that’s not…That’s not what I was thinking about.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“You just have – a lot. Of scars, I mean.” He sits up, pulling the covers off both of them. “I noticed them last night. Like…that one.”

He points to one on the right side of her collarbone, and Iris frowns down at it briefly. “Right. Um, remember when that alien threw me at the bus a few weeks ago? I kind of caught some metal. Deep, not too bad, but those always take the longest to heal.”

“I thought, with your healing, that there wouldn’t be any.”

“Yes and no,” she tells him. “They take less time to heal, but the same amount of time to fade, especially when they’re bad. And you have to know where to look to see them.”

“Oh,” he says quietly. He scans her body, but like he’s looking for something he’s already seen, not just a scar that he’s trying to pick out. Iris gets the feeling he’s been thinking about this for more than a few seconds. He points at her left arm, where there’s a thin dark scar on the lower part. “This?”

Iris swallows. “That was where Patty shot me. Wally had to reopen it because it healed too quickly and I got dirt in it.”

“Is it going to go away?”

“Probably.”

Barry twists his mouth around, and then gingerly turns her over with gentle hands so she’s lying on her front. She rests her head on her arms. “Um. This? This one’s…really big. You have one on both sides.”

 “Metallo,” she says, closing her eyes. He’s traced two fingers from the left side of her abdomen to her lower back. “She did a number on me, I’m telling you. Those are just the scars from the stitches.”

Barry brings his forefingers to two spots on her back, diagonally across from each other. “These are small,” he comments, and Iris laughs.

“That’s where Liv shot me.”

“And you still have the scars?”

“Well, she did rip out the arrows. Don’t worry, though, I’m making a speech at her wedding. This is what revenge feels like.”

Barry laughs with her, fingers ghosting across her skin. “Uh-huh. And…this?”

Iris frowns briefly and then realises where he is when his thumb brushes across the plane between her shoulder blades. “That was where I got struck by lightning the first time.”

She knows what Barry’s face will be like, seeing that star-shaped scar that skews slightly to the right. She knows from her mother, Nora and Barry how awful it was for them, that night, especially since her mother didn’t find out until hours later. “It was bigger, before,” she continues softly. She lifts her shoulders in a shrug. “At least, that’s what Colin and Dr. Wells told me. The lightning came from above and hit me from behind, but I was touching metal, so it could have been much worse.”

Barry shifts on the bed, moves some of her hair out of the way. “Calamity,” she says immediately, because she knows before she even feels his fingers brush the skin on the side of her neck, or the hollow of her throat where there’s a smaller one. Nobody ever notices it unless they’re really close and staring. He pauses and she knows he’s watching her. “She had these metal claws in her gloves that…well, you know. I didn’t get any medical attention,” she says quietly. “So, it just…healed wrong. There wasn’t any infection and I just wanted to forget about it, so they just left it alone. It doesn’t hurt, but I don’t think this one is going away.”

“Oh,” Barry breathes out. Iris sees her scars and thinks _that’s the time Liv shot me, awesome_ , or _ew, jellfish sting_ , or _that’s the time Metallo turned me into a shish kebab_ , but no one else sees that. Not Chesca and not her mother or Nora – they only see the danger she’s always in. And Barry – Barry who lost a father and a sister before she met him, who guards everything in the world he loves with a kind of ferocity she’s never seen from anyone, who would do anything not to see her hurt – she knows that he’d be seeing the fact that he’d failed in the promise he made that he would always protect her.

“What about this?” he asks quietly. His palm is covering her lower back and the little scar that’s shaped like a jagged swirl.

“Colin,” she says. “When we were on Earth-52. It’s where the lightning left my body. That’s not going away.”

“Wow,” he breathes, his voice shaking slightly. “I had no idea.” She lifts one shoulder in a shrug, laughing softly.

“Yeah. I mean, I get superpowers and I’m stronger and faster than the average human, but I don’t think I’ll get to wear a bikini any time soon.”

Barry is silent and still for a moment and Iris wonders if he’s found the scar she got when Geomancer attacked her, but then she feels him shift and then he’s pressing a soft kiss to the scar they were just talking about. Iris closes her eyes as he kisses each of them, shifting her hair so he can press his lips to her neck. His lips on her skin feel like liquid fire, exactly how they felt last night. He moves back down to her stomach and works his way up, tilting her head up so she can kiss the hollow of her throat, and then kisses her very softly. “You’ve always been beautiful,” he says simply. “Your scars just say you’re brave, too. And I feel lucky that I get to love someone as brave as you.”

Iris smiles, overwhelmed, and kisses him lightly on the nose. “Well, I feel lucky to be loved by you, Barry Allen. And-”

“I,” Barry growls as Iris’ phone starts ringing, “really, _really_ hate our friends.”

Iris holds out her hand for her phone as Barry rolls off her, and she gets up to put her glasses on. “Hello? Oh, hey, Jesse. How are you awake this early? I wasn’t ‘running around playing fireman’, there was a fire! Well, what was I supposed to do – I’m fine, really, you worry too…Fine. Yes, I will come for a checkup at lunch. Yes, I know you have a talk at the university today, I’m going, remember? I will be on time. I promise. I won’t forg – Goodbye, Jesse. _Goodbye_ , Jesse.” Iris makes a frustrated noise at her phone. “I need to find that man a girlfriend. Or a hobby that isn’t trying to make me grey before I turn thirty.”

She picks one of Barry’s plaid shirts from a pile on his chair and slips it on, buttoning it up over her underwear; it comes down to her knees. Barry grins at her. “You look cute in my shirt.”

“I look _lost_ in it, Barry,” she laughs. “And I forgot how much plaid you like to wear.”

“That’s because I look good in it.”

“You look good in anything,” she says, poking him in the chest. Then she stills, her fingers brushing his skin, and frowns. “Iris?”

Without a word, she pushes him gently on the bed and straddles him, that frown still on her face as she adjusts her glasses. “Iris.”

She starts tracing a path starting from his collarbone, her mouth slightly open so he can see her tongue pressed up against her front teeth, eyes narrowed behind her glasses. Barry shivers slightly at her feather-light touch. “Kind of got me hanging in suspense, sunshine.”

“Shh,” she says. “God. There are so _many_.”

“Many what?”

“Your freckles; I’m counting them.”

“Why?”

“For science.”

Barry bursts out laughing, because _of course_ Iris is counting his freckles for science. “Like – I think this group of moles is shaped like Texas,” she continues matter-of-factly, tilting her head to the side. The ends of hair brushes the skin of his chest. “Actually, maybe it’s Ohio…Oh, wait, definitely Texas. And I think there are some more hidden by your appendix scar.”

“Which one?”

“The one under your belly-button. God, I remember when that happened – you were practically doubled over with pain and you were _still_ insisting that you were fine.”

“I was! The pain didn’t get really bad until we were in the ambulance.”

“Bar, babe, I love you, but you are the absolute worst when you’re sick.” She shifts down, still studying his body. “Seriously, do you have more on your back? Wait – there are some more on your hipbone…”

Barry squirms a little at her touch and she looks up at him. “Bar? You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” he laughs lightly. “It just feels weird.”

Iris tilts her head at him, a glint in her eye. “Bar?”

“Yes?”

“Does this tickle?”

He gives her an innocent look. “Does what tickle?”

Iris pokes the cluster of moles she’d been studying by his hip and he makes a squeaking noise. “…no.”

Twenty years of Barry tickling her into helpless giggles – and the fact that she’s currently on top of him – win out, and she digs her hands into his hipbones, giggling as his body shakes with laughter.

“Iris – Iris, come on, that’s not-” he breaks off as she tickles his sides. “ _Fair_ -”

“Oh, _now_ you want to talk about fair? I have two decades worth of this to make up for, Allen…”

“Look, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ ,” he gasps, and she tickles him for a second longer before relenting.

“I think I’ve found the first perk of being your girlfriend over your best friend. Well,” she adds, smirking, “ _second_ perk.”

Barry wipes his eyes. “What, assassination by tickling?”

“You’re just saying that because you’re going to have to find another secret weapon,” she grins, kissing him. “Oh, that reminds me, you never told me about the kiss.”

“What kiss?”

“Our first kiss,” she yawns. “How did you remember it?”

Barry sits up with her still in his lap. “Oh. Um.”

“Barry, you made that face when I asked you the last time. What is it?”

“Well, um…Just remember how cute you think I am, okay?”

Iris gives him a curious look. “Okay…”

“So do you remember when we went to Earth-2, and I had to go to the precinct to find out about Madam Miracle, and I met your doppelganger?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I didn’t realise, at first, that you and I are married on that earth,” he explains. “And, um, it wasn’t until I saw her name-plate that said ‘Dr. Iris West-Allen’ that I realised. Only, of course, I walk in there and I look exactly like her husband, and I guess they were having some problems or something, because she was all worried. And she looks like you, obviously, and she looked so worried, so I was – kind of – promising that I would meet her to talk later. I wanted to make her feel better. Except, she still thought I was her husband, so she, um…kissed me.”

Iris raises her an eyebrow. “She did?”

“Yeah, and then the memory came back in this big rush, but Iris, I-”

“Barry, is that it?” she laughs. “Have you been feeling guilty because my doppelganger thought you were her husband and kissed you?”

He rubs the back of his head. “Well…yeah.”

“Oh, Bar, you really didn’t have to – I understand. Especially when your doppelganger did _literally_ the same thing to me.”

“He did?”

“Uh-huh. It was right before we had to go find Captain Cold and Heatwave, and he thought I was his wife because he kept telling me to go rest. And were saying goodbye, and that’s when I realised he thought I was his wife, because he kept talking about how he wanted to make more time for them. And, well…he told me he loved me,” she says, shrugging and looking at her hands. “I mean, he was talking to her, obviously, but he looked like you, so…You are not the only one to be kissed by a doppelganger. So I promise I’m not mad.”

“Well, I am.”

“Really?”

“Yes, at my doppelganger!” he laughs. “I thought he was going to shoot me for kissing his wife!”

“That…does not surprise me,” Iris laughs at his look. “He and his wife have been through a lot, and I hear he’s the protective type. Which shouldn’t be a surprise to you.”

“I am not that bad.”

“Barry, Henry told me that when he showed up at your office you told him if he ever went near me again you’d break his legs.”

“I really feel like everyone’s taking that way too seriously. I was kidding.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Were you?”

He rolls his eyes. “Well, no, but…”

“Anyway,” she continues, “I felt kind of bad for him. He thought this wife was going to leave him.”

“Really? Well, he shouldn’t have worried, because your doppelganger, she…” he laughs, remembering how Iris’ doppelganger had been with him. “I think they’re fine, Iris.” He remembers the news that Detective Allen is probably celebrating right now, and looks at Iris, with her big heart and her bravery and beauty – and can’t stop himself from thinking what would happen if there was a baby that was half her and half him. A boy with her eyes, or a girl with his smile. Barry knows without even thinking about it that she’d make a great mom.

(But he’s not going to tell her that – yet).

“Barry?” she asks, waving a hand in front of his face. He shakes his head.

“Sorry. I think Detective Allen and his wife will be fine.”

“Me too, actually. And, really, I don’t know how much time you spent with that man, but he is _handsy_.”

Barry grins, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah, he is. Wait, Barry, why are you looking at me like – _oh_!”

Barry flips them over so he’s on top and kisses her, smiling against her mouth. “Secret weapon,” he tells her, “is being tall. Just so you know.”

She shoves his shoulder, laughing. “Oh, whatever.”

Iris slides her arms up around his neck and then gasps when his hand slips below her underwear. Barry grins against her mouth. “Still think Detective Allen is the handsy one?”

“J-Jackass,” she gets out.

“Nerd.”

And despite both of their alarms, the fact that they’re both scared of their bosses, and another call from Jesse, they’re both late for work.

***

Scott takes one look at Barry’s face when he asks why he was late and decides that he doesn’t want to know, so at least everyone buys his excuse that there was traffic by his apartment. He gets to work to find about a dozen emails and several messages, which tells him that it’s going to be a long morning. The first thing he does, however, is return the call from Clark Kent that’s flashing on his answering machine. Even though he’s spoken on the phone with him before, that doesn’t mean he’s not going to get nervous. “Clark Kent?” he answers briskly.

“Morning, Clark – uh, Mr. Kent, it’s Barry.”

“I told you Clark is fine, Barry,” he laughs. In the background, Barry can hear people running around and at least one person talking about how Penny White, the Daily Planet’s editor, is going to murder them. “But thanks for returning my call. I just wanted to run something by you.”

Barry closes the door of his office against the noise of everyone else. “Sure, go ahead.”

“Well, apparently, Superwoman was talking to some of her…acquaintances, and it appears that they may be interested in joining her and Miss Miracle in this initiative.”

Barry raises his eyebrows, playing with the Miss Miracle toy. “Define ‘acquaintances’.”

“Aqualady, Marvel Man, and Batgirl.”

Barry almost drops the toy in his coffee. “So when you say ‘acquaintances’, you mean…”

“ _Acquaintances_ ,” he agrees. “Listen, Barry, I completely understand if Miss Miracle says no, we did agree it would just be the two of you, but she thinks this could be something really great.”

“No, I understand,” he says quickly. “It, uh – listen, let me call you back tonight, alright? Miss Miracle has some…acquaintances of her own and they may be interested in joining this group as well.”

“Oh, that’s great!” he replies, surprised. “Alright, I’ll let her know. So, if I recall correctly you’re going to meet us at the Queen Suites for dinner, and then you and I can meet with the Lady of Steel and the Golden Grace and see whether we can get this thing off the ground. And the day after that we’re all seeing Hamilton.”

“Yes, that’s right, and thanks again for agreeing to meet us at the show,” he says, looking through the confirmation for the hotel and the flights. “It’s something Iris and I have been planning for a while, but I know it can’t have been easy to get tickets on such short notice.”

Clark laughs. “I – well, Lois, actually – has a friend that can get things like this pretty easily, so don’t worry about it. I’ve been looking forward to seeing it, honestly.”

“So have we.”

“And I can’t wait to meet Iris, she sounds wonderful,” he continues. “I follow her on Twitter; I had no idea there was so much the average person doesn’t know about Marie Curie.”

Barry laughs. “She can’t wait to meet you guys as well. It was good talking to you, Clark.”

“You too, Barry.”

Barry hangs up and sits back in his chair. His relationship with Olivia pretty much stops at going on double dates with her, Freddie and Iris, and helping out whenever they’re in the city, so he has no idea how she’s going to react to possibly being part of this team. He makes a note to ask Iris to talk to her and Laurent about it, and then remembers that he has to call his sister. She picks up on the third ring and Barry hears what sounds like something being hurled against a surface.

“Five points to me!” she yells, and he hears Chesca replying.

“Mal?” he asks.

“Oh, hey beanpole. What’s up?”

“Nothing. What are you guys doing down there?”

“Playing with the catapult,” she says matter-of-factly. “Chesca went to Costco to get the watermelons – we’re trying to see how well I can stop objects in the air.”

“Make sure you’re wearing goggles,” he tells her, remembering an incident where Iris and Linda ended up hiding from a Jesse that was covered in watermelon. “So, are we still on for lunch today?”

“Well, you, me and Eddie are, but Dad cancelled,” she replies. “They’re being audited.”

“They run a fake insurance office.”

“Which is why they have to make it look _really_ good. And anyway, that just means you can tell me more about the Green Lantern. Like what her name is.”

Barry reaches for something that’s just come out of his fax machine. “No can do, little miss.”

“Come _on_ , I’m a spy! I am literally trained in the art of not telling people things.”

“Iris has very strict rules about her superhero friends and their secret identities. I, as a journalist, have to respect that. Not to mention as her boyfriend.”

“Whatever,” she mutters. “I can’t believe the one time I get to go earth-hopping of my own volition, all the fun stuff happens at home.”

“Didn’t you get to go to Atlantis?”

“True,” she admits. “But – oh, crap, it’s my turn. See you at lunch!”

She hangs up, but not before she hears the sound of the catapult firing a watermelon at her. He puts the phone down and rubs his nose, thinking. He hasn’t given much thought to Hal Jordan, the woman who’d managed to break into Olivia’s secret lair, knows all of their names, and calls herself the Green Lantern. She hadn’t stuck around for much longer after she’d introduced herself (and Olivia had begrudgingly cut her out of the trap), only giving her number in case they heard any news about the Sinestro – the strange alien that was turning people into her lackeys so she could take over the world.

“Everyone wants to take over the world,” Barry mutters, putting some of his papers away. He glances at the family picture that sits on his desk and pauses. He’s had his suspicions for a while now that his mother and Henry might be getting a little friendlier. It’s not surprising – they’d had two kids together – not to mention his mother fusses over Eddie so much (“Are you getting enough sleep? Here, take these vitamins…”) so much that he may as well be their third – and their relationship hadn’t really had a natural end. Sure, she’d divorced him soon after he left, but when your enemies come back to kill you, your son, and his best friend, it kind of throws all that relationship stuff into a new light.

Besides which, they were kind of obvious – they kept cancelling lunches, they’d get all weird whenever you mentioned one of them to the other, and they always seemed to go missing around the same time. Still, he’s willing to let them tell everyone in their own time.

If not for the fact that it could be _hilarious_.

***

Iris surveys the video footage of Chesca hurling watermelons from a catapult at Malina, who stops them expertly with a hand and hurls them into the tarmac of Ferris Airfield. She smiles as Dr. Wells hands her a cup of tea. “Good to know it’s being put to good use,” she says wryly, and Dr. Wells laughs.

“Yes, I never quite expected my morning work to involve watching a law student throw watermelon around a plane field. And neither did Jesse, apparently.”

She turns off the video and sips her tea. “Where is he? He was supposed to be meeting me here for a check-up.”

“Malina accidentally got watermelon juice on his suit,” she explains. “He went home to change, since he has that conference afterwards. He says he’s sorry.”

“I’m sure,” she mutters. “I can’t imagine he was happy about being turned into a watermelon slurpy.”

“Well, he certainly wasn’t as irritated as he usually is when Chesca does something like that.”

“Is that right?” Iris says, smiling. “Anyway, I’ll just wait for him here. I’m not really in any hurry,” she shrugs. She fiddles absently with her ring – she put it on a chain around her neck, so she can alternate and have it not appear that suspicious, and Dr. Wells puts down her own tea. “Anything I can help with, Iris?”

“Hm?”

“You forget that, in between being controlled by an ice-wielding psychopath, I trained for quite a while, and so I know when you are preoccupied.”

“Right,” she laughs quietly. “It, um – you know how I went to Earth-52 to visit The Flash?”

“Yes, I remember. How is the alternate Barry?”

“He’s been better,” she admits. “His father was murdered in front of him like his mother was a few months ago.”

Dr. Wells’ eyes widen. “That’s horrible.”

“Yeah. Same spot, actually. I think Zoom was trying to be poetic or something. Anyway, then his father’s doppelganger turned up right after that and I think it…I think it broke him, really. He went back in time and saved his mom, undid everything that had ever happened to him from that point. Flashpoint, that’s the new timeline he created. He stayed there for a few months but some things started to go wrong…” Iris pauses briefly, remembering the flash of memory that had jumped from her mind to Barry’s when he mentioned that Wally was dying. “When he changed it back, though, there were some things that he couldn’t fix. And he’s not… It’s been pretty hard for him to adjust.”

Dr. Wells thinks on this. “I can see why it would be. From what you’ve told me, it appears that it’s Mr. Allen who has had the rough time rather than you.”

“Well it’s a good thing I can’t see what could have been, isn’t it?” she says, somewhat bitterly. “It’s not like I have time-travel powers.”

She hesitates and Iris frowns. “Dr. Wells?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t…” she sighs. “Iris, you’re right, you don’t have time-travel powers. But that doesn’t mean there is no way to see what would have happened had Colin and I not interfered with your life.”

Iris freezes. “I – How?”

“The Mindscape is more than what gives us our powers, more than where we’re laid to rest when we die. It knows every thought that passes through the mind of every living being on this planet, and so it knows and generates each possibility from that decision. For every thought that we have that leads to a decision that we could make, there is a reality that reflects it, and the Mindscape knows of each one of those realities. It holds them together.”

Iris sits back in her chair, removing her glasses. “Every single one? But there are – that could mean _infinite_ possibilities, existing all around us right now. The Mindscape knows about every single one of them?”

“More than that,” she says. “It’s the thing keeping them all together. Were it not for the Mindscape, these realities would collapse in on themselves. There’s only one being that I know of that almost caused this to happen.”

“Who?”

“Savitar.”

Iris blinks. “Savitar like the secret agent, Savitar?”

Dr. Wells shakes her head. “Yes, Waller did take that name for one of his agents – he wanted to rehabilitate it, make it less scary so that the people who came afterwards would not know so much of her. Of course, this backfired when one of his rogue agents took the name and started killing the people on the Allen side of the schism – the Ognats’, the Mercuries, all those people. But the real Savitar had no true equal.”

There’s such a haunted look in her eyes Iris is almost afraid to ask the question. “What did she do? Nobody ever talks about her – even Henry is too freaked to talk about it.”

“Because, to my knowledge, Savitar killed several people in his parents’ generation, including his father.”

“R-Really?” Iris breathes.

“Yes. She…” Dr. Wells shakes her head. “Iris, the only person on 52 earths that Colin was afraid of was Savitar.”

“She’s still alive?”

“No one’s really sure. All I know is that she was an unnamed pilot with the WASPs, the women’s pilots from WW2. She was killed in a crash, but extensive research from A.R.G.U.S. has concluded that it’s likely she survived and renamed herself Savitar.”

Iris swallows. “The Hindu God of motion?”

Dr. Wells nods. “We speculate that it’s because of the ease with which she moves through realities. And because according to more research, she has been around since the beginning of time.”

“How does that work?”

“Well, Waller is fairly certain that she was killed in that crash, but the legend of Savitar stretches back centuries, even back to Roman times. So she called herself Savitar because she moved through different realities and made herself part of them, until she did it so much that she became a eternal part of reality itself.”

“Because she mastered the ability to use the Mindscape and move between realities?”

“No,” Dr. Wells replies slowly, “because she did it so extensively. Iris, what I’m trying to tell you is that _you_ could move between realities. Savitar was eventually defeated – by who or what, I don’t know – but not before she did irreparable damage to realities that exist outside of our own. I must admit, from what little I know of her, and from our powers, and what I myself have done, I do not think she’s truly gone.”

Iris notices that she’s looking at her wrists, and the power-dampening cuffs that are around them. “You think you could become like Savitar?”

Dr. Wells laughs, but there’s sadness instead of humour in it. “With all the bad that I’ve done, and all the darkness I’ve seen, I think it’s entirely possible.”

Iris feels it again, that chill she got when she came back from Earth-52 and wonders whether she would have done what E52 Barry did if she had the same amount of grief. What she would have done to make it go away. “So you’re saying I could… create my own Flashpoint?”

“Yes, in a way. It would not be brought about by time-travel – you would have to go to the Mindscape first, but yes. You could create your own Flashpoint.”

Iris looks down at her hands. Personally, she had always thought that the most amazing thing about her is that her eyes glow in the dark. Now, she’s finding out that she could alter the very fabric of reality itself, if she so chose. But then, she remembers bitterly, she shouldn’t be surprised. Colin did that to her before she even got her powers. He changed her entire world, just because he felt like it one day. And E52 Barry had done it while in the depths of despair.

So what does that mean for her?

But Iris doesn’t get time to think about this, because that’s the moment Jesse walks in, freshly showered in a new suit. “Aunt Helena, Iris,” he greets them. Then he scowls at the video, which is paused precisely at the moment where the watermelon is hitting him. “I told Chesca to delete that.”

“And you believed her?” Iris laughs, trying for a light tone. She sees Dr. Wells smiling as well, pulling her sleeves over her wrists. She’s been wearing clothes that cover them up more and more lately, and she’s starting to worry that Jesse will notice. “It’s all over the group chat already.”

“All this because I stopped her form eating my pizza pockets.”

“Actually, I think it’s because you weren’t standing behind the Designated Watermelon Safety Line.”

Jesse makes an impatient noise that Iris has learned means she needs to get to the medbay. Dr. Wells stands. “Well, I have some patents to work on. Jesse, I will be watching your lecture on the university website, and Iris, I will see you later. I hope you don’t…worry too much about what we discussed. We shouldn’t worry about problems before they present themselves.”

“Right,” Iris nods quietly. Jesse raises an eyebrow as his aunt heads off.

“Is this a metahuman thing?”

“A little. Come on, let’s get this over with so I can watch you patronise some college kids.”

She sits on the bed and peels off her jacket, before pulling up her sleeve. As she expected, the wound is completely healed. Jesse nods. “Yeah, I thought it would be fine, but it’s always good to check. Now, have you been sticking the meal plan Wally set you?”

“Yes,” she replies in a bored voice.

“Are you sure?”

“No, Jesse, I’ve been ignoring the meal plan, because I really love it when you yell at me (!) Of course I’ve been sticking to the meal plan.”

He doesn’t seem fazed by her sarcasm. “What did you have for breakfast?”

 _Barry_. “Um,” she says quickly, “a pan of scrambled eggs, eight slices of whole-wheat toast, three grapefruits, two bagels, and a carton of juice.” She’s really going to have to have a talk with Barry about her eating habits. Him making her breakfast loses a little of the romance if it means he has nothing to eat for the rest of the week. But Jesse is frowning, checking his notes.

“I thought we said you had to eat more bananas.”

“Barry didn’t have any – I mean,” she corrects herself, “I was out.”

“What were you doing at – oh.” Jesse looks embarrassed, but presses on. “Right. Well, that’s…look, there’s a lot to be said about dating a metahuman, which he should know about. So when you’re…there, make sure you have some juice and a snack around because you burn a lot of calories when you’re having-”

“Jesse!” Iris interrupts. “Please do not tell me we’re actually going to talk about my sex life.”

“I’m trying to make sure you don’t keel over from exhaustion later in the day if you’re going to be spending all night with your boyfriend! Besides,” he adds, “would you rather be having this conversation with your cousin?”

Iris thinks of Wally, and when Barry told her that Wally threatened Barry if he ever made Iris cry. Since she doesn’t like to imagine Wally and Linda doing _anything_ , she imagines he feels the same way about Barry. “Alright.”

“Thought so. That’s really everything important, making sure you have enough energy, unless you want to talk about stamina-”

“ _I do not want to talk about stamina_.”

***

Iris knows Central City University well, since she took summer classes here as a teenager and then spent months visiting Barry in the university library while he wrote his dissertation. She’s never been in the huge conference hall though, which is filling up with more people than she would have expected. But then, she can hear Jesse lecture for free without leaving her desk at STAR Labs. These people have all paid money to come and hear Jesse give a talk about the biology and genetics behind metahumans.

“Is it always this full?” Iris asks, peeking out from behind the stage. Jesse, who’s preparing his notes and setting up his Mac, shrugs.

“It is, actually. More so now than it was at the beginning, but it seems that with you and Malina being the two of you, and Barry still investigating metahumans, people really want to know what’s going on in the city.”

“Looks like your idea paid off.” He looks at her.

“It wasn’t my idea, Iris, it was yours.”

“You’re the one giving all the lectures.”

“And you’re the one who suggested that we do something like this for the city,” he points out. “STAR Labs funding a series of educational lectures on metahumans is a great way to make up for the damage it caused with the Particle Accelerator were your exact words, I believe.”

Iris shrugs, adjusting her glasses. “Well, we do all this research and we have all this information, and Chesca still works with the police, but we should tell the public, too. Plus if you’re bending our ears about this stuff all the time, it might as well be for a good reason. And you know, you’re right, this was my idea. I’m your boss, you should be nicer to me.”

Jesse scoffs, going back to his notes. “You’re not my boss.”

“I pay you!”

“You sign the cheques; the accountant pays us.”

“And I sign for all the deliveries, I email all our suppliers, I contact the copyright office, and I keep you and Chesca from murdering each other, which should get _me_ a salary.”

Jesse makes a noncommittal noise under his breath and Iris busies herself with his complimentary muffin basket, slipping a couple into her bag. She shrugs at his glare. “Weren’t we having a conversation about my calories earlier?”

Jesse is about to reply when there’s a knock on the door to the corridor, and when he opens it, Malina is having a very enthusiastic argument with the security guard positioned outside. “Dr. Chambers, Miss West, do you know this young woman?” he asks, bored. Malina bristles.

“I think it’s appalling how you treat a young mind trying to ask questions as-”

“She’s with us,” Iris interrupts, trying not to smile when she makes a face. “Thank you.” She notices that Jesse fixes his tie and collar as Malina puts her bag down. She offers Malina muffin. “Want one?”

“Those are mine!” Jesse complains, and Iris scoffs.

“Please, like you’re going to eat them all anyway.” Malina pauses before eating.

“Do you mind?”

“No,” he says, and he only sounds halfway grumpy about it. Iris is going to keep her comments to herself.

“Anyway, what are you doing here, Mal?”

“Well my classes are done for the day and I thought I’d come see what the fuss was about. And these are really good.”

“I thought you were having lunch with Beanpole, Choirboy and Henry.”

“Dad cancelled,” she shrugs, picking off bits of muffin and popping them in her mouth. “Emergency call with Waller.”

“And they have _names_ , you ass,” Iris adds. She does frown, though, because this isn’t the first time Henry has cancelled lunch on them. She wonders what could have him so busy all the time. “So, what’s the topic for today, Dr. Chambers?”

“The Psyche of the Metahuman: Nature or Nurture? I actually asked Barry for help with this one.”

“Yeah, his dissertation was all about that,” Malina adds, and Jesse clears his throat.

“Right. I hope you like it. I know all this stuff isn’t usually your thing – but anyway, I hope you like it.”

Malina beams at him. “I’m sure I will. And I don’t think I’m the only one – there was a girl out there who was asking whether you were going to be taking questions.”

“Oh, she’s a regular,” he shrugs. “Everyone always wants to know about the people with the powers and costumes running around Central City. She always comes up to me at the end.”

Iris notices that Malina looks a little sad about this and Iris clears her throat. “So, what, is this your secret admirer, or…”

“No,” he scowls, blushing. “She’s just – a person. I don’t even know her.”

Malina’s thoughts take a more positive turn and Iris smiles to herself. “Huh. Cool. Anyway, we’d better go sit so you can actually get paid to bore the asses off people.”

Since Iris is the owner of S.T.A.R. Labs, she gets a seat designated in this talk and manages to swing one near the front for Malina as well. They settle in as everyone gets into their seats, rustling their notepads and exchanging excited whispers. “You know, I really don’t think Jesse is the ‘adoring fangirl’ type,” Iris says idly. “In case you’re wondering.”

Malina blushes and tries to hide it – and Iris knows that because she looks exactly like her brother when she does it. “W-Why – um, why would I be wondering?”

“No reason,” Iris says innocently. “Just saying. Look, it’s starting.”

The lights dim and Jesse walks out on the stage, looking very distinguished and doctorly in the suit that she and Chesca suggested he buy. He clears his throat. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Dr. Jesse Chambers, and welcome to the fourth in the series of lectures about metahumans – The Psyche of the Metahuman: Nature of Nurture?”

Iris settles in to listen, sharing a bag of candy with Malina. It’s true, Jesse does talk about this stuff all the time, but she hasn’t really taken it in before. She remembers when they went up against Toni Woodward and she posited that these powers only make you more of what you are. So Toni became a bully, and she became a hero, and all the criminals that she caught just used their powers to help them be worse. But E52 Barry said that Killer Frost altered Caitlin’s brain chemistry, and that’s why she keeps losing control…but how much of that is true? Because Colin was always that way – he just kept it hidden. And Dr. Wells believes she’s that way too, that’s why she wears the cuffs.

And then there’s her…

Iris has never liked to think about what would have happened to her if Nora hadn’t taken her in, if she hadn’t become a part of their family. Because she knows as hard as it was to grow up with everyone thinking that she was a freak, arguing with Nora all the time because of it, and being sent to all those therapists, if she ended up in the foster system like the court was going to order after the trail, she wouldn’t be the same person she was today. If she had that memory – of seeing her mother ordered to kill her father by Calamity – as the only thing in her life, she’s fairly certain she never would have been whole. And what kind of person would she have become if she was given powers then?

Colin changed her. She had Barry and Nora, and he may not have altered her brain chemistry like he did with Dr. Wells and the tachyons, but he changed her. Her life would have been different if he hadn’t changed it. Even with Barry and Nora, she’s never been able to let go of the darkness from that night, or from all the things she’s seen since she became Miss Miracle. So, really, when E52 Barry says he turned back time just to make the pain go away, she’s not really sure she can blame him.

“…extensive research has shown that,” Jesse continues, unaware of Iris’ thoughts, “due to the structure of the DNA, the metahuman gene is in fact a mutation of a gene that’s latent in most humans. In most cases the gene does not act on the body immediately – there is usually a gestation period ranging anywhere from two weeks to nine months…”

Iris looks down at her hands. _You could create your own Flashpoint_. One day, she could be so broken, so sunken into despair, that she could change her entire reality. And everyone else’s.

“Hey,” Malina pokes her gently in the arm. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says quickly. “Yeah, fine. Sorry, I-”

Right at that moment, both of their phones start vibrating with the special alert that means they’re needed. Then the lights come back up and Jesse starts frowning, his hand to the headset in his ear. He blinks and looks up at everyone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve just been asked to inform everyone to evacuate this building because of a possible attack. Everyone should follow the signs to the emergency exits…”

“What is it?” Malina asks as they move quickly through the crowd. Iris frowns at her phone.

“I’m not sure. It’s a meta, definitely, but all this says is ‘copycat’. Do you see anywhere we could disappear?”

“Through here,” Malina says. “Copycat?”

“Apparently there’s a woman in a black costume attacking people uptown.” Iris takes her hand as Malina leads them outside to a small alley. Then she flashes them to a skyscraper uptown, and she can already see people running away from the town centre. Without another word, both of them pull out their rings, punch their rings out, and flash easily into their suits. “You evacuate the area, I will take care of our new friend,” Iris says briskly. The teleport down to the ground and Iris scans the place as Malina moves off. Cars and poles are flying around the place, and people are running in all directions. “Chesca, what the hell is going on?”

She hears Chesca typing frantically over headset. “I told you, it’s a copycat!”

“A copy – shit,” she mutters, avoiding a flying car. She can see the woman now, but she’s not doing much apart from standing in the middle of the plaza looking around. Then as she locks eyes with Iris, she disappears.

“She’s a copycat of _us_?” Iris demands.

“Looks like it!”

“That is all I need,” Iris says to herself. “Malina, did you get that?”

“I got it!”

“Keep evacuating – I’ll call you if I need you.”

Iris can see that someone has already called the police and they had been shooting at her; as she watches, the copycat appears directly in front of them and raises her hands. The cars and the police fly off in different directions and Iris shoots towards them, catching one and then the other and setting them both on the ground. Iris turns when she hears the woman laughing cruelly behind her.

“Miss Miracle,” she says. “Right on time, as always.”

Iris regards her. The copycat’s costume is like Iris’ except instead of a mask there’s a cowl that covers her face. Plus, her costume is completely black apart from yellow accents on the collar, waist and wrists. “I never like to keep guests waiting,” Iris replies archly.

“I’m not the guest in this town anymore, _Golden Grace_. Your time performing all your little miracles is over.”

“Oh, yeah? Why do you say that?”

“Because,” she replies, raising her hands. Iris starts when she sees yellow lightning spark around them. “This town is only big enough for one of us, and that one is me. Say hello to The Rival, Miss Miracle.”

At that, she shoots two arcs of lightning at her; Iris narrowly avoids them and they smash into two cars. Iris dodges alternating objects and lightning bolts, trying to keep them from hitting any civilians. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Malina running towards them, but The Rival hears it too, and before she can do anything else, The Rival turns and shoots a lightning blast directly at Malina, who’s too surprised to do anything about it. It hits her straight in the chest and slams her into a car and she falls to the ground, unmoving.

“Malina!” Iris runs towards her and The Rival laughs.

“I think you need to get yourself a new sidekick, Miss Miracle,” she says. “It seems like Little Miss Miracle is dragging you down.”

And she disappears.

***

“Ouch,” Chesca says as they review the footage. “That looks like it hurt.”

Iris looks at Malina, who is being examined by Jesse on a table with Dr. Wells’ help. There are electrodes attached to her chest and a bandage on her head for when she knocked it against the ground. Iris herself has a bandage around her right arm where some glass caught her from a flying car.

“It did,” they say together. Iris rolls her shoulder and looks around at everyone. Chesca is still at the terminal, looking at the footage, and Barry is on his laptop going through his sources. Eddie’s on the phone in the corridor, probably to Waller.

“Any idea where this… _lady_ came from?” Iris continues, but Chesca shakes her head.

“None. I mean, with that cowl, I can’t even see her face. Our facial recognition is good, but not _that_ good.”

“Yeah, and she’s a copycat of you guys,” Barry adds. “So no one knows exactly where she came from – she just appeared out of nowhere the way you guys do.”

“Great,” Iris sighs. “After Peek-A-Boo, this is everything we need.”

“The important thing is that you’re safe,” Dr. Wells says. She starts to take the electrodes off Malina. “No long-term damage, that concussion should be cleared up soon, and the lightning didn’t do anything.”

“Well, that’s the last time I try and be the hero,” Malina mutters, pulling her shirt back on, but Iris shakes her head.

“You thought I was in trouble, Malina. I would have done the same thing.” Malina gives her a grateful smile.

“Besides, because everyone saw both Miss Miracle and Little Miss Miracle there,” Barry points out, “nobody thinks it was the two of you. I do need a statement from you about it for the paper and the police.”

“And Waller wants to know what your plan is,” Eddie adds, walking back into the room. “Do you want to deal with it yourself or does he have to send some people in?”

“And have this city crawling with his merry men in black?” Iris says. She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. “No, it’s – we’ll handle it. Barry, you can say that The Rival is dangerous and probably unstable, judging by all the monologueing, and shouldn’t be approached under any circumstances.”

They both nod and go to do what she asks, but then someone that Iris has never seen before walks into the Cortex. She’s dressed in a black and green costume with a black and green mask over her eyes, long auburn hair swinging down her back. There’s an odd symbol on her chest as well, one that Iris has never seen before. “Well said, Iris,” she says, grinning. “It’s nice to know you’re a planning kinda girl.”

Iris looks around, shocked. “I – who are you?”

“And how did you get in here?” Jesse wants to know. Her gaze slides to Barry and then Chesca.

“You guys didn’t mention me to her?”

“We did,” Barry corrects her. “But we only met yesterday and we were…busy. Uh, everyone, this is Hallie Jordan, or Hal, but she likes to be called-”

“The Green Lantern,” she finishes. “A pleasure.”

“Wait, seriously?” Malina says excitedly. “We’ve been looking for you for years. Wait, are you an alien? Is that how you got in here?”

“No, I’m not an alien – are you telling people I’m an alien?”

“You have alien technology, Hal,” Chesca she points out. “It’s a little misleading.”

“Is anyone else confused by who this woman is or what she’s doing here?” Jesse wants to know, and Iris clears her throat.

“Right, um – Hal? What is it that you want, exactly?”

“And why couldn’t you use the doorbell?” Jesse mutters.

“Before anyone says anything else,” Eddie declares, “I need to say that I work for a government organisation that has been trying to find out your identity for a while. Please don’t incriminate yourself.” Hal looks pleasantly surprised at this.

“Nobody told me Amadeus had friends here! How is he? Does he still have that moustache?”

“ _Hal_ ,” Barry, Iris and Chesca say.

“Sorry.”

“Chesca and I met Hal yesterday in Olivia’s lair,” Barry explains. “She’s looking for an alien called Sinestro. She uses rings to control people, and she had reason to believe that it could have happened to Malina and Iris.”

“And how do you know their names?” Dr. Wells wants to know. Hal opens her mouth but it’s Malina who answers.

“She has a Lantern ring,” she explains, grinning excitedly. “You used them to scan us, didn’t you? That’s how you know everything.”

“How do you know so much about them?” Barry asks, and she looks affronted.

“Our case files are very thorough, Barry.”

“Anyway,” Hal interrupts. “I saw what happened today, with The Rival, and I need to know whether she’s one of your friends gone rogue or something, because that happened to one of our Lanterns.”

Iris shares a look with Barry, who gives her an encouraging look. Iris raises an eyebrow. _You think we can trust her?_

 _I don’t see why she’d be lying_.

“No,” Iris answers out loud. “She’s not. We have no idea who she is, but we’re working on it. But you can’t just stroll in here, reveal you know all of our names, and then expect me not to be worried about you.”

“I get that,” she says evenly. “But I’m like you, Iris. I’m one of the good guys. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Waller – I’ve worked with him before.”

“Hal, according to reports he’s tried to get you into a meeting over a dozen times and you usually escape,” Eddie points out. She shrugs.

“Alright, maybe we’re not sending each other birthday cards. But even if Waller didn’t at least know that the Green Lantern isn’t a supervillain, you have four metahumans here – you could probably beat me.”

Barry frowns. “What do you mean four metahumans?” Hal blinks.

“Well, you have Iris, Malina, Chesca, and Dr. Wells.”

Iris freezes and looks at Chesca, while everyone looks around at each other. Dr. Wells has gone as pale as chalk. “Dr. Wells isn’t a metahuman,” Eddie says slowly. But Hal shakes her head, looking at her ring.

“Lantern technology doesn’t lie, dude. It doesn’t help that she’s wearing those power-dampening cuffs-”

“Power-what?” everyone demands. Jesse looks at Dr. Wells.

“Aunt Helena, what is she talking about?”

Hal seems to realise that she’s stepped into something. “You didn’t know about the-”

“Hal, we’ll tell you if we find anything out about Sinestro,” Iris says firmly. She gives Chesca a look and then breaks off from the group, leading her away into the corridor. Hal, at least, has the grace to look apologetic.

“I’m sorry about that,” she says. “I thought you all knew-”

“A couple of us knew,” Iris tells her, glancing back into the room. Everyone is gathered around Dr. Wells as she speaks, head bowed slightly. “Not everyone.”

“I don’t usually burst into places like this. Well, I do, but I’m usually a little more graceful. It’s just Sinestro kidnapped my best friend, and my…someone I know.”

Iris isn’t an idiot; she knows that person Hal knows means a lot more to her than the best friend. “Who?”

“Kyla Rayner,” she answers quietly. She takes her mask off. “We were fighting – me and the rest of the Green Lantern Corps – and she took her while we were distracted.”

“And the other person?”

“Cameron Ferris,” she answers – and yeah, Iris can tell who Cameron is to her just from the way she says it. She rubs her eyes. “He – he means a lot to me. Do you ever have people that you’d move heaven and earth for? That you’d do anything at all for them? If anything happened to them, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“I get it,” she says quietly. Barry has always been the most important person in her life – a best friend and the love of her life, all wrapped up into one. “If I see anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks. And I don’t usually make friends like this.”

“What, you usually break into their base of operations _after_ you take them for coffee?”

“Coffee _and_ bagels.” She grins and holds a hand out. “It was nice to properly meet you, Iris. Maybe when I’m done with all this alien stuff we can get a real coffee.”

Hal leaves and Iris steels herself before going back into the Cortex. Chesca is standing next to Dr. Wells, while Malina is in front of both Eddie and Barry with her hands folded. Jesse is between them all, looking a mixture of confused and hurt.

“…what you mean, you’re saying you have powers?” he asks. Dr. Wells shakes her head.

“No, I’m saying that my powers have returned.” She lifts her sleeves to reveal the bracelets, the blue light pulsating lightly on the inside, and snaps one off. After about a second, blue lightning crackles around her fist. Malina takes a step back, throwing an arm out in front of her brothers. Iris sighs. “You guys-”

“How long have you known about this?” Malina demands, and Chesca and Iris look at each other, but Dr. Wells stops them.

“A couple of weeks. It was my idea not to tell you,” she says. “I was…afraid of what you would all think, and I thought you would all be afraid of me. Especially you,” she adds, looking at Jesse. He swallows – he’s only ever seen Calamity on the news, so he’s never had to think it was his aunt, not really. “I didn’t want to seem like a monster to you.”

“What does this mean?” he asks. “Are you like Iris and Malina now, or is it just the lightning?”

“We think it’s everything,” Chesca answers. “We were looking at her scans and blood and comparing it to Iris’, and it looks like she can do everything that Iris can do.”

Barry looks around. “But, I mean…she can still just wear the bracelets, right. Nothing’s happened so far, this doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Actually, it does,” Eddie agrees. “The whole reason we let Dr. Wells out in the first place isn’t just because we got Colin; it’s because her powers are gone. When Waller finds out about this, he’s going to want to take her back in, at least for a little bit.”

Jesse stares at him. “And how is he going to find out?”

“This is our job – we don’t have a lot of choice.”

“So he’d just lock her up again?” Barry wants to know. Jesse glares at everyone.

“He can’t her up again; she didn’t do anything-”

“Jesse,” Dr. Wells says calmly, “if Amadeus determines that it could be too dangerous for me to-”

“Nobody,” Iris interrupts in a hard voice, “is locking anyone up. Not without a good reason. Are we clear? Eddie, I will call Waller tomorrow and tell him myself, and we’ll go from there, but he’s not just swanning in her and taking someone from the team just because he feels like it. Especially when he couldn’t find Patty or her mother for a decade and it almost got you, me, Barry and Chesca killed.”

Everyone seems to agree to this, though Jesse still looks like he’s about to punch someone, and Dr. Wells still looks worried. Iris nods. “Okay, good. Everyone go home and get some sleep, we have enough to worry about. Jesse,” she says, when everyone starts moving. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says shortly. He glances at his aunt, who’s talking to Chesca about the cuffs. “Did you all really think I’d think of her differently if I knew her powers were back?”

“Of course _I_ didn’t,” she replies, “but that’s because I know you. And Jesse, you weren’t there when she had her powers. The night Colin sent her on that rampage, a quarter of the force ended up dead, the city had a curfew for a month and a half, and I was…” Iris thinks of the scars, both on her body and inside of it, and takes a deep breath. “The only reason I ever came back from that at all is Barry. I get that you’re not scared of her, and if I’m honest, I’m not scared of her either, but I can totally see her being scared of herself. Sometimes just the fact that you know you’re capable of doing something like that makes you afraid to go to sleep at night."  _You could create your own Flashpoint_. Jesse makes a face.

“Are you really going to talk to Waller to stop him from taking her?”

“Jesse, Waller is not going to lay one hand on your aunt. Not while I’m around.”

He regards her for a moment. “Thank you, Iris,” he says quietly. She blinks in mock-surprise.

“A sincere thank you from Dr. Asshole? Are you going to stop babying me next?”

He gives her a small smile and then hugs her goodbye, following his aunt out of the Cortex. Barry and Malina are the only ones left; he walks up as she’s grabbing her jacket. “I need to get something from the attic in the house so I’m gonna take Malina to mom’s; are you okay getting home?”

“I’m going to go with you, actually,” she says, rubbing her forehead. “I need to talk to your mom about the Coolidge case anyway.”

It’s all she can think about on the drive over – Dr. Wells and her powers, Colin and his powers, Barry causing Flashpoint, Caitlin becoming Killer Frost. All of them used their powers for bad things, whether they were in control or not. Barry had all the love of the West family, but it didn’t stop him from succumbing to pain when his father was murdered. Colin she knows had a loving family but he’s a complete sociopath. She doesn’t know a lot about Caitlin, but she knows that she kept to herself a lot after her fiancé died, and Barry mentioned that sometimes she seems reluctant to help. And Dr. Wells spiralled into despair after her husband died.

How long before something like that happened to her?

“Iris?”

She hears her name suddenly and looks around, realising that Barry has been saying her name for past ten seconds, and she’s just been staring out of the window. “What?” she says. Malina speaks up from the backseat.

“I just wanted to know about whether it would be possible for me to go into the Mindscape, since I wasn’t struck by lightning like you.”

“Oh. Oh, I – Um, I’d have to…ask Jay, I think,” she answers, shaking her head. Barry glances away from the road briefly, his green eyes curious.

“You okay?”

“Fine, sorry. I’m just a little tired.”

Nora is reading in her chair when they all traipse in; Malina saying a quick hello before going straight to the refrigerator to take her food upstairs so she can watch _Humans_. Barry kisses her on the cheek hello. “I just need to get some old books from upstairs, and then we can go,” he promises. “Or wait, maybe they’re in my old room.” Nora laughs.

“Honey, I turned that into a library as soon as you moved out.”

“Hey! I thought you said I could stay over when I wanted!”

“That’s what the couch is for. Or the spare room.”

“With the weird noises in the pipes?”

“Couch, then.”

Barry grumbles and goes to get his books, and Iris sits down. “Hey, so I wanted to ask,” she says, “I was looking at some of the old Coolidge cases today and you were the lead detective on the case, right?”

“Yes,” Nora answers, putting her book down. “Along with Patty.”

Iris raises her eyebrows. “How did I not know that?”

“I believe this was sometime after you came out of the coma and you realised they were dating – before you told me, I might add.”

“Hey, I got my karma,” she points out. “Because I got to spend the next month listening to how amazing she was and how nice and how he was really happy that we got along. And then she tried to kill me seven months later.”

“You also got superpowers. Call it superhero karma.”

“Whatever,” she laughs. “Anyway, I was looking through my notes and because I was in the coma when she started, and I just wanted to know – the flames were moving really quickly, right? Like, faster than we had at the publisher’s office this morning.”

“Mm, pretty fast,” she nods, sipping her tea. “Aren’t there witness reports?”

“Yes, but whatever CSI you hired to replace me can’t write notes to save their life, and I wanted to double-check,” she replies. “Thank you, I have a meeting with Coolidge and I wanted to be sure. High-temperature accelerant fires are her MO – they’re more dangerous because they release heat more quickly.”

“Mm, Henry was telling me earlier that they’re used to commit arson,” she replies absently. Iris frowns briefly.

“When?”

“What do you mean?”

“When did he tell you that?” she asks. Nora blinks at her. “He had a conference call with Waller today, he’s been cancelling lunches with everyone because he’s so busy. Actually, you’re both always busy these days. And he was in London last week, right? Plus, you’re always cancelling on me and oh my God, _you’re dating Henry_!” she gasps, standing up.

“Iris-”

“This explains so much! Why you never want to get lunch with me anymore, and Henry’s never at the office with Eddie, why you get so weird when I mention him, and – I _knew_ he wasn’t in London. I asked him to get him a Bakewell tart and he said he forgot, but he’s a spy. He never forgets anything.”

“Iris,” Nora interrupts, looking up the stairs, “ _shh_.” Iris stops and sits down.

“Wait. It’s true, isn’t it?”

Nora sighs, smiling. “Yes. It’s true.”

“Aw! Nora, that’s great! And so much better than when you were punching him – I’m so happy for you guys! This is amazing!”

“Iris, please,” Nora says, looking around. “Thank you, I appreciate it, but…you can’t tell Barry.” Iris’ face falls

“Wait, what?”

“We don’t want him to know until we’re ready – we don’t want any of them to know.”

“ _No_!” Iris practically wails. “This is terrible!” Nora frowns.

“I thought you said you were happy for us!”

“I am! But Nora, you cannot make me keep another secret from Barry, it’s just gonna end badly!”

“Iris-”

“Do you remember what happened when we didn’t tell him I was Miss Miracle? I got attacked by a ten-foot, genetically-modified, venomous jellyfish. Do you know what happened to Flash Barry and that Earth’s Joe when they kept a secret from Iris? They got kidnapped by a sentient, telepathic gorilla and Barry _almost got hit by a train_. Superheroes can’t keep secrets – it’s bad for our health!”

“Iris, I understand, but our lives have been complicated enough,” Nora says. “We’re still getting to know each other after all this.”

“Nora, I don’t want to-”

“You don’t want to what?” Barry asks idly, and Iris turns around and clears her throat.

“Um, I don’t want to…go into the Coolidge case without being prepared – are you ready?”

“Yeah – yeah, I’m ready,” he answers, frowning a little. He holds up the books, smiling. “Took me a little while, since they were hiding under several piles of comic books belonging to a certain someone.”

“Haha,” iris laughs a little shrilly. Barry hugs Nora goodbye and Iris does the same. “We’ll see you for dinner on Sunday?” Barry says, and his mother nods.

“Sounds good. Bye, you two.”

They walk towards the car and Barry grabs her arm. “Iris,” he says quietly. She turns back to him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just… tired. Why?” Barry doesn’t look convinced.

“Are you sure? Because you can talk to me, you know.”

“I know.”

Barry looks around. “You know, it’s really nice tonight,” he points out. “Do you want me to walk you home? Then you can tell me more about what happened on Earth-52.”

“What about your car?”

“I can pick it up tomorrow.” He holds out his hand. “Come on.”

Barry doesn’t say anything for a little bit. He’s always been like that – when she came back from visiting her mother or the therapist or someone said something about her parents at cheer practice, and Barry could tell that something was eating at her, he wouldn’t say anything. He’d sit on the armchair next to the couch, or knock on her door and sit on her bed, or just wait until she wanted to talk. Occasionally he would try to pull it out of her, when she was _really_ upset, but usually he just waits until she feels safe enough to talk. Some things just never changed.

“I told you how that Barry’s dad died, didn’t I?” she says quietly. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Barry nod. “Well, it was Zoom. He murdered him in the same place his mother was killed, in the house he grew up in.”

“God,” Barry mutters.

“Right. So then the prisoner that Zoom was keeping – their man in the iron mask – turned out to be his dad’s doppelganger, and I guess it just broke him. He went back in time and saved his mother, and lived in the timeline that resulted in that. Except when he was doing it, it brought about all these changes, his memory was slipping away, and all this bad stuff happened. But then when he changed it back not everything went back to the way it was. And now Cisco’s brother is dead, Caitlin is Killer Frost, Wally has super speed granted to him by what sounds like a witch doctor named Dr. Alchemy, and there is a villainous speedster called Savitar running around trying to murder everyone.”

Barry stares at her. “Like the Savitar Henry always talks about?”

“Different powers,” she admits. “But yeah, same thing.”

He frowns. “So you’re saying Barry just…changed the timeline? Just like that? Just altered the course of the entire universe?”

“Barry-”

“But I thought he said that could be dangerous! That he didn’t even know what could happen if he meddled with it – how could he change time knowing all of that?”

Iris sighs. “Barry it… Me and him – it’s hard, for us. His mother dying, and then his dad, and my dad, it’s not like losing a parent the way most people do. We…we see it. All the time. Everyday, I see it. I see my father murdered and I can never do anything about it. For fifteen years, it shaped everything that I did, and I’m okay with it now, mostly, but it never goes away.”

“Hey,” Barry says softly, stopping them. He puts his hands on her waist. “I will never know how much that hurt you, and I hate that you have to go through that. I didn’t mean to make it sound like it was insignificant.”

“I know, Barry,” she says. She steps back from his arms gently, trying to gather her thoughts. She takes a deep breath. “I’m…never going to grab lunch with my dad. I’m never going to buy him sweaters for Christmas or ties for his birthday. I’m never going to show up to the house on a Sunday with you and a pie from the market so he can threaten you for dating his daughter and you can pretend to like sports while my mom makes casserole. He’s never going to… walk me down the aisle.” She sniffs pauses, steadying her voice. “And all of that isn’t because he was hit by a car or he had a heart attack or something, it’s because someone changed my life and everything that should have been. _It wasn’t supposed to happen_. Because of that one decision, my dad died, and then fifteen years later all those people got turned into metahumans because of the explosion. And then _they_ killed a bunch of people, Dr. Wells killed Simone Stagg, and the people from the precinct. Colin made one decision and it affected my entire life, and the lives of a lot of other people. The same thing happened to Barry – and he had it worse because his dad left him for a year, came back, and then was killed about two weeks later. So, yeah, I know it was stupid, and selfish, and I don’t know if everyone on his team is ever going to forgive him for it, but if it were me…” Iris shrugs. “I don’t know that I would have done anything different.”

“But you’re not…there,” he says quietly. “Are you? I mean, I met that Barry, and he was pretty desperate to catch Zoom at the end there.”

Iris shakes her head. “Barry, I don’t think I was that different at all from him last year. After Patty left and Dr. Wells got away and my mom was still in prison, I was there – I was _angry_ , Bar. I woke up and I went to work and I was Miss Miracle angry. I was angry all the time. Before you guys and Olivia locked me in the Pipeline, I didn’t care whether I was hurting myself, let alone anyone else. I was lucky you guys interfered when you did, and Dr. Wells came back so my mom could come out.”

Barry looks at a complete loss for words – which she isn’t surprised at, if she’s honest. “I never…thought about it like that. So are you thinking about that? About what things would have been like if-”

“No, Barry, no – I love my life. I love my job, I love our family, I love you. I’m not thinking about that – well, not all the time, anyway. I was mad at Barry before, but now I’m realising that if I ever got to the point that he did, if I lost anymore people, I don’t know if I could have stopped myself. So when I see Dr. Wells wanting to keep those cuffs on because she’s afraid of slipping once, I don’t blame her.”

“Okay, Iris, are you sure you’re doing alright? Because it sounds like you need a break.”

“A break?”

“Yeah, like a vacation or something. You shouldn’t be carrying all this around by yourself.” Iris shakes her head.

“No, it – I think I just need to think by myself for a while,” she says. She runs a hand through her hair. “Just walk it off and clear my head. Do you mind?”

“No, of course not. But will you call me tomorrow?”

“Promise. And,” she adds, “last night was incredible, Barry.”

Barry searches her face, and then takes her face gently in his hands and kisses her. “I love you.” Iris looks up at him and realises that it’s him. Barry is her line. If she ever lost him, it would shove her right over the edge.

“I love you, too.”

***

“Wow.” Linda takes her feet off the desk and looks at Barry, who’s sitting across the Cortex on his laptop. “So is everyone okay with that?”

Barry shrugs. It’s the next day at lunch, and he’s at STAR Labs with everyone but Iris, who’s at work, and Eddie, who’s on a mission. Jesse is in the medbay working on something, significantly less annoyed than yesterday, but Barry’s not sure how he’s feeling about the whole ‘Dr. Wells has powers again’ situation.

“Eddie doesn’t want to tell Waller,” he says. “Because he knows how he is. I’m fine with it as long as Iris is – she’s the one who got hurt the most by Calamity. And Malina’s fine too.”

“I’ve known Dr. Wells for years,” Chesca says firmly. “I know her. Waller doesn’t need to take her anywhere.”

Wally looks away from drawing on the board. “Right, but what about long-term? Is she just going to wear those cuffs forever?”

“Right, I mean you think it would be better for her to learn how to control her powers?” Linda adds. Barry hesitates. From everything that Iris told him last night, it’s not just about control, it’s about constant control. He knows that she’s happy and he makes her happy, but having seen all that she’s seen in her life, maybe it isn’t that simple. And for someone like Dr. Wells, whose husband was killed and then was forced to do all those things by Colin, it’s probably even worse. He glances at his phone again. Iris called him this morning like she always did, sounding like her usually sunny self and suggesting somewhere for their date night this Friday. She’d assured him that she was fine, just down about Waller and Dr. Wells and her dad, but she had walked it off. He’s not sure whether he believes her, but he can’t do anything about it unless she tells him.

“Order’s up!”

Malina pops back into the room holding four bags of Big Belly Burger orders, two of which probably belong to her. She distributes them to everyone and then goes to get Jesse, who isn’t as irritated as he usually is when people interrupt him. He follows her back into the room and scowls at them all. “You shouldn’t be eating in here; this is a sterile environment. You’ll get food on the computers.”

“Take the stick out of your ass, Chambers,” Chesca says. Malina grins at him.

“If we make a mess, I can just use my superpowers to clean it up,” she promises. Jesse looks at her and relents.

“Alright, fine. But I’m not happy about this.”

“And water continues to be wet,” Wally mutters, making everyone laugh. Linda chews on her burger, glancing at Barry.

“Jesse,” she says evenly. “It – look, I don’t know what Dr. Wells is thinking right now. But, um, ever since she got out, she’s taught me all this stuff, things I didn’t even know I needed to know. And honestly, Barry hadn’t just told me about her powers coming back, I wouldn’t have noticed the difference. So she shouldn’t be worried about me thinking any different of her.”

“Or me,” Wally adds. “She taught me a lot as well. Never thought I’d be able to diagnose and treat metahumans when I took the Hippocratic Oath.”

“Me too,” Barry and Malina say together.

Jesse nods into his food and then looks up. “Thank you,” he says sincerely. “I will…I’ll tell her that.”

He smiles at them all gratefully and then Linda clears her throat. “So, what’s new with everyone? I want to know everything.”

“What do you guys normally talk about?” Barry asks.

“You and Iris,” Malina answers immediately through a mouthful of fries. Barry stares at her.

“What?”

“Oh, yeah,” Chesca nods, “all the time. What? You guys were so cute and in love and oblivious. Especially when you worried about her.”

“So adorable,” Linda sighs.

“Please,” Jesse scoffs, “I have never seen anyone act more dramatic than Barry does when Iris is in danger. That is not cute.”

“That is spoken like someone who joined the team twenty minutes ago,” Chesca says, throwing a fry at him. “If you had to chase after that woman to make sure she didn’t kill herself, you’d be dramatic too. Don’t forget this is the same person who fought a hurricane, took on Captain Cold and Heatwave at the same time, and tries to think of the most effective way to electrocute herself even though it’s bad for her for fun.”

“Besides,” Wally adds, “I’m sure you want someone to act dramatic if you’re ever in danger.”

“Hmph,” Jesse grumbles, and Barry laughs.

“Well, since everyone’s so concerned about my love life, maybe you can help me. Have any of you ever been to Red Lobster?” Everyone looks at him.

“The seafood place?” Wally asks slowly. Chesca has her lips pressed together.

“Yeah, Iris thought it would be fun. She really wants to go and that apparently I earned it?” He shrugs, going back to his chicken wrap. “Whatever that means. She must still be worried about how much work I’ve been doing. So, is it good?”

Linda looks like she’s trying not to laugh. “Ahem. Barry, have you heard Beyoncé’s new album yet?”

“ _Lemonade_?” he laughs, shaking his head. “No, Iris won’t let me – she says I need to be able to sit down and take it all in properly and she doesn’t trust me to do that by myself, so she’s doing it with me. Apparently, there’s going to be a quiz with an essay section and a discussion afterwards. She even changes the radio when the songs come on. Why?”

“No reason,” Chesca answers. “But, ahem, Red Lobster is great, Barry. I’m sure you’ll really enjoy it.”

“Oh!” Malina says suddenly, whipping around to look at him. “I just realised – oh, _gross_! You guys, he’s my _brother_!”

Chesca bursts out laughing, Jesse looks extremely bored, and Wally is glaring at him. “What?” he asks. Linda smiles.

“Nothing. You guys should get dinner. And,” she adds, squeezing his shoulder, “I’m really glad you guys are happy, Barry.”

***

Iris West is a regular at Jitters. She has been for years, ever since the first time she and Barry came here as teenagers to get what would turn into their annual Christmas hot cocoa. Most of the people recognise her, and if someone’s looking for her, there’s a good chance that they can find her in Jitters. Which is good if anyone wants to find her.

Unfortunately, ‘anyone’ now a man with a gun in his jacket.

Iris bumps into him just as she’s getting her coffee and getting ready to go back to the office. “Oh, sorry,” she says quickly. He looks down at her.

“Ms West?”

“…Waller,” she sighs. She looks around. “I thought we were doing a conference call this evening?”

“He’s requested your presence this afternoon.”

“So, he almost makes me spill my coffee and now I’m missing work,” she says. “Great.”

Waller is sitting at his desk when they finally arrive, having stopped to get her lunch because they know how unbearable she can be without it. He only looks a little amused when she comes in with pasta and fresh rolls. “Amadeus,” she says.

“Miss West. I – are you alright?” he asks when she starts rubbing her eyes.

“I haven’t been sleeping so well. Now, may I ask what was so urgent that you had to interrupt my workday?”

“You mean apart from the copycat that caused an accident on the causeway?”

She puts her fork down. “I was going to tell you about that in the conference call.” He shrugs.

“Tell me now.”

“There is a woman that calls herself The Rival with identical powers to mine and Malina’s. She seems to have a grudge against us. We’re working on it.”

“See that you do, Miss West. I don’t want another Calamity situation.”

Iris swallows. “Right. Well, that’s another thing. We’re not quite sure how – yet – but it appears that Dr. Wells’ powers are back.”

“They’re _back_?” he demands. “How?”

“I told you, I don’t know. We noticed a few weeks ago.”

“And you’re telling me this now?”

“I don’t tell you about things that aren’t dangerous,” she points out, and he raises an eyebrow.

“And you don’t think a woman who brought the city to its knees on one night getting her powers back is dangerous.”

“She’s not…” Iris sighs. “We’re keeping them under control. We have power-dampening cuffs that prevent her from using them. Amadeus, Dr. Wells has no desire to use her powers. She doesn’t even want them.”

“I wish I were naïve enough to believe that,” he replies. “I will give you two weeks, and I want a report from you, Henry and Eddie. If I think it’s going to be a problem, we’re going to have to come up with a solution. And send me the specifications for those cuffs.”

Iris sighs through her nose. “Fine. Now, since I don’t believe you dragged me all the way down here just to tell me to do my job, what is it?”

When Waller looks worried, Iris almost drops her pasta. “You…” He glances through the one-sided windows, even though he knows that no one can see through it to his office. Iris’ throat goes dry.

“Amadeus?”

“You still want to be informed of what happens with Dr. Snow?”

“I…Y-Yes.”

“I see. Well, it appears in the last few weeks he’s become rather more…enthusiastic about you. It seems that he’s been asking about you, what you’re doing, why there are now two of you. Meaning Miss Thawne, of course.”

Iris puts down her food with shaking hands. “You said he can’t get out,” she says quietly. “Right?”

“No, he can’t. I’m only telling you because you asked me to.”

“Oh,” she nods. Even though it’s spring, even though she knows he’s deep underground behind a steel wall and several agents, Iris feels the cold. The man who changed her life still isn’t done with her. She shivers and takes a deep breath. “Right. Well, that’s nothing to worry about, then. And I’ll take care of The Rival. And Dr. Wells. Ahem, can I go now? I still have work to do.”

“I’ll call you an escort. Iris,” he says when she stands up. “He is not getting out of here. That is a promise.”

***

The Rival doesn’t make an appearance for the next week after that, so everyone begins to relax a little. Iris’ experiences have told her that it probably just means she’s biding her time, but at least this gives them more time to prepare. Sometimes, though, she does want to take a break, and tonight that means watching TV at her boyfriend’s apartment. She finishes dumping the various bags of chips on the dining table and arranges all the candy. Barry, who’s making popcorn, looks at her.

“When did you and Chesca watching Game of Thrones turn into everyone we know coming over?” Iris laughs.

“Well, Jesse said to Chesca that he thought Cersei’s bodyguard was going to be Gregor Clegane, and she bet him fifty dollars that it wouldn’t be. Since Eddie _also_ bet against Chesca and Linda bet Wally the same thing, that’s how it happened. Do you mind?”

“No, it’s going to be fun watching them all yell at each other when it turns out that it’s Gregor.”

Iris regards him as he pours the popcorn into the bowl. “So you’re on Team Mountain? Smart move, Allen.”

“I try. And at least they’re all bringing food, right?”

“Yeah, you’re already feeding Miss Miracle. Don’t overdo it.”

“Mm,” he agrees. She comes over to the counter and starts sorting the candy into smaller bowls. She hasn’t mentioned anything about Flashpoint or Colin or Dr. Wells since that night they walked home. Sometimes Iris is so good – scarily good – at hiding how she feels that he doesn’t know when he’s overreacting, when he’s just worried because he’s always been so attuned to her emotions. But she’s here, dancing around his kitchen, stealing brownies when she thinks he isn’t looking and being her usual carefree self. You would never know to look at her what she’s carrying around. He clears his throat. “So, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure,” she replies.

“Do you remember when you first got your powers and I didn’t know it was you, and you spent all that time flirting with me?”

The tips of Iris’ ears go red. “Um,” she says, still sorting candy. “No.” He raises his eyebrows.

“Really? You don’t remember teleporting me all over the city?”

“That wasn’t flirting, that was transportation.” Barry grins at her.

“And the calling me your only boy? And then when you started dating Scott, saying that I wasn’t your only boy, but that I was your favourite?”

Iris avoids his eyes. “…yeah, can’t say I remember that. Kind of sounds made-up.”

“ _You need to be more careful, Barry_ ,” he says in an irritatingly accurate rendition of her voice. “ _It’s important to me that you’re safe, Barry_ ,”. He pokes her in the ribs. “ _I will always come when you call me, Barry_.”

Iris blushes at his grin and then scoffs, walking up to him. “You know, I think I do remember that. Know what else I remember?”

“What?”

“I remember Miss Miracle being on a certain reporter’s three list,” she tells him, and then it’s Barry’s turn to blush. She folds her arms. “And you certainly remember a lot about what she – allegedly – told you.”

“Well, I…”

“And I seem to remember a lot of nights listening to my best friend talking about how _amazing_ Miss Miracle, how cool and brave and smart. Do you remember that too, Barry?”

“I…Hey,” he says, pointing at her, “ _I_ had a crush on the cool superhero who saved people from burning buildings, which is understandable, because _everyone_ had a crush on Miss Miracle. _You_ had a crush on a barista with a blog, which means that you couldn’t resist little old me.”

“Alright, Barry…”

“Couldn’t resist this big piece of sexy.”

“Beanpole.”

“ _Sexy_ beanpole.”

“I really don’t know why I like you so much,” she sighs, and he pulls her towards him and kisses her. “Oh,” she says against his mouth. “That’s why.”

“And for the record,” he adds, “I can’t resist you either.” He kisses her again and then frowns. “Iris, stop eating all the brownies.”

“I brought more! Anyway, we’re ordering more food as well and I’m using the STAR Labs budget, since we’re all supposed to be on duty today.” She walks over to his noticeboard, looking for takeout menus. “I’m thinking Thai, sushi and pizza, and – hey, what’s this?”

“What’s what?”

Iris plucks something off the board. “ _Submissions are now being taken for Central City’s Excellence in Journalism Awards in the categories sports, broadcast journalism, special interest_ …yada yada terms and conditions… _applicants must have a senior member of their staff sponsor them and have until the second week of May for submissions_.”

“Oh,” Barry shrugs. “Yeah, I got that last week. I don’t think I’m going for it, though.”

“Why not?”

He makes a face. “I don’t know, I just don’t think anything I’ve written so far is good enough. I mean, the people who usually win this win a Pulitzer within a year or two, and I don’t want my first showing to be something crappy.”

Iris stares at him. “Barry, _nothing_ you have ever written is crappy. Your paper on Catcher in the Rye in high school made the Lit teacher cry, remember?”

“I guess,” he says. “But that was high school – this is the real world.”

“But there was that thing you wrote about the Baldwin Towers, the thing you wrote about me, the series about the falling education budgets across the West coast districts, the DA’s corruption scandal…”

“How do you remember all that?”

“Photographic memory, duh. Look,” she adds, grasping his shoulders. “Just promise me you’ll think about it, okay? We’re already going to that party; we might as well have something to look forward to.”

“Right. You’re right, I’ll think about it.”

He kisses her on the forehead and she peers at him. “We are going, right? I just assumed that you were going to take me, but-”

“No, Iris, I’m going to take my other girlfriend. Of course we’re going, sunshine.”

“Good, because I already found a dress. It should be here by then. Oh,” she says suddenly. “Have you seen my phone?”

He points to the couch. “Why?”

“I need to remind myself to call my landlord – I still don’t know whether I’m renewing my lease or not,” she says. Barry looks up from dumping the rest of the popcorn in the machine.

“Have you tried finding anywhere else?”

“Yeah, but nowhere really sticks out to me, you know? With my first apartment it was like ‘yes, this is perfect’. But then I don’t really want to move back in with my mom.”

“But you like your old place, right?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “It’s not really doing anything for me anymore, but it’s better than nothing. Maybe I should just stay there.”

Barry pauses. “You could – um, you-”

But he’s interrupted by the doorbell, and when Iris opens it she sees that Eddie and Chesca are on the other side in the middle of a heated argument, followed by a very bored-looking Malina. “Oh, thank God,” she says. “Iris, make them stop.”

“What are they arguing about?”

“ _Glee_ , of all things,” she replies, going straight to the food. “I call the beanbag chair!”

“ _Glee_?” Iris frowns, closing the door. Chesca sighs.

“My boyfriend seems to think that Barry looks like the evil singer that tried to kill one of the nice singers on Glee.”

Barry stares at them all. “I look like _who_?”

“He does!” Eddie insists. “With the hair and the face – and the singing!”

“Oh, you mean Sebastian?” Iris asks. “Oh, yeah, totally. I’ve always thought that. He was hot.”

“See, I told you!”

The doorbell rings again and Malina goes to get it. Wally and Linda have brought food and Jesse, who’s lugging three bags of ice. “What’s everyone yelling about?”

“Barry’s the evil singer from _Glee_ ,” she says matter-of-factly. “Thank God, my beer needs ice.”

“That’s it!” Wally exclaims, taking off his jacket. He gets a beer from himself and Linda. “Thanks, I’ve been trying to figure that out for a year.”

Iris laughs at Barry’s expression. “Okay, I really have no idea what any of you are talking about. Why am I an evil murderous singer?”

“You remember that guy on _Glee_ that I had a crush on? The one that did Smooth Criminal with Santana?”

Barry’s face clears. “What, the guy in the blazer? Is that why you liked him so much, because he looked like me?”

“What, you think I liked him for his personality?” Iris scoffs. “That guy was an ass.”

“Great voice, though,” Chesca says.

“Yeah, I stopped watching after he left. I wanted him to do that standard, what was it?”

“ _Runnin’ Home to You_ ,” Barry remembers. “Yeah, we stopped watching after that, didn’t we?”

“I stopped watching when Emma and Mr. Schue broke up for the four millionth time,” Linda mutters.

“I stopped watching when they moved to New York,” Eddie admits. Jesse looks around at them.

“What’s _Glee_?”

“God,” Chesca mutters as everyone laughs. “Fine, I guess I see it. That guy _was_ hot, you’re right.”

“Hey!” Eddie says indignantly. Chesca pats his chest.

“Relax, choirboy, you know I love you,” she says. Eddie stares at her.

“You…You what?”

Barry and Iris share an amused look as Chesca’s mouth pops open. Linda and Wally are doing the same thing. “You guys, I think I just heard all the ice melt,” Iris says loudly. Everyone scurries away from the table, and then Linda yanks her away to the couch where Malina is eating chips and dip. “I actually need to talk to you.”

“Sure, what?”

“I heard that you and Barry finally did it.”

“Oh, guys,” Malina groans. “I’m eating – do I have to leave?”

Linda pauses. “You should probably leave.”

“Noted.”

Iris frowns as Malina leaves. “How did you find that out?”

“You mean besides the fact that you two keep looking at each other like you’re going to jump the other one on your desk? Please. But I did want to know something. You have like all this…enhanced stamina, right?”

“Right…”

“And how did Barry do with that?”

“How did – Linda Jasmine Park!” Iris hisses. “You’re terrible!”

“Oh, come on!” Linda laughs. “You’d want to know too!”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me this!”

“Just tell me once and I’ll never ask again.”

“Really?”

“No, of course not, but please?”

Iris sighs, covering her face. “Fine. I…Barry was…He kept up…very well.”

“Is that so?”

Iris takes a sip of her drink. “Miss Miracle was very satisfied. Extremely satisfied.” Linda grins.

“I bet she was.”

Iris swats her arm. “You say one word-”

“Please, who am I going to tell? Wally, so he can punch Barry in the face? Please.”

“Okay!” Eddie calls. “Ten minutes, where’s the food?”

“Calm down,” Malina says. She appears behind him as Iris gets up to join them. “Iris and I have devised a way to make sure that everyone gets their food hot and make sure Iris and I get fed as well. Now, we need to eat a lot, but we can’t eat fast.”

“So we can’t order everything at the same time, because the food will get cold,” Iris says. “So we have to order everything at half hour intervals. The Thai should be here soon, the pizza will be ordered when we’re done with that, and we round that out with pizza.”

“But my birthday,” Eddie says, “she forgets.”

“At the risk of sounding like Chesca,” Jesse interjects, “I want to watch people get stabbed.”

“Hopefully,” Chesca adds, “by a White Walker. How cool would it be to watch Cersei get stabbed by a huge shard of ice.”

Iris swallows as everyone laughs. “God, I hate her,” Linda says. “Yeah, petition for a White Walker to stab Cersei in the heart with ice.”

It’s cold again, and Iris closes her eyes until the doorbell rings with the food. She got that update a week ago but she’s been thinking about it ever since, even though Waller said he put an extra guard rotation on him. “Iris?” Barry asks quietly, coming up behind her. “What’s wrong?”

“What? Oh, nothing, I’m just light-headed. Need some food.”

Everyone gets their food and gets settled around the TV, and even though Iris is nestled comfortably against Barry’s side, she doesn’t feel comfortable for the entire hour.

***

“So we were right.”

Iris looks up from putting the plates in the trash. “What?”

“The Mountain turned out to be Cersei’s bodyguard.”

“Oh. Oh, right.” She tries for a smile, but it probably doesn’t reach her eyes because she keeps thinking that Colin is going to jump out at her. “Who knew Jesse would be right about Game of Thrones?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that happy.”

“Hm.”

She gathers up some bottles and organises them to be recycled. Barry clears his throat. “So has Dr. Wells given anymore thought to what she’s going to do?”

“Huh? Oh, um, I think she’s just taking it one day at a time, you know? I mean, she knows we’re okay with her being there, and she’s still wearing the cuffs, so…”

Iris picks up one of the plates from the brownies and turns away to put it in the sink, and jumps about a foot in the air when she feels a hand on her shoulder. “Whoa!”

“Iris – shit!”

The plate falls to the ground and shatters, pieces flying everywhere. “Oh,” Iris says sadly. “Oh, God, Barry, I’m sorry-”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it-”

“It’s fine, Barry-”

“I’ll do it,” Barry interjects, “because you’re shaking, Iris.”

Iris looks down at her hands and finds that he’s right. She gingerly withdraws her hands from the shattered plate and swallows. “Iris, seriously, are you okay?” he asks. He faces her, his green eyes round with concern. “You’ve been off for a while.”

“I haven’t…been sleeping,” she admits. “Superhero stuff. Flashpoint stuff.” She shrugs, twisting her mouth around. “Nightmares.”

Barry takes her hand and stokes her knuckles softly, leading them to sit down on his couch. “Waller gave me an update last week, about Colin. Apparently he’s been asking about me, about what I’m doing, and I don’t know, I just - I know he’s locked up, but I can’t help it - I’m scared.”

Her voice breaks a little on the last word and she looks down. “He’s not going to hurt you, Iris,” he promises. He searches her face “But do you want to stay tonight?”

“Are you sure?”

“’Course,” he says firmly. Iris nods.

“Okay, then. If you don’t mind.”

Barry kisses her hands and stands, leading her to his room. She gestured to the smashed plate. “What about-”

“I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

She has time to notice the night now that everyone’s gone - only the sounds of the traffic and people below disturb the night. She reaches up to tie her hair up and curses. “I should go back to my apartment – I need to get a-”

“Bottom drawer on the right,” Barry interrupts. Iris frowns at him and he shrugs.

“Bottom drawer on the right.”

Iris crosses to the right side of the bed and opens the bottom drawer. There are three new silk headscarves, exactly like the ones she uses for sleeping, sitting in the drawer. At her surprised look, he shrugs. “I have been your best friend for years, Iris, and I wrapped your hair when you broke your arm. I bought them in case you forgot them one night.”

Iris walks back to him to kiss him, long and tender, and then they both brush their teeth. She slips into his Berkeley shirt, wraps up her hair and climbs into bed with him, sighing when he wraps an arm around her and she settles her head on his chest. She’s still thinking of the nightmare she had last night - Colin stabbed her through the heart with an icicle, but only after he killed everyone she loved first.

“ _You are my sunshine_ ,” Barry sings softly. “ _My only sunshine_.”

Iris closes her eyes and curls into him, revelling in his warmth.

“ _You make me happy, when skies are grey.”_

She makes herself forget all the worry about what could have been and what may be out to get her.

“ _You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you_.”

 _Please don’t take my sunshine away_.”

She doesn’t remember falling asleep. All she knows is that, with Barry’s arms around her and the song in her ears, she feels the way she always feels with him, ever since the night her father died and she came to the house, terrified and in shock, so in shock she didn’t cry until everyone was asleep, and he snuck out of bed and pulled her into his arms and sang this song to her until she fell asleep. She remembers it was the first time she felt safe since seeing all that horror mere hours before, and for now, Iris feels just as safe as she had that night.

***

“ _All I wanna do_ ,” Iris hums to herself, looking through some letters, “ _is come running home to you_ , da da-da da da daaaa…Mm…” She presses the button for the Cortex on the elevator and leans back against the wall, closing her eyes. Barry had offered to hang out with her on her day off, but she just wanted to go in and do some work. Maybe she would train or work on her suit, or catch up on all the paperwork she’s always neglecting. Anything to take her mind off the fact that Colin is still out there wanting her dead. She walks into the Cortex and finds Malina sitting at one of the computers. She’s lucky they’re going to see Hamilton soon – she really does need a break. “Hey, little miss,” she says pleasantly. “What’s up?”

Malina wipes her eyes and Iris stares at her. “Hey,” she says quietly, sitting down. “What is it? What happened?”

“Nothing, it’s fine.”

“I know fine, and you are not fine. Come on, you can tell me.”

She waves a hand. “Just…” she shakes her head. “I was looking for Barry’s blog and the quote he got from us about The Rival, and I kind of fell down a hole and I…found some stuff. About what people were saying about me.”

Iris’ face clears in recognition and she sighs. “Right. This part is never fun.”

“There’s just…all this _stuff_. There’s people who make fun of my name, and my suit, and the fact that I can’t fly yet – the video of me getting hit by lighting is online now, and everyone’s just laughing at it.” She rubs her nose. “I thought I was doing a good job, or that I was getting better, but people are kind of awful. If they can’t find anything to talk about, they just make stuff up. About how you don’t really like me and I don’t deserve to be a superhero.”

Iris hesitates. Nobody tells you this part about being a superhero – about how there will be people who’ll hate you no matter what you do, because they can, because it makes them feel brave, and there will be little else you can do about it. When she started she read all manner of awful things about herself online – and this was _before_ she attacked a police officer and her boyfriend. Some people are just assholes, and when you’re a superhero, and a superhero that also happens to be a girl, it gets a lot worse.

“Malina,” she says carefully. “It…I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that this is just a one-off. That it won’t get worse. Because the stronger you get, the more recognition you get, the worse this will become. You are a superhero, and there are people all over this city that love you with their whole hearts. Unfortunately, that means that there are people who will hate you, too.”

Malina faces her, blue eyes sad, and then Barry walks in whistling. “Hey, Iris, have you – wait, what is it? What’s going on?”

“Malina,” Iris sighs, “has found the worst part about being a superhero.” Barry’s face falls.

“She found the hate blogs?”

“She found the hate blogs.”

Malina stares at him. “You know about them too?”

“Malina, I’m your social media manager. Everything you see, I see.”

“How do you handle this stuff?” she demands. She clicks at the computer. “Like, there’s this one guy who tweets all day long about how ugly I must be underneath the mask. And this woman is just…horrible.”

Barry and Iris share a look, and Barry comes to sit in the chair while Iris sits on his lap. “Malina, I know it easier said than done,” he says, “but you can’t let this stuff get to you.”

“Because it’s not true?”

“Yeah, and because it’s not about you,” Iris says simply. “It’s about them.”

“Studies have shown that those who hide behind anonymous monikers and send hate to people online are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem and take pleasure in making others feel small to – futilely – battle their own insecurities,” Barry rattles off, and Iris glances at him.

“Malina, did you know that your brother has a PhD? But he’s right,” she adds, when Barry pokes her. “You are powerful and caring and passionate – you’re a superhero. You are getting to be everything that we all dream about when we’re little, so are you realised surprised that people are jealous?”

Malina wrinkles her nose. “You think that’s what it is?”

“Of course I do. Plus, nobody who’s really happy with themselves is going to spend all day complaining about someone they don’t even know on the internet.” He turns the computer towards him. “They’re probably just someone that sees you, and sees you happy, and trying to make the world a better place, and they’re jealous and angry because they think _they_ should be doing it. But really, no one cares what ‘dickface123’, anonymous Twitter egg who probably looks like a foot thinks.”

“Barry, I’m sure they’re not called…okay, maybe they are,” she laughs, peering at the screen. “And Barry – a foot, really?”

“Why else would they be hiding?"

“Look, I never said it was going to be easy. Let’s be real, the world is always going to have a problem with two women having the audacity to save the world, even though Superwoman has been around for years, especially when one is Black. Believe me, I’ve been dealing with this stuff for years, and that’s just as Miss Miracle.” Malina stares at her.

“Wait, who’s saying mean things about _you_?” she demands, looking a little angry. “You’re…Iris.” Iris shrugs.

“Apparently dating Barry Allen comes with its pitfalls.”

“People don’t like that you’re dating Barry?” Iris gives her a sad smile.

“You really think there are people who don’t have a problem with Dr. Barry Allen dating the black girl instead of the tall, pretty blonde he used to go out with? People make up stuff about me all the time – like how I’m not pretty enough, or cool enough, or how I don’t deserve him-”

“Which is ridiculous,” Barry interrupts, “because I’m still trying to figure out how I tricked her into falling in love with me in the first place.”

“My point,” Iris laughs, “is that I’m the one with the great boyfriend, and the great job, and the great life. You have this incredible family that loves you, school that you love, and work that you love. And we both have this amazing gift. And those people are on the internet. Whining about it.”

“You know what people use the internet for?” Barry asks. “Porn and complaining.” Iris looks at him.

“That is a One Tree Hill quote, Barry.”

“My point stands,” he says. Malina folds her arms.

“I guess, but…I don’t know, some of them are right. I don’t know how to fly yet, and I did wipe out pretty bad last week with The Rival.”

“Look, Malina, the point isn’t what people think of you. The point is that you get up, and you do your best, and at the end of the day, if you can look in the mirror and say you did your best, and you can be happy with yourself, you’re doing fine.”

“And,” Iris says, “as the saying goes, ‘You know that you’re that bitch when you cause all this conversation’.” Malina smiles.

“Quoting Beyoncé now?”

“That’s not – Iris,” Barry says tiredly, “you have to let me listen to that album.”

“You’re not ready! Besides, I haven’t finished the essay questions yet.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Anyway,” she continues, leaning forward to type, “if you’re going to look at the bad stuff, you have to look at the good stuff, too. Like, okay ‘Little Miss Miracle is the coolest superhero ever, I want to be like her when I grow up’. ‘Little Miss Miracle is gorgeous, I want to…’ Okay, I’m not reading that,” she says quickly, blushing. “Oh, look, ‘It means a lot to me that Little Miss Miracle exists, now me and my best friend have superheroes that look like us’.” She looks at Malina, who’s trying not to smile. “Pretty neat, huh?”

“I guess,” she says. She rubs her face. “Maybe I was just being stupid.”

“You weren’t,” Iris promises. “It just takes a while to get used to this stuff. But I promise it gets easier. And believe you’re a great hero – which is why I’m leaving you in charge when we go to see Hamilton next week.”

“What?” she says. “But I’m – I’m not-”

“You’re ready, Mal. You just need support, but so did I in the beginning. You’re going to be fine.”

Malina doesn’t say anything for a while. “When you’re a spy you don’t worry about what people think of you,” she says, “because you’re always trying to be someone else. But here it’s like people are punishing you because they know who you are, or think they do.”

“Which is why,” Iris says, “you have to keep winning. If not for any reason than it’ll make them _really_ mad.”

Malina grins as Eddie walks in, who frowns when he sees Malina’s face. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” Iris promises. “Some people were just saying some things about Mal on the internet…”

“…and we were telling her that sexist jackasses are a waste of space,” Barry finishes. Eddie's frown deepens.

“What are their IP addresses?”

“Eddie,” Iris warns, and he gives her an innocent look.

“I just want to talk.”

“Nobody’s allowed to call me dramatic,” Barry says, “because Eddie’s about to go cancel the internet.”

“We tried that already,” Eddie says, “didn’t work.”

“What do you mean you tried that already?”

“You guys think Y2K was about clocks? Anyway, I need to talk to Mal, but I can come back if you’re busy…”

“No, we’re done,” Barry promises. “I actually came to find Iris before I went back to work. Can you talk?”

“Sure,” she says easily. He leads her out into the corridor. “What’s up?”

He rubs the back of his head. “Uh, just – that was okay, right? That was what a big brother would say.”

Iris smiles. Actually, with how protective he just got and the way he gave her that advice, it sounded like something a dad would say. But she’s not telling him that – yet. “Yes, Barry, it was great. She’s lucky to have you. Now, what’s up?”

“So, Clark called me last week. But with everything that’s going on, I kind of forgot to mention it. It turns out that Superwoman is bringing some friends to our meeting.”

“What kind of friends,” Iris asks slowly.

“Batgirl, Marvel Man and Aqualady.”

“So… _good_ friends?”

“Right. So I was thinking…how does Liv feel about seeing Hamilton next week?”

***

The Queen family are known for having their hand in almost every industry under the sun – textiles, pharmaceuticals, weaponry, you name it. One of those is hospitality. Their standard is always impeccable, the service world-class, the food to die for. You know you’re getting class when you’re staying at the Queen Suites, no matter what state you’re in. So when Iris arrives and is waiting to have her bags checked in, she makes a note to enjoy everything it can offer.

Or, rather, she tries to.

“I ought to take back your invitation,” Freddie grumbles as they wait by the dining room. All around them, bellhops and guests mill around, waiting for tour guides and chauffeurs.

“This is not my fault.”

“Didn’t you swan into the Foundry asking whether she wanted to join some super team that you were starting?”

“She didn’t have to say yes.”

“Please, it was like dangling a carrot in front of her face. We were supposed to have a cake-tasting today.” Iris looks up at him, eyebrow raised.

“She’s Olivia Queen,” she points out. “You can have the cake brought to your room.”

Freddie huffs. When Iris asked Olivia whether she wanted to be involved, she not only said yes, but she brought along Laurent and Freddie as well, leaving Dig and Theo in charge of the city. Once she, Barry, Clark and Lois have dinner, the Justice League might all be meeting. The thought makes her skin tingle. Right then, Liv, Barry and Laurent walk back over from checking in.

“Okay, that’s all done,” he says. “So as soon as Clark and I are done deciding the meeting place, we’ll call you.” Laurent grins.

“This should be fun.”

“If it doesn’t go wrong,” Olivia mutters.

“My ideas are great!” Iris says. “Just wait, this is going to be great. Like the time you and I worked together!”

“Oh, goody (!)”

It’s nice, Metropolis. Olivia and Freddie do go off and try cakes, so Barry just takes Iris around the city, and she’s content to just be there with him. It’s good to get away from her city for a bit, with the constant worry. Malina is taking care of things at home, though The Rival hasn’t reappeared yet, so Iris keeps the feeling of calm. She lets it carry her through the day, all the way until the evening when they’re all dressed up for dinner and heading to the lobby. She’s in a green evening dress and her hair is pinned elegantly to the side. “Barry,” she says evenly. “It’s fine. He already likes you.”

“I know,” he replies. He fiddles with his tie “Is my hair okay?”

“Barry,” she laughs. “You look perfect. You always do.”

He smiles gratefully at her. “Thank you. I couldn’t do any of this without you.”

“And you’ll never have to. And remember you don’t have to do anything just because he buys you dinner.”

“Ha ha. Look, there he is.”

Clark Kent and Lois Lane look like a couple from a fairy-tale. Both dark-haired, he’s a few inches taller than her and strapping with a strong jaw and crisp blue eyes, she’s pretty and bespectacled with hazel eyes. Both smile when they see them, Clark offering a hand. “Barry,” he says warmly, “it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“You too,” Barry practically grins. “Clark, this is Iris West, my girlfriend. Iris…”

Iris shakes his hand, smiling winningly. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Kent.”

“Clark. I get the feeling we’re all going to be good friends. Iris West, meet Lois Lane.”

“A pleasure,” she says. “And I’d just like to be the first to say you look incredible, Iris.”

“Second,” she corrects, looking at Barry, “but thank you.”

“You both look stunning,” Clark says, “and I’m glad we’re doing this. How do you like Metropolis so far?”

“It’s incredible,” Barry replies. “There’s so much to see, it’s a shame we’re only here a couple of days.”

“You should come by the office tomorrow, we can show you around. After, well…” He gives Lois a look, and she laughs.

“I think they want to discuss their other girlfriends, Iris,” she says, and she waves them off. “So, Barry tells me you’re a CSI?”

Clark and Barry move off to the side. “So we’re all set,” Clark says. “Superwoman and her friends, tonight on the Wayne Tower roof at eleven. I’d say earlier, but I want to make sure Lo gets to bed – she’s been feeling a little tired.”

“That’s fine,” Barry agrees. “Iris is whacked from the journey. Miss Miracle, the Green Arrow, and the Black Canary will meet you up there.” Clark grins.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“…hoping to be director one day,” Iris finishes. She pushes some hair out of her face and Lois gasps.

“That’s a beautiful ring, Iris.”

“Oh,” she says, looking at the Miss Miracle ring. “Yeah, it was a gift. What about you, you’re wearing a few.”

“From my dad, mostly,” she laughs. “He picks them up in antique shops – thinks I’ll like them.”

(And that’s where, she’ll realise later, her antennae should have gone up).

But then there’s a tall, beautiful, dark-haired woman walking past them and Lois grabs her arm. “Bree, there you are. I’d like you to meet someone. Bree, this is Iris West. Iris, this is-”

“Brianna Wayne,” Iris breathes. “Like, Wayne Industries.” She grins at her.

“That’s me. And I know you. Horse and carriage on Twitter, right? Cute.”

“Play nice, Bree.”

“You two are friends?” Bree’s dark eyes sparkle.

“Oh, the girl scout and I go way back,” she says. There’s something in that gaze Iris doesn’t quite recognise. “Enjoy your dinner. Iris West.”

***

If one were to look at the Wayne Tower at eleven pm that night, they’d be met with quite a sight. A woman in gold standing next to a tall man in a suit, both standing across from a taller man while they watch a caped figure land. Superwoman is more impressive in person, cape billowing in the wind, stance strong, and a strange energy that emanates from her.

It’s this that Iris pays attention to. Not the speech – Barry rehearsed it a million times, and they’re just getting acquainted before the others get here. Iris doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s not unpleasant, exactly, but when they go to shake hands, Iris feels something jumping along the other woman’s skin. But before she can think about it, Superwoman had gripped her arm, picked her up, and thrown her off the roof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked that. I've been feeling weirdly bad about these. It's almost over, at least.  
> Next one:  
> Barry's heart is in his throat as he watches. Iris is hanging from Colin's hand, bruised and bloody and barely breathing.  
> "B-Barry..." she gasps, and Colin grins, a wickedly sharp shard of ice in his other hand.  
> "Colin, come on," he begs. "Please, just-"  
> "You guys probably should have killed me."  
> Iris is crying, through pain or fear, he doesn't know. "Barry," she gets out, "I love you."  
> "No! No, Iris, don't say that-"  
> "Looks like you're out of miracles."  
> And he plunges the shard into her chest.  
> "No! No - IRIS!"


	37. The Room Where It Happens: Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But no one else was in the room where it happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is very WA heavy and I would appreciate feedback. The moment (you will know the one) came from a S4 Smallville episode.

* * *

Barry gets there before Iris does, and he finds Clark standing atop Wayne Tower like he does this all the time. He had been surprised when no one questioned him when he walked into the building, since it wasn’t everyday that he just walked into the headquarters of a billionaire’s empire – unless he was visiting Olivia, of course. But no, when he’d walked inside and repeated the instructions that Clark had given him to the guards sitting at the desk, they’d let him go right up to the roof. Soon, after Superwoman and Miss Miracle met properly for the first time, he would send a signal to Freddie, and Olivia and Laurent would join them.

“Hello, Barry,” Clark says pleasantly when he gets up there. “Nice night.”

Barry laughs, sticking his hands in his jacket. He’s right. From here, they can see all across Metropolis “It is, actually. Think we’ll be telling our grandkids about how pretty it was?”

“That’s the hope. Ready?”

Barry nods. He has the earpiece in his ear but it’s mostly for show – he doesn’t need it. Iris can reach his mind wherever she is (benefits of being someone’s lightning rod), as long as his mind is open to it. Nevertheless, he turns his head to the side. “Miss Miracle?”

Iris appears next to him almost immediately, and Barry smiles at Clark’s expression – Iris is always pretty impressive to people who aren’t used to it. The ‘MM’ emblem on her chest shines bright under the light of the moon, and her eyes glow gold behind the black domino mask. Her hair is done up in a neat ponytail that swings slightly as she inclines her head in a nod. “Mr. Kent,” she says calmly. Her voice comes out distorted thanks to the technology in her mask. Then she turns to Barry, a smile in her voice. “Barry.”

“Miss Miracle,” he replies evenly. Clark clears his throat.

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Miracle.”

“The pleasure is all mine, I’m sure.”

“So I guess we’re really doing this,” Clark says. He stands with his hands behind his back and Barry frowns.

“Aren’t you going to…”

“She can hear us.”

As if in answer, they hear the flutter of a cape, and then it’s Barry’s turn to be shocked when a figure zooms seemingly out of nowhere and lands gently on the floor of the roof, her cape pooling on the floor around her. He’s never thought that pictures did Iris justice when she was in her suit, and the same can apparently be said for Superwoman. Her face is half in shadow but he can still see the red mask over her eyes. The hope symbol on her chest matches her skirt and boots, and she tilts her head in greeting but doesn’t say anything. Unlike Iris, Superwoman doesn’t have anything that modifies her voice.

Barry starts talking about the stuff he and Iris discussed – introductions, when the others will get here, that kind of thing. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Superwoman walk forward to shake Iris’ hand, who hesitates slightly before gripping hers in return. And it’s normal, just for a second.

But then Superwoman throws his girlfriend off a roof.

And then disappears after her.

It’s so sudden that it takes a split second for them to react, but then Barry is racing to the side of the roof, trying to stop herself from calling out her name. It plummets when he sees that both of them have disappeared. “What the hell?” he snaps, looking back at Clark. “What is she doing? Where is she taking her?”

“I don’t – I have no idea,” he replies, looking just as dumbstruck as Barry feels. “Superwoman – Superwoman, _what are you doing_?”

_Iris? Iris, can you hear me?_

_SUPERWOMAN HAS LOST HER DAMN-_

But then her thoughts cut out, replaced by panic and fear, and Barry whips back around to glare at Clark. “You tell Superwoman to bring her back, _now_.”

“I can’t, she’s not listening to me!”

Barry’s about to say something else but he’s hit with a wave of Iris’ feelings, a mixture of terror and confusion. Then he hears some grunting and metal on brick, and then Olivia and Laurent land on the roof. About a second later, Freddie appears, wheezing from the run. He pulls out his inhaler and takes a long drag before looking around at everyone. “Whoa, who died?”

“I – Miss Miracle is gone,” Barry tells them. “Superwoman lost it and threw her off the roof.”

“What?” Olivia and Laurent demand. “Why would she do that?”

“I’m wondering that myself, actually,” Barry says tightly, and Clark shakes his head, fishing out his phone.

“Believe me, Barry, I have as much idea about all of this as you do-”

They’re interrupted by a cacophony of car alarms, crashes, and people shouting in the street. “Okay,” Freddie says shakily, “starting to be a little afraid of Metropolis.”

“What is that?” Laurent wants to know. He looks down below to the ground, and his eyes widen. “You guys, they’re all attacking each other and smashing windows and cars.”

“Who is?” Barry asks.

“ _Everyone_. What’s going on?”

“What’s going on,” a stern female voice says, “is that we are in big trouble.”

None of them had noticed the lithe figure in the skintight suit that appeared on the roof behind them. And no one, apart from Clark, who runs to her immediately with a look of relief on his face. When she steps into the light, Barry sees the black pointed ears, the black cape edged with gold trim and, most importantly, the golden bat on her chest. “Clark,” Batgirl says tersely, her voice modified in much the same way that Iris’ is, “you and everyone here needs to come with me. Right now.”

“Do you know what’s happening?”

“And would someone mind telling me?” Olivia demands. Batgirl looks round at all of them, her black mask reflecting the light from the moon.

“Green Arrow, Black Canary,” she nods. “Barry, Freddie.” Freddie stares at her.

“How do you know me?”

“You’re not the only one who’s good at computers, Smoak, and I get the feeling we’ll all know each other pretty well by the end of this. But I wasn’t kidding when I said that we had to move. Di and Aria are already waiting-”

“Okay, I know all of you masked people really enjoy being mysterious,” Barry snaps, his fear for Iris making him impatient, “but Superwoman literally carried off Miss Miracle for no apparent reason. We have two Miss Miracles, but we’d really like to keep it that way. So nobody is going anywhere until you tell me what the hell is going on.” Batgirl regards him for a second before nodding.

“Well, you’ll fit right in, Barry. There is something – I’m not sure what, exactly – attacking this city. I’ve been getting reports of things that aren’t quite human doing strange things in Gotham _and_ in Metropolis, and I’d wager they were probably doing it in Opal City and Ivy Town as well. But we need somewhere to regroup and figure out what to do next, because this…” she shakes her head. “This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Are you all ready to go?”

“Go where?” Olivia asks. “And in what?”

Even as they’re speaking, the sound of engines split the air, even though they’re high up on a roof and Barry can’t see any helicopters. Then he sees a large black… _thing_ materialising out of nowhere, hovering above their heads. Batgirl presses something on her wrist and a panel slides back into the vehicle, allowing a ladder to slide out. “A little place I have in the mountains,” she replies. There’s a smile in her voice as she takes in everyone’s shocked faces. “And…I assume you’ve all heard of the Batmobile?”

***

The only thing that saves her is the fact that she can fly.

Because to call Superwoman strong would be a gross understatement – the woman is a _powerhouse_ , and Iris is hurtling towards the ground at high speed before she gathers her thoughts and realises she’s about to die. She pulls up at the last minute, flying upwards in a graceful arc. And not a moment too soon, because Superwoman’s fist is smashing into the pavement where Iris would have been, and bits of concrete and dust shoot into the air. Iris lands on the ground, panting. “Superwoman?” she tries, frowning. The alien starts stalking towards her, every movement imbued with deadly grace. Her eyes start glowing. “Superwoman, what – shit!”

Iris barely has time to move out of the way before Superwoman is blasting her heat vision at her. She flashes away and appears behind her, noting that the brick building she’d just been standing in front of was smoking from the blast. Even a metal pole next to it was melting into a puddle of molten steel next to her. Superwoman barely misses a beat, turning with all the grace of a cat and clenching her fists. Iris looks around, panicked, before she hears Barry’s own frantic thoughts in her mind.

_Iris? Iris, can you hear me?_

_SUPERWOMAN HAS LOST HER DAMN-_

But then Superwoman lets out a breath and Iris has no other word for it – it’s like she’s shoved back into the wall by an invisible force. Her limbs grow cold and her brain freezes, and she realises that it’s Superwoman’s famed super-breath. Iris grits her teeth through the pain and teleports in a circle, building up heat so that her limbs don’t lock up before she’s attacked again. For whatever reason, the Lady of Steel is trying to kill her. But why?

Superwoman herself doesn’t seem too angry – even though the mask is covering her face, Iris can see that her eyes are full of a kind of deadly calm. If she keeps avoiding these attacks, however, she’s not entirely sure how long that will last. Iris looks up at the woman’s eyes again, trying to see her through the mask. “Superwoman, please. I’m your – friend, I’m not-”

Then the woman is right in front of her, moving at an impossible speed and grabbing her by the throat. She lifts her in the air, mouth twisted in a smile and eyes starting to glow that odd yellow colour again, and Iris’ vision starts to blur. She looks down at her and feels a flash of recognition just as a chorus of alarms and shouts break the quiet, still air. She knows this woman. “L-Lois?”

***

The Batmobile is, Barry will learn later, a combination of a car, a helicopter, and a fighter jet, but the part that Barry appreciates the most is that it’s practically invisible and very, very fast, which means that they reach their destination in mere minutes. He barely gets to appreciate the view as they speed over the skyscrapers of Metropolis and the streets of Gotham, before they’re flying over a dark blue ocean towards some greenery set in the mountains. He’s wondering where on earth they’re going when the sea itself seems to open up and the Batmobile angles downwards, sweeping into the entrance without so much as a jerk. They’re plunged into a tunnel, which darkens as the entrance seals back up.

“This is either the most awesome or the most terrifying day of my life,” Freddie says to no one in particular. Batgirl chuckles from the cockpit as they reach what looks like a large underground landing pad.

“Funny, that’s exactly how I feel whenever I leave for work.”

Barry looks at Clark, who’s run his hands through his hair so many times he’s sure it’s going to start coming out in his fingers. He feels bad, thinking that Clark couldn’t have known anything if he’s this cut up about it. “You really have no idea what’s going on?”

“Not really,” replies. He rubs his eyes. “I thought – a few years ago, she was hit by this thing called Red Kryptonite. It turned her into an angry, violent version of herself, and she very nearly killed someone. I thought this was like that, but there were warning signs with the Red Kryptonite – this came completely out of nowhere. Almost like someone flipped a switch.”

“It’s something like that,” Batgirl says. The Batmobile has come to a stop in what looks like a large cavern, with fluorescent lights nestled into the walls. She orders everyone out and they’re faced with a tall, slim old woman with neat blond curls and a kind face. “Alma,” Batgirl sighs in relief. “There you are.”

“Here I am,” she says in a pleasant British accent. “Although when you said you were going to pick up our guests, I did expect there to be two more of you.”

“Plans change, we should know that better than anyone. Where are the others?”

“Ms Curry and Mr Prince are upstairs, awaiting your instruction.” She turns to Clark. “Mr Kent. Is anything the matter? You look rather unwell.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Batgirl says immediately. “Tell Aria and Dino to meet us in the control room.”

“Right away, Ms Wayne.”

Barry’s mouth drops open as Alma walks off. “’Ms Wayne’? Not like…”

“Brianna Wayne?” Laurent splutters. “You mean there’s more than one vigilante billionaire running around?”

Batgirl smiles. “My friends call me Bree. Come on, let’s move. Miss Miracle is incredible, but I’ve fought Superwoman, and that woman can level a city.”

Barry swallows as he follows everyone downstairs. He can still feel Iris – scared and frantic, and she’s moving too fast for him to get a feel for her thoughts – but he can still feel her. He’s waiting, though, for that awful feeling that happened when she died, when felt like something was crushing his lungs and pouring acid on his muscles. They reach a large chamber filled with equipment and computers, and see that there are two figures standing there. One of them looks like a literal Greek God, all golden muscle and bright blue eyes under thick dark hair, and the other one is slightly shorter with raven-black hair that seems to shine of it’s own accord, sea-green eyes, and a myriad of tattoos all over her body that almost seem alive. She’s also holding an absurdly sharp trident. “Who are you?”

“Dino Prince,” the man replies evenly. His voice is warm and low, and a little musical. The other woman brandishes the trident, her grin as sharp as the tallest tine on the weapons. “And Aria Curry.”

“Also known as Marvel Man and Aqualady,” Batgirl replies. “Everyone, this is Barry Allen, Freddie Smoak, the Black Canary, and the Green Arrow.”

Freddie makes an audible choked noise nad goes for his inhaler again, and Barry steps forward. “Bat – Bree,” he corrects himself quickly. “It’s nice to meet you all, really, but-”

“Miss Miracle, of course. Alma?”

The woman has appeared seemingly out of nowhere and crossed to all the controls, tapping buttons until a several videos of what looks like the city come up. At everyone’s surprised looks, she smiles. “Alma Pennyworth, Ms Wayne’s personal maid,” she says cheerfully. “Lovely to meet you all. Ms Wayne, I’ll have everyone’s communications devices hooked up in a moment.”

“For the past month,” Bree says, pointing to the video, “I’ve been seeing weird things happening in these cities. Weird life forms that attack people and then disappear, leaving little to no trace of who or what they are. But it also happened to people – citizens would do these things and have no recollection of doing them afterwards. My first thought was that they were from Krypton, and they’d migrated to Gotham to avoid Superwoman.”

Clark frowns at him. “No alien that she’s ever told me about can do that.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Bree sighs. She looks at Dino. “This wouldn’t happen to be some sort of god, would it?”

“The control of a god doesn’t quite work that way,” he replies. “It would be to accomplish a specific goal, not random acts of violence, and certainly not for short bursts.”

“Barry?”

“Miss Miracle knows one alien,” he says, thinking of Kaden, “and he’s not…capable of this. Or here, for that matter. But I’m sorry, you said they like to cause havoc?”

“I know what she’s talking about,” Aria says. She flips her trident in her hands. “I have an army, one that commands every area of the sea, so I have many soldiers. And because I have so many, I often have my captains deal with them when they’re disobedient or otherwise going against their jobs. So when I heard about some of them attacking their comrades and doing other criminal things, I thought they would take care of it, and didn’t think anything more than that.”

“But?” Olivia prods. Aria runs a hand through her hair.

“But my soldiers are brilliant – they have to be. They’re trained early adulthood, they’re unflinchingly loyal, and any rule-breaking is always minor. So now I’m thinking perhaps they’re been influenced by whatever…this is.”

“And you think it might be happening to Superwoman?” Clark asks worriedly. “Whatever this alien life form is?”

Something starts niggling at the edges of Barry’s memory, dancing swiftly out of reach when he tries to think too hard on it. Batgirl nods. “I managed to catch one as they were coming out of it, but they didn’t remember anything other than a name. Sinestro.”

Barry’s head snaps up. “S-Sinestro?” he repeats. “You’re sure that’s what they said?”

“Very sure – have you heard of him?”

“Her,” he corrects, getting his phone out and gesturing to Freddie. “Bree, I need to use your computer. Freddie, can this connect to Miss Miracle’s comms so we can talk to her?”

“Wait,” Olivia says. “Barry, is this the same thing that the Green Lantern was talking about?” Marvel Man frowns.

“Who’s the Green Lantern?”

“She’s a hero friend of-” Barry breaks off when he feels a wave of fear and knows that Iris doesn’t have a lot of time. He takes a deep breath. “Of – Of Miss Miracle’s, and she’s been looking for Sinestro. But we need to help Miss Miracle – if Superwoman’s being controlled by her, she might not stop until she-”

“We’ll help her, Barry,” Batgirl says. She nods at Freddie, who gets to work connecting his phone to Bree’s computers. Clark turns to Barry.

“Can you call her? The Green Lantern?”

“I will, I promise. But you – all of you – are going to need to help with this, I don’t-”

“…B-Barry?”

Iris’ voice, shaky and exhausted, sounds over the speakers. It takes everything in Barry not to blurt out her name; he barely stifles a sigh of relief.  “Miss Miracle? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she says tightly, and then she winces in pain. “Just…tired. You really have to tell me what Superwoman’s eating, that…woman never gets… _ow_ …tired.”

Barry swallows. “Just hang in there, okay? Listen, this is really important – is Superwoman wearing a ring?”

“A ring?” she repeats. “I don’t…” There’s a pause, and Barry knows she’s realised what he’s talking about. “You think it’s Sinestro?”

“Whatever it was that the Green Lantern was talking about? Batgirl told us it’s all over Gotham _and_ Metropolis.”

“We should call her.”

“I’m on it, but-”

“Right, ring. I can’t see…Wait, there, on her right hand, under her suit. She’s definitely wearing one.”

Olivia nods. “Freddie, call the Green Lantern. Bree, can we give her the address of this place? She’s the only one who knows how to defeat these things.”

Bree hesitates. “That’s not a problem, but how long will it take her to get here?”

“Ms Wayne is right,” Alma adds from beside Freddie at the terminals. She adjusts her headphones. “I’m getting reports from emergency services all over the city that people around them are attacking randomly, and they’re reporting that there are aliens as well.”

Freddie makes a triumphant noise. “I’ve got her – Hal? Hal, it’s Freddie Smoak, we need you to-”

But then he breaks off when there’s a flash of green light and Hal herself appears in the middle of the room, impressive in her black and green suit. She looks around and whistles. “Okay, nice digs. I really do have to upgrade my base.”

“How did you find us so quickly?” Laurent frowns, looking around. “We didn’t even tell you where we were.”

“I told you guys to call me if you heard anything about Sinestro, and she’s bad news.” She shrugs. “I figured if you were calling me, it had to be serious. Now, where, exactly, are we?”

“You teleported to somewhere without knowing where we are?”

“I put a tracker in Freddie’s phone.”

“And later,” Barry says at his affronted look, “we’re going to have to talk about your boundaries, but right now we don’t have time. Green Lantern, this is Clark Kent, Batgirl, Marvel Man, Aqualady, and Alma Pennyworth. Everyone, this is the Green Lantern, but everyone calls her Hal.”

“Pleasure,” she says curtly.

 “Sinestro managed to get a ring on Superwoman and now she’s trying to kill Miss Miracle, and there are all these aliens attacking people.”

She stares at them for about half a second before squaring her shoulders. “Alright, the first thing we need to do is get a warning out to everyone – people should stay in their homes and don’t let anyone they don’t know in their house.”

“I can do that,” Barry says quickly. “Me and Clark – people will listen to us.”

“Good idea. Then we’ll need someone to deal with the aliens themselves, and the humans that are being controlled by them.”

“So they’re all going to be wearing those rings? And we just have to get them off?”

Hal hesitates. “Yes and no. The thing is, those rings are linked to Sinestro herself, so we need to find her and defeat her. Otherwise, she’ll just find a way to get them back on people and do all of this all over again.”

“How do we stop them?”

“Sinestro is a Yellow Lantern, which means that she and her followers get their powers from the fear of others. I’m a Green Lantern – I get mine from determination and willpower. It’s not just physically defeating them, it’s being strong enough mentally to go through with the attack.”

Freddie frowns. “Well, why is she trying to get Superwoman to kill Miss Miracle?”

Hal laughs bitterly. “Because she’s smart. Miss Miracle is one of the most powerful beings on the planet, and thus one of the only ones that could defeat her. Superwoman is probably one of the few in existence that could kill Miss Miracle, so she’s trying to wipe her out. And then she’ll come after all of us, so we’ll have to watch our backs.”

Almost as if she hears them, Iris lets out a scream and Barry’s heart twists. “You guys,” Iris gasps painfully, “this is all very interesting, really. But Superwoman just gave me a concussion and I can’t…I can’t get the ring off her!”

“We’ll have to find Miss Miracle,” Hal says. “Freddie, I’m sending you pictures of what Sinestro and some of her lieutenants look like – forward them to everyone else. Marvel Man, follow me and we’ll start taking out as many of these aliens as possible on our way to Miss Miracle. Black Canary and Green Arrow, you do the same on land, Aqualady has the sea. Batgirl, can that flying thing you have back there do any damage?”

“It’s been known to cause some problems.”

“Good. I may need it to chase an alien spaceship down.” She pauses. “I hope you have another one.”

Batgirl blinks at her and then looks at Barry. “Are we sure about her?”

“She’s our only hope, Bree.”

“Wait, Bree?” Hal repeats. “Like, Bree Wayne, the billionaire? Wow, I owe Stewart a hundred, she-”

“Hal!” everyone snaps. Freddie clears his throat.

“Uh, guys? I just traced Miss Miracle, and unless you can move as fast as Superwoman can, I don’t know whether you can get to her in time.”

“Where is she?”

Freddie reads out the address. “But that’s on the other side of town, and they won’t stop moving.”

“Is there some other way she can get the ring off?” Barry asks desperately. Hal sighs.

“Barry, Superwoman is under the control of a very powerful alien. I only know of a few people who’ve broken through the control of a Yellow Lantern ring, let alone one that’s being controlled by Sinestro, and one of them is me. It would take an extraordinary act of willpower, or something strong enough to break through that programming.”

“We’re going to get her back, Barry,” Olivia promises him, throwing her shoulders back. “She’s a fighter, you know that.”

“We’re going to get them both back,” Dino says. He pulls a large sword out of a sheath on his back. “I’ve fought things from other worlds before. This should be quite simple.”

Barry nods as everyone moves out, and Alma taps him on the shoulder. “Mr. Allen,” she says warmly, “I think you might be in need of some tea. Shall I bring some up?”

“Yeah, um, yeah,” he replies gratefully. “That would be nice, Mrs. Pennyworth.”

“Alma is fine. And, well…” she looks around at Clark and Freddie, who are already at the terminals, Clark talking to news stations and Freddie giving the team instructions. She looks back at Barry. “Miss Miracle. She’s your Iris, isn’t she? Ms. Wayne showed me that picture of the two of you from Twitter. You’re quite lovely together.”

Barry’s throat goes dry. “I…I don’t…”

“Relax, my dear. I’ve been looking after Batgirl for years – I know how to keep a secret.”

“Right.” He rubs his forehead. “I – how did you know?”

“How much you care about her. It’s written all over your face, dear. Don’t worry about it,” she says at his alarmed face, “you’ll get used to hiding it eventually.”

“How do you know that?”

Alma laughs. “Let’s just say you’re not the only one around here who worries about a masked superhero in a suit.”

***

Iris knows she’s running out of energy, and that’s when she starts to worry. She can always find some way to evade someone that’s stronger than her, or faster than her, or more powerful, but she can’t evade fatigue. She’d eaten a lot at dinner, but she’s also been fighting off Superwoman for what seems like forever, and that’s no small feat. Iris can also hear the rioting and attacks going on in random pockets of town, and hopes that everyone’s on their way to stop them from getting out of hand.

And it does not help that it’s Lois Lane under the mask.

When Lois had her before, trying to choke the life out of her, Iris gasping out her name had caused something to flicker in her eyes, and Iris had taken the opportunity to kick her in the stomach and scramble away from her. But it’s been a while since then, almost half an hour, and she’s not sure whether her friends will get there in time. Even as she’s thinking this, Lois fires off another heat vision blast at her, this time burning her lower arm.

“Barry?” Iris asks, flashing around a corner to hide. He knows it’s just him, him and Clark and Alma and that the others are on their way, but she still needs to hear his voice.

“Everyone’s on their way,” he promises, and Iris knows that he wants to say more, that he wants to comfort her, but he can’t without giving away her identity – something they thought they’d be able to discuss until the aliens literally invaded. “How are you holding up?” _Are you okay? Are you hurt?_

“Pretty well, all things considered.” _I’m fine, Barry._

_Are you just saying that to make me feel better?_

_No._

_Liar_.

Iris laughs out loud, more nerves and fear than anything. She’s seen Superwoman in action, and while she is miraculous, she isn’t invincible. “Have you told Freddie to erase any footage of Superwoman and me fighting that might have appeared anywhere? We don’t want anyone to think that we hate each other.”

“Already on it,” he says swiftly. “Okay, update, Black Canary and Green Arrow are on the southside and are making good ground, Aqualady is holding down the harbour, and Batgirl, Marvel Man and the Green Lantern are taking care of the sky and looking for Sinestro.”

“They’ll be with you soon,” Barry adds. “Just hang on, okay?”

“Okay. Hey, what was it Hal was saying about the rings? About breaking through the control?”

“Uh… _Citizens are advised not to engage with any life form that means them harm_ ,” Barry says into the microphone. He switches back to her. “She said that it was really powerful and only a few people have done it, and it would take a lot of willpower.”

“Right. So I just wait and hope she doesn’t snap me in half until everyone else gets here?”

“Looks like it.”

“Well, I suppose I have to-AHHH!”

Iris chokes on her words and lets out a scream as she’s grabbed from behind and thrown into a wall. Everyone panics, shouting her name over the comms, but she can barely hear them. Stars explode behind her eyelids and she feels blood trickling down her back. She slumps against the wall, dazed, and sees Superwoman stalking slowly towards her. “Lo…” she coughs painfully. “Lois.”

Her eyes flash with anger and they glow with that strange yellow light but she keeps walking towards her, fists clenched. Iris tries to stand, but her muscles have turned to jelly and she’s still disoriented from being thrown into the wall. The mask has fallen off and she can see the real Lois, the sweet woman who got excited about writing articles and got shy when she was asked about her boyfriend. Then Iris has an idea – desperate, stupid, and it probably won’t work, but it’s the only one she has. “Barry,” she says carefully.

“Yes?” he answers quickly.

“I need you to…I need you to put Clark on the phone.”

Thankfully Barry knows her so well that he knows when she’s serious. “I’m here,” he says uncertainty.

“Clark, I need you to do something for me,” Iris says, eyeing Lois as she looks around. She swallows as Lois wrenches a pole out of the ground and rolls her shoulders. “And I need you to not ask any questions.”

“Alright.”

“I need you to talk Lois down.”

“You want me to what?” he demands.

“You’re the only one she’ll listen to when she’s like this! Lois?” Iris says. God, her head is killing her. “You need to listen to me, alright? I have someone who wants to talk to you.”

Iris turns the speaker in her comms on so everything plays out loud, and then they can hear Clark’s voice. “Lois? Lo, can you hear me?”

She pauses and Iris lets out a sigh of relief. “It’s working,” she whispers. Iris’ eyes flicker between the ring and Lois’ face. “Keep going.”

“I…I remember the first time I fell in love with you, I think. Everyone says it was when we started working at the Daily Planet, but it wasn’t it, was before that.”

Lois is frowning now, mouthing something, and Iris tries to get to her feet. “Keep going…”

“It was when we had that dunk tank in high school, remember? And everyone persuaded you to do it, even though you really didn’t want to.” He pauses, and Iris hears from the emotion in his voice that this isn’t just a memory. She takes a deep breath and tries to concentrate, because she’ll only have a short window in which to do this. “None of you believed I was good at throwing footballs,” he laughs fondly. “But I did, and you fell in the tank.”

Iris can see the ring, sitting comfortably on a finger of the hand that’s clenching the pole. Lois isn’t even looking at her anymore, but she’s still dangerous. “I was so worried that you would be mad at me, because I messed up your hair. But you weren’t. You just let out this…this _laugh_ , and I swear to God, it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. And I fell in love with you right then.”

Lois drops the pole. “Clark?”

“I love you, Lois.”

Iris takes her chance – she thrusts her hands out at Lois, who flies back into a wall. Iris pins her down by the arms while she’s still confused and wrenches the ring off, dropping it when it burns her hand. Lois’ eyes stop glowing and she blinks up her. “…Miss Miracle?”

“Sorry!” Iris says. “Sorry, about that, but you kind of…attacked me.”

“I attacked you? How did – wait, _Iris_?”

“Hi, Lois,” Iris says, laughing. “You have no idea how glad I am that you’re not punching me anymore.”

Lois looks so confused that Iris wants to reach out and hug her. “What happened? The last thing I remember was Clark telling me that we had to go meet you and Barry on the roof.”

“Yeah, you were kind of being controlled by aliens. But not like your aliens, different aliens.”

“…right.”

“Everyone’s on their way, and I’ll explain – _look out_!”

Iris shoves Lois out of the way when she sees a figure launch itself at her, and they roll away. She’s never seen anything like it before – an alien with yellow skin and scales, clad in a black and yellow costume with an odd symbol on their chest. A ring, different to the one that was on Lois’ chest, sits on one of their fingers. “Superwoman,” she says, and Iris feels like that voice is creeping up her skin. _They get their powers from fear_ , Hal had said. And maybe they tried their best to instil it in people as well. The alien looks at her and Iris feels a boundless, bottomless terror. “Miss Miracle. You were much more powerful than we thought you would be.”

Iris can’t move – her limbs have locked up completely. The alien advances but Lois charges forward without so much as a second thought and ducks under the punch that the alien swings. Then they hit Lois with a blast of yellow light but, amazingly, she fights through it and fires back with her heat vision. The alien screams in pain and explodes in a shower of sparks, leaving nothing but the suit and ring behind. Iris lets out a breath she didn’t realise she was holding and Lois wrinkles her nose as flakes of the alien’s skin float to the ground. “Yum. Are you okay?”

“I – I think so,” she replies. Then they’re on alert again as they hear figures approach, until Iris recognises the figure in front. “Hal?”

“Iris West,” she laughs. “Of course you’re the only one who gets attacked by all the aliens.”

“Only because you entered my life. Who’s this?” she asks, gesturing to the well-muscles man in head-to-toe armour. He nods. “I am Dino, Prince of Themyscira.”

“Marvel Man, Dino, she doesn’t know where that is,” Lois says. He shakes her hand and Iris swallows at his grip. He looks like he walked out of a Calvin Klein ad. “H-Hi. I’m – um. I’m Miss Miracle. So, you’re like a real prince?”

“Iris.”

“Right, sorry. Lois, this is Hal Jordan. She’ll probably break into your house inappropriately at some point.”

“Nice to meet you,” she says, shaking Hal’s hand. “Now, do you know what’s going on here?”

“I already said, we’re being invaded by aliens. One of them managed to slip a ring on your finger so they could get you to kill Miss Miracle.”

“I think it was the ring that you said your dad gave you,” Iris adds helpfully. “But don’t worry, I got rid of it. And I’m guessing that they’re all trying to kill us now?”

“Well, as of right now, thanks to Lois and Iris wanting to start a superhero team-up, there are three vigilantes, an alien, a vigilante with alien technology, a metahuman, and a god running around this place. Not to mention the Queen of the Seven Seas.”

“Nice to know you guys remember me,” Aria says over the comms.

“So, it’s safe to say that they’re going to be hunting everything that could kill them.”

“What do we do?” Dino asks. “I don’t think we should hide, but like you said, we need to find this Sinestro woman and defeat her so the rings don’t work.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Iris says. She looks around at everyone. “When I met Lois and Clark on the roof, I noticed that there was this weird energy around her. And then when that alien attacked us just now, I felt the same thing.”

“That was Karu-Sil,” Hal says. “One of her captains, so her power must be a lot stronger. Maybe if we follow that aura we can find Sinestro faster. Are you okay, Iris?”

“I’m fine,” she promises. The wound in her back is already starting to heal, she can feel it. “And those other Yellow Lanterns, they all have that fear thing?”

“Yeah, but you just have to concentrate on what’s real. Or failing that, do like Superwoman here and punch it’s lights out. Call me if you find her.” Hal’s eyes flash. “She and I have some unfinished business.”

They all nod and separate, and Iris flies down to the ground, searching out people to help. She can hear Barry and Clark relaying information to news station and police precincts, and it’s comforting to know that they’re there. Hal is right – the humans are wearing rings and the aliens are just attacking people, but it becomes a task she’s good at the longer she goes at it. She finds one family cowered in the corner of a grocery store by someone with a ring glowing on their finger. She locks eyes with them and puts a finger to her lips, advancing on him from behind. For whatever reason, the rings also block out Iris’ mind control. When she’s confident that he can’t see her, she tackles him from behind and knocks him out, yanking the ring off his finger.

“Miss Miracle,” the youngest gasps. “Is it really you?”

“It’s me,” Iris replies, standing up. “Are you hurt?”

They all shake their heads. “Good. Go outside and tell the cops there your address – they’ll try to get you home.”

Iris carries on like that, walking or flying. At one point she sees Aqualady blasting aliens out of the ocean with her trident, and decides that she doesn’t need her help. Iris stalks the abandoned streets, looking for Sinestro or anyone like her, when she sees a familiar figure curled up in pain on the floor. “Help…” he moans, coughing. “Help me…please…”

Iris races over to him. “It’s alright, sir, I’ve got you…” Then she sees who it is, and it’s like the world has stopped spinning.

Barry.

“Iris,” he whispers. Blood is coming out of his mouth and he looks up at her with pleading hurts. “It hurts, Iris. Please make it stop… _hurting_.”

Some part of her mind knows it’s not Barry, that he’s somewhere in Batgirl’s lair, but the part of her that’s always been in love with him, the part of her that’s had to watch her father die in front of her over and over again, is terrified. “B-Barry, no,” she whimpers. She cradles his face in her hands, feeling a bone-deep terror wash over her. Very far away, she can hear people calling her name, but that doesn’t matter, none of that matters when Barry is hurt like this.

“You let me die,” he whispers painfully. “Why did you let me die, Iris?”

Tears start leaking out of her eyes. “N-No, I didn’t – I’m sorry, Barry – _Barry_!”

He goes limp in her arms, his skin turning cold immediately, and all the breath is knocked out of her. Her brain refuses to comprehend it, that Barry’s dead, but there is this unending horror filling up every part of her, pushing out any rational thought and-

“IRIS!” she hears suddenly. “Iris, you need to listen to me!”

“Barry?” she sniffles. She looks down at him – lips blue, still unmoving, dead. “You…you’re…Barry, you’re de-”

“No, I’m not,” he says forcefully. She raises her head, frowning. “Iris, whatever you’re seeing in front of you isn’t real, do you understand me?”

“It’s not?”

“No! It’s Sinestro and her followers playing on your fears. Look, listen to me, okay? Concentrate on my voice. I’m here. I’m still alive. I’m not leaving you.”

Iris swallows. Barry feels so real in her arms, but the smart part of her knows the boy she’s always known would never lie to her. She closes her eyes. “Do you promise?”

“I promise, Iris.”

“Okay.” She’s aware that, if it was Sinestro, the alien could be anywhere near her – that energy is back, pulsing around her like a live thing. She forces herself to concentrate on Barry’s words. _I’m not leaving you_. She stands gingerly, holding her breath. The fake Barry’s body slides away from her and lands on the ground with a sickening thud that she’s trying to ignore. “Not real,” she breathes out. “Not real, not real, not-”

Something slams into her from behind, and she falls, landing on her back. A shadowy figure appears above her, yellow eyes glowing in bright pink skin and inky black hair. And Iris knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, even without he energy pulsing off her, who this is. “Sinestro.”

“Miss Miracle,” she says disdainfully. And the terror seems woven into her voice, like it seeps into Iris’ skin from mere words. Everything is amplified, and the screams of people as they’re being attacked sound like they’re right behind her. Iris hears more – she hears Barry’s cries of pain, her friends calling for her to save them, her father’s screams as he dies. Sinestro raises an eyebrow as she stands over Iris, knowing exactly how her powers is affecting her. She tips her head. “I have to say, when people said that you were able to hold off Superwoman,” she intones, “I expected someone with a mind less pliable. Someone strong.”

 _I’m not leaving you. I promise_.

“Didn’t you hear?” Iris asks lightly. She feels electricity build within her, flowing out to her arms. “I _am_ strong. Hal, I’ve got Sinestro!”

Then she blasts Sinestro with as much lightning as she can manage. Sinestro turns gold and white above her, but then it’s too much for her body to take, and Iris knows no more.

***

Barry’s eyes flick between each of the monitors and the giant map that shows everyone moving around on it. Next to him, Clark is giving a live radio broadcast to the Daily Planet, while Barry himself has his blog and Miss Miracle’s Twitter account open so they can get news to everyone. It’s like what he does at home, mostly, except right now he’s watching Hal aboard the Batmobile as they board Sinestro’s spaceship.

“I’m picking up a lot of weird energies,” Freddie warns, tapping at the controls. “You guys should be careful.”

“I think I know to be careful when boarding an alien spaceship,” Batgirl says.

“You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?” Hal mutters, and Barry laughs despite himself. Then he frowns, hearing something from Iris’ comms. “ _B-Barry, no_ …”

“Iris?”

But she doesn’t say anything else, and when Barry tries to reach her thoughts wherever she is, all he can feel is despair and grief. Then an image of himself, pale and still in Iris’ arms, flashes through his brain. “Something’s got Iris,” he whispers, and Clark looks up at him. “It’s making her think I’m dead – Iris!”

“You guys,” Batgirl says, “Sinestro’s not here – it’s just more of her goons. Other than that, the ship’s empty.”

“It’s a trap!” Hal realises. Barry hears them all scramble out of the ship and get into the Batmobile. “Get out – move!”

“ _N-No, I didn’t – I’m sorry, Barry_ – _BARRY_!”

“Sinestro might have her,” Hal says, “she always could sneak up on people like that. Barry, listen – Sinestro is showing Iris her worst fear, you have to make her believe it’s not real.”

“Iris, you listen to – IRIS!” He can see from the map that she’s frozen in place. “Iris, you need to listen to me!”

“Barry?” he hears her sniffle. She lets out a breath. “You…you’re…Barry, you’re de-”

“No, I’m not,” he says forcefully. He gestures for Freddie to direct everyone to Iris’ location. “Iris, whatever you’re seeing in front of you isn’t real, do you understand me?”

“It’s not?”

“No! It’s Sinestro and her followers playing on your fears. Look, listen to me, okay?” he says softly. “Concentrate on my voice. I’m here. I’m still alive. I’m not leaving you.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise, Iris.”

“They’re almost there,” Freddie tells him, while Clark is instructing everyone to keep away from the street where Iris is. Her voice is more breath than whisper when she speaks next.

“Okay.” She pauses. “Not real. Not real, not real, not-”

Barry hears a crash and then a voice like flint saying, “Miss Miracle.”

“Sinestro,” Iris gets out, and Clark curses.

“You guys, hurry!”

“I have to say, when people said that you were able to hold off Superwoman, I expected someone with a mind less pliable. Someone strong.”

Barry’s heart is in his throat, but then he hears Iris speak and, curiously, there’s a smile in her voice. “Didn’t you hear? I _am_ strong. Hal, I’ve got Sinestro!”

There’s a bang and then – “ _WARNING, WARNING, Miss Miracle in great distress_ ,” the computer drones, “ _Heart rate is elevated and there is extreme shortness of breath, please initiate emergency evacuation_.”

***

“Mr. Allen, do please have some tea.”

“I don’t want any tea.”

“Barry, they’ll be back any moment-”

“You said that five minutes ago!”

Alma and Clark look at each other and Barry resumes his pacing. Freddie is in a tense conversation with everyone, and trying to get Wally awake so he can send Bree Iris’ medical records. The computer had kept squawking about Iris being in danger, that her heart rate kept rising and she wasn’t breathing properly, and that was when the others arrived. They’d fought Sinestro and won, according to Hal, but now he was getting impatient, because they should have been back by now.

“Okay, they’re here,” Freddie says. Barry turns.

“They are? Where?”

“Landing pad. They’ll be down here in a sec, but Wally says we need to prepare a medical room for her.”

“We don’t have any doctors,” Barry frowns.

“We have a Batgirl,” Alma says. “She’ll see Iris right, or she’ll find someone who can.”

“Heads up!”

The doors to the huge chamber slide open and the whole group walks in – Bree already giving instructions, Dino covered in sweat and bruises, Aqualady with her trident, Laurent and Olivia looking like they’ve been through hell, and finally, Lois carrying a still Iris in her arms. Barry gets up and practically runs to them, but Lois is already reassuring him. “She’s okay, Barry. I think she’s just sleeping.”

“What happened?”

“She electrocuted Sinestro,” Dino laughs. “She was so surprised we were able to surround her. She did put up quite a fight,” he adds, gesturing to the blood all over his arms, “but Iris gave us some time.”

“But I think she did something to Iris with those powers of hers,” Olivia adds, taking off her mask. “She keeps…I don’t know, it’s like she’s hallucinating.”

“Hal said that anyone who was hit with what Iris was hit with will be a little spacey for a little while,” Bree says, breaking off her orders. “We just need to keep an eye on her. Alma, I need the smallest medical bay ready, and three IV bags. Do I have those medical records, Smoak?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Barry presses his forehead to Iris in relief, before kissing it softly. “Where’s Hal?”

“Taking care of Sinestro. I think-”

“W-Where’s…” Iris whispers, eyes still closed. “…Barry? I want…I want Barry…”

“She’s been like that since we found her,” Laurent says, putting his tonfas away. Lois nods at Barry.

“You can stay with her, if you want.”

“Hurry,” Bree says, already out of her suit and grabbing an iPad from Freddie. “The sooner we get her stabilised, the faster she’ll stop hallucinating.”

Alma, cheerful and optimistic as ever, claps her hands together. “Well. On that note, who wants dinner?”

***

Iris wakes up on a cloud.

At least, that’s what it feels like. She’s never slept in something so soft before, and for a moment she thinks this must be what heaven feels like before she feels the brutal headache that comes when she’s overworked herself. That’s the thing with electrocuting people – she’s not done it that many times before, and certainly not when that tired. So maybe that’s why she lost control and ended up knocking herself unconscious. But as long as Barry is safe, she doesn’t care.

When she opens her eyes, dappled sunlight is filtering through a window and warming her skin. Iris sits up gingerly, several different parts of her body protesting at the beating she put it through the night before, and sees Barry sat in an armchair next to her, tapping away at his laptop. “Barry?”

“Hey,” he smiles, half relieved and half cheerful. He kisses her on the forehead. “Good to see your eyes again, sunshine.”

“It’s good to be able to open them,” she says, and he laughs, sitting back down. Iris looks around in bewilderment – they’re in a huge luxury suite, nothing like their hotel, with a flat screen TV, lots of polished furniture, and the queensize bed she’s currently sat in. “Where are we?”

“Uh…” Barry consults a piece of paper that Iris realises with a jolt is a map. “Ah, right. We are in the East Wing on the ground floor.”

“East Wing of what?”

“The Secret Sanctuary,” he answers.

Iris blinks at him. “The what?”

Before he can answer someone knocks on the door and Barry calls for them to come in. Iris’ mouth drops open in shock when she sees Brianna Wayne wheel in a tray filled with food into their room, shutting the door behind her. “Good morning, you two,” she says. “Are you feeling better, Iris?”

“…yeah – yes, I feel…fine.”

“Good.”

“I’m sorry that I’m the one bringing your food,” she continues, still not noticing the shock on Iris’ face, “but it was either this or deal with Hal’s eating demands, and only Alma has enough patience for that.”

“It’s no problem,” Barry says easily. “How’s everyone else?”

“Fine, as far as I know. Now, Iris, your injuries aren’t dire, but I still want you to take it easy for a while. Not many people survive a fight with Superwoman.”

“R-Right.”

“Anyway, just come down when you’re ready,” she says, checking her watch. “We want to have a meeting before everyone has to leave.”

“Thanks, Bree,” Barry replies, and she leaves. Barry plucks a grape from the plate and puts it in his mouth.

“Barry.”

“Yes?”

“Why did Brianna Wayne just bring me iced tea?”

“I have no idea, I told her you like orange juice.”

“Barry.”

“Oh, right. Bree is Batgirl.”

Iris almost falls off the bed. “Brianna Wayne is _Batgirl_? So, billionaires have nothing better to do than put on masks and shoot people?”

Barry chuckles. “Apparently not. How are you feeling? Do you remember last night?”

She leans forward for some toast. “I remember electrocuting Sinestro and then knocking myself out.”

Barry frowns briefly. “Yeah, Jesse and Wally aren’t too happy about that.”

“Why?”

“You gave yourself cardiac arrhythmia, Iris.”

“That was an accident!”

“Hey, I’m on your side!” he laughs, “but Jesse and Wally were the ones we had to wake up in the middle of the night. But…” he sits next to her on the bed, pushing some hair out of her face, “I’m really glad you’re okay, Iris.”

“Sorry if I scared you.”

“S’ok.”

“S’not.”

“You said ‘snot’.”

“Ass,” she mutters, and he laughs. “So what’s this meeting we have to have?”

“Well, it might have something to do with the whole ‘band of superheroes fighting aliens in the streets of Metropolis at night’ thing. Oh,” he adds, “we’re in trouble.”

Iris makes a face. “With who?”

“…everyone. Apparently, people get upset when you run off to start the Justice League and don’t tell them. Don’t worry, I talked to your mom, she knows you’re okay.”

Iris laughs. “She might actually ground me, you know.”

“Oh, mom already grounded me.”

After Iris has showered and redressed, she and Barry wander downstairs. Barry explains that the Secret Sanctuary is owned by Bree, a base she has in Happy Harbour on the East Coast, but it’s too hard to get to. There are residential rooms, in the wing they’re in, the main hall and weapons rooms in the West Wing, training rooms in the South Wing, and the garage in the North Wing. “Bree arranged for all our stuff to be brought here,” Barry says. “But she said she can get a car to take us to see Hamilton tonight. Well,” he adds, “a helicopter might be more useful.”

“Adding that to my growing list of questions,” Iris mutters as they turn a corner in a large, cavernous hall with televisions showing news from different parts of the world, as well as a map with America highlighted. She’s greeted with a loud chorus of cheers and applause.

“There’s sleeping beauty,” Hal jokes. Her feet are on the long table and she’s eating a granola bar. Bree is glaring at her from across the table, while Alma laughs. Olivia, Laurent and Freddie, who are deep in conversation at one end of the table, all smile at her. Dino comes and captures her in a bone-crushing hug. “You are of great bravery, Miss West,” he says sincerely. “Your city is lucky to have you.”

“Th-Thanks,” Iris replies, adjusting her glasses, and Barry gives her a proud look. “How is everyone?”

“Iris,” Lois says, coming up to her and grabbing her hands. “I am so sorry about yesterday.”

“Lois, really, it’s okay,” she assures her. She gives Olivia a pointed look. “You are most definitely not the first person to try to kill me.”

“You gave me rat poison!”

“I was trying to save your life! And then a year later you turn around and shoot me some more.”

“At least one of those times you were trying to kill me,” she points out.

“I was whammied!”

“As fun as this is,” Clark chuckles, “I have a very angry Penny White demanding to know why I didn’t tell her I knew about all this.”

“Oh, me too,” Barry says. “I think Erica is going to shoot me on sight.”

Bree nods. “Good. Well, since we’re all here, I would like to congratulate everyone on a job well done. Hal tells me that Sinestro and her followers are…where, exactly, are they?”

“Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it, Ms Wayne?”

“Hal.”

“They’re on a spaceship prison,” she shrugs. “But they won’t be a threat for the foreseeable future. Thank you for your help, everyone. Now, what about this team?”

“I was getting to that.”

“Well, why aren’t you there yet?”

“I think,” Lois interjects, before Bree and Hal shoot each other “that the first thing we need to do is talk to Iris. It was her idea, after all.”

Everyone turns to look at Iris, who swallows. Barry gives her an encouraging smile and she steps forward. “Well,” she begins, “the first thing I think we should establish is boundaries. Like, sure, aliens attack and everyone comes running, but I think we should make it clear that we all look after our respective cities and…Seven Seas,” she adds, looking at Aqualady, which makes everyone laugh, “unless specifically asked.”

“I agree,” Dino says. “Can you imagine what would happen if the Joker came back and we all came back to help? Chaos.”

“Exactly,” Iris says. She points to the map. “I stay in Central, Liv and Laurent stay in Star City, Bree stays in Gotham, Lois in Metropolis, Hal in…space-”

“Or Coast City,” she adds helpfully. “They have the best pizza.”

“And Dino and Aria can…go wherever they want, I’m not about to tell a god and the queen of the sea what to do.”

“Right,” Clark laughs along with everyone else. “What else?”

“I have a concern,” Aria says. She gestures to the room around her. “This base is good, but it’s also extremely hard to get to on short notice.”

“I second that,” Laurent says. “For those who can’t fly or teleport, it’s difficult.”

“But I don’t think we should get rid of this place,” Lois points out. “It’s perfect – not to mention it’s secret. Do you have any idea how hard it’s been to keep a base of operations from everyone?”

“We could always have two,” Dino suggests. “Or even three.”

“But where? Who’s got a spare building in their back pocket.”

Iris clears her throat again. “Well, I do, actually. It’s in Ferris Airfield – think Cameron sold it to STAR Labs, Hal,” she adds. “It would be great, and I own it, so I can keep people away from it. It’s private property.”

“That’s good,” Olivia says. “That way those of us on the West Coast have a base from which to operate, and a place for everyone to gather if we need it.”

“I’ll need a little while to get it ready,” Iris says. “With communication, and-”

An alarm start blaring and everyone looks around in shock. “What is that?”

“After everyone went to bed I set up the computers to receive alerts about everyone,” Bree says quickly, crossing to the computers. She frowns. “Iris, it’s about you.”

“What? But I’m-”

“That’s not Iris,” Barry says. “That’s _Little_ Miss Miracle.”

Bree turns up the volume and puts it on the big screen. Iris sees Malina facing off against The Rival, dodging cars and lightning bolts with ease. “She seems to be handling herself pretty well,” Lois says. “Can she do everything you do?”

“Not everything,” Iris admits. She hasn’t heard anything from the team, so she had assumed everything is fine. As they watch, Malina bends the pole that The Rival sends her way. Then she dodges the punches and kicks she throws, before The Rival appears a few feet away.

“This is rather exciting,” Alma mutters.

Malina starts running towards her, flitting out of the way of her attacks. “What is she doing?”

“Is she going to throw lightning?”

“She can’t do that yet,” Barry frowns and then looks at Iris. “Can she?”

“I dig the outfit,” Aria says, leaning back in her chair. “It suits her.”

They watch as Malina comes closer to The Rival, not showing any signs of stopping. Then Iris is gasping as Malina grabs The Rival in a bear hug and lifts her clean off the ground. She’s flying.

“Oh my God,” Iris breathes. “She’s never done that before!”

“Well, did you teach her how to start?” Barry asks.

“No, I – I guess she learned by herself,” Iris says, awed. Malina flies like she’s been doing it her whole life, and The Rival looks terrified, all her bravado gone. After a couple of seconds Malina sets her down on the ground and knocks her out, before cuffing her and handing her to the police amid cheers. Dino looks at Iris. “You know, you can bring her next time.”

“I just might,” Iris laughs, smiling proudly. Barry grins at her, and she makes a note to congratulate Malina when she gets back. Alma clears her throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we may need to continue this conversation later,” she says. “The cars that are going to take everyone to work have arrived.”

Olivia stands, straightening her shirt. “I have a meeting with Queen Chemical today.”

“And then a cake-tasting at four,” Freddie reminds her. Olivia sighs, smiling.

“And then a cake-tasting at four.”

“We should go talk to Penny,” Clark says to Lois as everyone starts to get ready to go downstairs. Barry grabs Iris hand and they walk over to them.

“I had an idea I wanted to run by you, actually,” Barry tells them. “I wanted to write something about all of this, and I thought maybe we could do it together. Can’t let these two have all the glory.”

“You’re just jealous because we’re cute,” Lois laughs. “But I think that’s a great idea. And Iris, again, I’m so sorry for what happened – I don’t know how that alien techology came over me, I usually work through that stuff.”

“Thank Clark,” Iris says easily. “He’s the one who talked you down.”

“Not all heroes wear capes,” Clark says seriously, and Lois kisses him on the cheek. “We’ll talk later.”

They wish them goodbye and sit back at the table, where Alma has laid more tea and scones. “I had a question about that, actually,” Barry asks. Iris spreads jelly on her scone.

“About what?”

“That whole ring thing. How did you know it would work?”

“I didn’t,” she replies. She puts her scone down and adjusts her glasses. “But I just – I thought, if I were in the same situation, I’d…I’d want to hear your voice. It would calm me down. It always does.”

Barry leans forward to kiss her but then sees someone watching them.

“Go away, Hal,” Barry says, rolling his eyes. She grins at them.

“I can’t help it; you guys are adorable!”

Iris throws the scone at her, and Hal laughs when she misses.

***

_“The team of superheroes have pledged to protect this earth from any danger that may face it, whether from within or from beyond. They are the very best of us, and they have walked among us for years before deciding that their efforts together are more useful than their efforts alone._

_They are the Justice League._

_A press conference will be held at Central City Town Hall next week where their representatives, Dr. Bartholomew Allen and Clark Kent, will answer any questions_.”

Iris puts the paper down and gets back to work. It’s short, succinct, and it took about two hours for everyone in the League – and she still gets shivers when she says that – to agree on it. They still had lots of stuff to figure out, so she and Lois suggested that they take some time to decide on, communicating with each other until they could properly announce themselves to the world. They’d gotten back a few days ago and hadn’t stopped working since – Iris was renovating the Hall in her free time, ordering new equipment for the place and working with Olivia to stock it with weapons. She was also trying to re-task Gideon so he could be used as a communication tool for all of them.

They got back to their routine relatively quickly – the only difference is that she’ll be eating dinner and then have to contend with a three-hour conference call with Bree Wayne and the Queen of the Seven Seas over who was in charge if robots took over. She and Barry work, they train with the team, they have their lives. Which is why, right at this minute, she is going to have dinner with her mother and her boyfriend.

Iris locks up her lab and makes her way down the stairs to find Barry and Malina chatting in the lobby of the precinct. She already knows what they’re talking about before she gets down there. “…just once?”

“We have a protocol, Mal.”

“Your protocol can’t be more than eight days old. Come on, I want to see the Secret Sanctuary!”

“A little louder, Mal,” Barry hisses, “I don’t think they heard you in Gotham!”

“Well, what’s the point in having a brother and mentor in the Justice League when I can’t even use you guys for stuff?”

“We love you too (!)” Iris says. “Look, you can meet them when they have the press conference next week, how about that? Aqualady already wants to meet you.”

Her eyes widen. “She does?”

“She does. Although that woman likes to blow things up with a trident, so keep things in perspective. Now, did you need me for something?”

“She wanted to talk to you about Gideon,” Barry says. “And I need to go talk to Rose and we can go.”

Barry kisses Iris on the cheek and leaves, and she turns to Malina. “What’s up?”

She hands her a report. “Gideon needs more power cells,” she explains. “He keeps glitching, and the diagnostics report says it’s what happens when he needs new ones.”

“Thanks, I’ll order some tonight.” Iris puts the report in her bag and grins. “So, we never talked about you kicking The Rivals’ ass.”

She folds her arms, uncharacteristically shy. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“It _was_ a big deal.” The Rival, as it turned out, was nothing but a college sophomore studying chemical engineering who was hit by the dark matter as well – but her powers were nowhere near Iris or Malina’s. However, she was jealous of the praise that they were both getting, and decided to target Malina because she was weaker. “All she ended being was an insecure copycat who was jealous of you,” Iris points out. “And she was jealous because she couldn’t be you. Believe me about those hate blogs now?”

Malina shrugs. She still remembers the conversation she’d had last week about the things people said about them both on social media. “I guess. I just don’t like how you can work really hard, and do your best, and help all these people, but if you slip up once or you’re not strong enough or fast enough or _good_ enough, people have license to rake you over the coals.”

“That happens,” Iris relents. “Look, there will be people like this, and they’re not going away. They will make fun of you, they will belittle your achievements, they will take everything you dislike about yourself and remind you of it. Constantly. But the thing you have to remember is that if they’re making all this effort to make you feel small, it’s because they need to feel big, and this is the only way they can do it. And that’s kind of sad, don’t you think?”

Malina raises an eyebrow. “Is this your other superpower? Making everyone feel better?”

“Yes, be jealous.”

“Well, thanks. Anyway, I have to go, I’m on duty.”

“Right, with Jesse. That must suck.”

Malina blushes a little. “It doesn’t, actually. He’s not that bad.”

Iris snorts. “He actually threatened to have my mother put me on house arrest.”

“Iris, you almost gave yourself angina.”

“Still.”

Barry shows up just as his sister is leaving, still talking to Rose. “…just glad it’s you instead of Jake,” Rose says. “That guy never shuts up. Hey, Iris. Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah, thanks,” she says easily. “I guess I ate something bad while we were in Metropolis.”

“It’s a shame you missed all that Justice League stuff,” she continues. “Barry said it was a lot of fun.”

“Yeah, it sucks. Food poisoning, you know? But Barry filled me in.”

“I’m sure he did. You guys have a good night.”

Barry and Iris are meeting her mother at the restaurant, the first time they’ve all had a normal night since getting back. “You know, the good thing about being your CSI girlfriend,” she says, “is that nobody ever asks me any questions. They just assume that I miss everything.”

“I would much rather take that over being attacked by aliens,” he laughs. Iris shrugs.

“Believe it or not, you get used to it.”

“Did you call the suppliers?”

“Yeah, they should call me back tomorrow,” she answers. “Who knew starting a league of superheroes would require being on the phone with customer service this much?”

“I saw that list Bree gave you, so I’m not surprised. Look, there’s your mom.”

Francine had been less than impressed when Iris called her, given that she’d almost gotten herself killed several times in one night, but they’re over that now. Mostly. “I thought you kids were just going to see Hamilton,” she says for the fifth time, shaking her head as they go in to sit down. “Not running off to fight Superwoman.”

“That wasn’t her fault, mom,” Iris points out. “An alien did that. And we did see Hamilton – Barry met Lin-Manuel Miranda.”

“I know,” she replies fondly, looking at him. Barry blushes. “He’s mentioned it. Was it fun?”

“You mean after he stopped hyperventilating and shook his hand?” Iris asks idly, and Barry pokes her.

“When you met him you couldn’t even speak.”

“Well, could you keep the fighting mind-controlling aliens to a minimum, at least?”

“I will do my best to fight less aliens.”

Francine shakes her head as the waiter brings the menus. It’s nights like these she likes the best – where she can just enjoy a normal dinner with her mom and her boyfriend, and she doesn’t have to worry about anything. Much. Because she still thinks about Colin, more than she should, but she can’t help it. When Sinestro had showed her her worst fear, it hadn’t escaped her how close Colin had come to bringing it all about. But still, she’s alive, and so is Barry, and she needs to live in the present.

“Sorry,” Barry says, standing. He gestures to his phone. “This is work, I have to take it.”

“Go ahead, Barry,” her mother says, and he walks off.

“I think Erica’s still annoyed that he ran off to start the league without telling her.”

“Mm.”

Iris frowns. “Mom? You okay?” Her mother wrings her hands together.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I just wanted to…run something by you.”

“…okay.”

“How would you feel if I…I mean, if I were to…”

“Mom, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Cecil asked me to dinner,” she says quickly. Iris blinks.

“He did?”

“Yes. And I said that I’d think about it.”

Iris thinks for a moment. “Well, do you want to go?”

She bites her lip. “Well, I do, actually.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“You.”

“Mom, you don’t have to wait for permission from me to live your life,” she promises. She hesitates. “I mean, it – I didn’t tell Barry that I loved him for years, because I was so consumed by what happened to dad that I wouldn’t live my life. And that was definitely not the smartest decision I could have made. I’m not going to think you’re replacing him – nothing ever could. But you have to let yourself be happy. Dad would want that.”

Her mother bites her lip. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. That’s what background checks are for.”

“Iris.”

“Kidding – I’m kidding!”

***

“You know,” Barry says from the comms the next day, “if Bree saw you goofing off like this, she’d kick you out of the league.”

Iris, who Barry can see if levitating bank robbers through traffic to the entertainment of the public, laughs. “Please, she can’t kick me out. It’s my league.”

“And you get on Malina for showboating.”

“When you’re as awesome as me, the urge to showboat is irresistible.”

Barry just laughs to himself. They both have the day off, so they let everyone go have fun while they just spent the day doing this. It’s a relatively slow day, which explains why Iris is trying to entertain herself. As he’s thinking this, she flashes back into the room, grinning. “Did I mention that I love being a superhero? Because I love being a superhero.”

“Did you drop them off at the precinct?”

“I did,” she tells him, coming round to the terminals. She settles in his lap. “How’s the article going?”

“I was halfway through and then I got an idea-”

“Also known as the story of your life,” she laughs. “Barry, every time I talk to you, you add another section to this story. It’s a good thing we said Clark had to write the recap on the attack.”

After everyone had come back, they’d decided that Clark would detail everything that happened, but Barry would write the story behind the League – why they wanted to come together. Iris hasn’t seen him this excited about anything in a while, and she’s happy that he’s so passionate about it. He shrugs a little shyly. “I just want it to be good.”

“It will be,” she replies. “It’s you.” She kisses him, long and lingering, and he lets out a shaky breath. He tilts her face back down to him, kissing her deeply. “You know,” he says, looking down at her in the suit, “I might have had a dream about this.”

“You had a dream about making out with me?”

“I had a dream about making out with Miss Miracle.”

Iris’ eyes glint mischievously and she brushes her lips against his. “That doesn’t have to be a dream, you know. Aren’t I at the top of your three list?”

“Second, actually. My girlfriend’s at the top.”

“Darn it,” she giggles, kissing him again. She manoeuvres so she’s pressed up against him in the chair and wraps her arms around his neck. Barry’s hands quest up her sides and he slides one hand into her hair while looking for the zipper with the other. She runs a hand up his abdomen, making him shiver. “You’re incredible.”

“I’m a superhero.”

“No,” he says. “ _You_. You’re incredible, Iris West.”

Iris kisses him again in response, her legs tightening around him. He leans into her, and they’re so into it that neither of them notice the elevator doors opening.

“Iris, what did – Shit! Okay, you guys, this is the third time – can’t you do this at home?”

Iris and Barry look up to see Jesse trying to look anywhere but at them. Iris climbs off Barry, embarrassed. “Jesse? What are you doing here?”

“I work here.”

“I gave everyone the day off.”

“And now I see why,” he replies grumpily. He points at them. “You’re like rabbits. You could at the very least do it in your office.”

Iris sighs impatiently, trying to hide her embarrassment. “What do you want, Jesse?”

“You need to sign for the delivery upstairs.”

“Great.” Iris slips off her ring and the suit disappears. “I’ll be back.”

“Take your time, I need Gideon anyway.” Barry gives Jesse a grin.

“Sorry, Jesse.”

He grumbles something and follows Iris out of the room. Barry walks towards the large computer in the middle of the room. “Gideon?” He pops out. “Could you get me video of the time Iris took down that plane? I need a still for my article.”

“Right away, Garry.”

“Barry.”

“My sincerest bananas.”

Barry frowns as Gideon starts flickering. Iris really does need to install those new power cells. He’s not even getting up the right date – Iris saved the plane in February 2015 – this video is from December 2013. In fact, there shouldn’t be anything from that date, it’s the month Iris was struck by lightning. But Gideon’s already playing the video.

“Gideon, I don’t think this is…” Barry trails off when he recognises the scene. It’s Iris’ lab, and she walks in to turn off the computers. He can see her hands are bandaged from when she tripped after they chased that robber; the memory is so visceral he can feel her fingers between his as he surveys the damage. Why do they have this video?

Suddenly, as Iris is closing the skylight, objects in the lab begin to rise. Iris looks around, confused…and then lightning crashes through the window and straight into her, sending her straight into one of her shelves, which collapse. Barry can’t breathe – he knows she’s okay, she’s upstairs for God’s sake, but he’s never seen this before. Iris is bleeding and covered in chemicals on the floor, random parts of her body twitching. Just as Captain Singh and Patty come in, the video morphs into Iris climbing out of the plane as it crashed into the ocean.

Barry swallows. He knows what that night did to her. He lived it. He saw the scars. But he has never witnessed it, not like this. And why do they have it? But of course – Colin. He had videos of all of them, watching every moment to ensure his plan came to fruition. He knew this had to happen; he knew all of it had to happen. At any moment, he could have killed her.

“…pays me enough for this,” Iris says, coming back into the room. “Barry, I’m sorry, I have to – Barry? You okay?”

He turns. “Yeah,” he says quickly. “Yeah, fine. What is it?”

“They delivered some of the stuff to the hangar a day early, and that’s what I have to sign for,” she says regretfully. “I’m calling Chesca to deal with it. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he smiles. Iris kisses him goodbye quickly.

“I love you.” She peers at him. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” he promises. She nods and leaves, just as Jesse walks back into the room. He sits back at the terminals.

“Not that I’m not happy for the two of you, but this is a place of business.”

“Right. Sorry. Listen, Jesse, Iris doesn’t have any long-term effects from the Justice League stuff, does she?”

He snorts. “You mean apart from Chesca being mad that she wasn’t invited?”

“No,” Barry replies. “I mean like…medical stuff. There’s no damage?”

“Uh,” he frowns. “Not really. I really would like her to calm down when it comes to running into danger headfirst, but apparently Barry, you’re dating Leeroy Jenkins. Why?”

Barry swallows. “No reason. I should…I should get back to work.”

***

Chesca brings Eddie, which doesn’t surprise Iris. And to be fair, he is very helpful at bringing everything in. Chesca looks at all the boxes. “What is all this stuff?”

“Batgirl says they’re just computers,” Iris says, looking through the delivery papers. “But this is bigger than me.”

“And you’re short, but still,” Eddie adds. Iris scowls at him and Chesca laughs.

“Well, we’d better get to work. You’re lucky I’ve forgiven you for not inviting me to meet Batgirl.”

“I didn’t _know_ I was meeting Batgirl,” she points out as they start unpacking stuff. “Besides, you can meet them at the press conference. You guys are coming, right?”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” Eddie grins. “All the other agents are jealous because my friend is in the Justice League.”

“I’m glad I can be of service to you. Waller’s not mad at me, is he?”

“You stopped an alien invasion of earth, Iris. I actually think you made him smile.”

Chesca snorts. “I hope you took a picture.”

They work easily and quickly, unpacking all the equipment and setting it up as best they can. Bree and Olivia promised that they would do the rest of it, but Iris is at least glad that she could help. Being faced with Superwoman, Batgirl, and Marvel Man showed her that she still has a lot to learn. When they’re finished they sit on one of the tables eating. “Are you guys good for movie night at my mom’s this week?” Iris asks.

“Oh, definitely,” Chesca says. “Mama West is adorable, and she makes the best mac n cheese.”

“Yeah, she made me some. And a casserole. Actually, three casseroles. She’s turning into Nora.”

Iris laughs. It does warm her heart that, since Eddie’s mother died when he was so young, he has her mother and Barry’s mother mothering him. It’s sweet. Chesca snaps her fingers.

“Hey, Iris, what was that idea you were telling about? With Gideon?”

“Mm.” Iris swallows. “I was thinking, with the way memory works, and the way Gideon works, I could find some way to transmit brainwaves into a computer. So, theoretically, I could see the images from someone’s mind on a computer. But with him being all weird and glitchy, I don’t know whether I can do it.” She pauses. “So, um, is there another report? About Colin?”

Eddie gives her a sympathetic look. “Nothing new.”

“He’s not going to hurt us, Iris,” Chesca promises. “Besides, I can kick his ass now.”

“You know, people don’t often talk about it,” Eddie says. “People betray us all the time, and we have to learn to move on from it. The amount of times someone went rogue…It doesn’t make you stupid, or a bad person. You don’t deserve it. But the fear’s there, and the only thing you can do is let yourself feel it, and work through it. No matter how long it takes.

Iris doesn’t say anything for a moment. “You should keep him,” Iris decides. “I like him.”

“You’re figuring this out now?”

“I take my friend’s boyfriends very seriously.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and Iris regards them. Chesca and Eddie are happy, she’s noticed, truly happy. Eddie is incapable of being anything but an angel, but it’s like his face changes whenever Chesca walks into a room. And Chesca is…is _more_ Chesca, like being with him makes her proud of being herself. So even if she is still scared of Colin, she can’t regret anything that brought her friends together. As she’s thinking this she feels her phone buzz, so she goes a little away from them to answer it. She thought it would be Barry because she’s still kind of worried about him after today – he looked a little freaked about something. But it isn’t – it’s Freddie. “Hey, Smoak, what can I do for you?”

“Iris,” he says. He sounds oddly serious. “Are you busy?”

“Not anymore. What’s up?”

“It…It’s about Patty.”

Iris freezes. She hasn’t heard from her in months, apart from the occasional report. She seems content with her life, and Iris hasn’t head to talk to her. Until now, apparently. She forces herself not to clench her fist. “What is it?”

“She’s…Well, okay, so one of the ways we track a person is checking their pattern of spending. And every year around this time, Patty buys purple orchids, a Cuban cigar, and a copy of _All the President’s Men_. Did anything happen to her around this time?”

“Her dad’s death,” she remembers. The memory had flashed into her own mind on the day that she was going to dinner with Patty, Barry, Ray and Freddie. “This must be what she does to remember him.”

“Right. Well, anyone watching her might be able to figure it out, and I know you’re trying to keep Waller away from her…”

“I’ll talk to her,” she promises. “Thanks, Freddie.”

He hangs up and Iris puts her phone away. She’s going to have to talk to Patty Spivot again.

***

Barry’s still thinking about it.

He’s supposed to be writing this article while Iris has her second helping of lasagne, but he keeps thinking about Iris being struck by lightning, at how easy it was to break her. And more than that – how Sinestro almost killed her, and Lois attacked her. And Colin – deranged, unstable, utterly psychotic Colin, who still wants her dead. He shakes his head, trying to concentrate on writing

“Not that I’m adverse to the idea of my mom dating,” Iris from across the breakfast bar. She makes a face. “It’s just going to be a little weird. He’s like my boss’ boss.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which reminds me, I need to finish up that Coolidge case – I think we’re testifying in a couple of weeks.”

“Good. That’s…good.”

“Barry?”

He looks up. “Huh?”

Iris walks over to him, concerned. “Are you alright? You look completely spaced out.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I just think this article is stressing me out a bit.”

She takes his face in his hands. “Babe, are you sure you’re not overworking yourself? It’s okay to take a break.”

He takes her hands and kisses them. “I’m sure. But can you stay tonight? Are you busy?”

“I can stay,” she smiles. She snaps her fingers and her lasagne appears in front of them. “Just let me run home quickly to get some stuff later. Maybe I can get you to destress. So, where are you with this article?”

This, he can talk about. Iris slips onto his lap. “Well, I wanted to really highlight the story of why everyone became superheroes, and why you all decided to start this. With Bree it was her parents dying, and with Aria it was inherited, but did you know that Dino fought in World War I? He liberated this town in Germany all by himself.”

“Yeah, he told me that,” she says. “It’s really cool learning about all that stuff.”

“What about you?”

Iris frowns, feeding him some of her lasagne. “What do you mean?”

He swallows. “Why did you become a superhero?”

“Oh. Um, I wanted to get my mom out of prison, I wanted to help people, you, I felt I had these powers, so-”

“Wait,” he interrupts. “What do you mean me?”

“You’re one of the reasons that I became a hero,” she replies simply. He looks around, bewildered.

“But I’m just…me. I’m Barry.”

“Yeah, and you’ve always believed me. About how my dad died, about the impossible…and about me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. So when I became the impossibly, I felt like I could finally do something to return all that belief in me. Every time I thought I couldn’t do something, all I had to do was remember the times you were there for me.”

Barry blushes at her, at her sincerity. “It’s gonna be hard writing all that down without giving away the fact that you’re my girlfriend.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” she laughs. “Just make sure you put me before Hal, because my reasons are totally better than ‘I thought it would be cool to own a spaceship’.”

It works, really. Iris has always been the person he felt most safe with, the person who always soothed his anxiety away whenever he felt it. So she listens to the article (and they get a call from Hal, who wants to know whether they can make Justice League pizza nights a thing), and hang out and watch TV before going to bed. Barry falls asleep with Iris next to him, after he wrapped her hair and she kissed him goodnight and they twined their fingers together. But that isn’t the problem, because Iris is always there when he’s awake, but not when he’s asleep. The problem is the nightmare.

***

“Is this Bartholomew Allen?”

Barry looks at the time – eleven at night. Who the hell is calling him at this hour? “It’s me,” he murmurs, rubbing his eyes.

“Mr. Allen, this is the emergency services at Central City Memorial, and you’re listed as one of the emergency contacts for Iris West.”

He sits up, heart hammering. “Iris? What happened to her?”

“It appears she was struck by lightning…”

He knows this nightmare, knows it in his bones. It’s like it always is, from there. He drives to the hospital in the rain and thunder, out of his mind with panic, shouting Iris’ name when he gets to the parking lot. He knows what will happen next – he’ll burst into her room to see the doctors operating on her, and he’ll wake up. When he gets to the familiar door, he knows what he’s going to see.

But there’s nothing there.

The room is empty.

For a second, and then there’s a flash of white light, and he knows that this is no dream.

“Did you really think,” Colin laughs, “that I wasn’t going to come back? That I wouldn’t get out?”

Barry's heart is in his throat as he watches. Iris is hanging from Colin's hand, bruised and bloody and barely breathing.

"B-Barry..." she gasps, and Colin grins, a wickedly sharp shard of ice in his other hand.

"Colin, come on," he begs. "Please, just-"

"You guys probably should have killed me."

Iris is crying, through pain or fear, he doesn't know. "Barry," she gets out, "I love you."

"No! No, Iris, don't say that-"

"Looks like you're out of miracles."

And he plunges the shard into her chest.

"No! No - IRIS!"

 Barry jerks awake, gasping with panic and covered in sweat, and looks around desperately until he sees Iris sleeping peacefully next to him, one of her hands stretched out to him. She shifts as Barry, relieved, sinks back into the pillows. “Barry?” Iris mumbles sleepily. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he says, trying for a smile. He kisses her on the forehead and then sits on the edge of the bed, reaching for a drink of water. “I just…had a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

“Because I’m not totally wide awake after hearing you scream in your sleep or anything,” she replies, yawning. Barry looks at her and then at his hands.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“It’s okay, Bar. You wanna talk about it?”

He lies back down next to her. “No, I’m fine. But since we’re awake…”

“Ah – I have known you since you were six, Bartholomew,” she warns him as he inches closer to her. “I know when you’re trying to change the subject.”

He gives her a lopsided smile, running a hand up her arm. “Okay, full name alert, am I in trouble?”

“No, I’m just worried. I was supposed to help you destress.”

He grins at her and inches closer to her. “You _can_ help me destress.”

Right before their lips meet, both of their phones vibrate. “Fire,” Iris sighs. “At Richmond Heights.” She gets out of bed and pulls on a tank and leggings, while Barry finds one of her scrunches and removes her scarf. “Careful,” he says, pulling her hair back gently. He ties her hair up in a ponytail so it doesn’t get in her way, careful not to let anything get caught in her mask.

Iris she checks the map for where she needs to go as Barry ties her hair up neatly. “I’m happy we have these alarms,” Iris says, slipping her ring on, and he sits back down on the bed. “But I also need sleep. Okay, I have to make sure Malina doesn’t beat me there, and – what?” She turns around and looks at him. Barry does this thing with her that she really should have noticed when he was falling in love with her – this _gazing_ thing, where he looks at her like she’s the whole world. And when she catches him he just grins, like he’s not even ashamed he’s been caught. He’s looking at her like that now, but there’s something else mixed in with it. “Baby,” she says softly, taking his face in her hands. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing, I just…” He shrugs lightly. “I just really love you.”

Iris gives him a small smile and kisses him. When she breaks away, his eyes stay closed for just a second longer than hers do. “Come back safe,” he whispers.

“I will. Promise.”

***

Iris does come back safe, Barry learns, because it turns out that the fire wasn’t even the problem. “Jackie Murillo,” Nora says when everyone meets there the next day. He knows it must be bad, because Linda has taken a day off work. “Used to work for Wayne Enterprises.”

“Yeah, she worked with me,” Linda says. Barry and Iris share a look – Patty’s mother worked for her.

“I think you need a new job, sis,” Chesca mutters.

“She’s hit seven jewellery stores and is rumoured to be taking a crack at the gold reserves,” Nora adds. “But her weapons…really, they’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Iris rubs the back of her neck. When she and Malina arrived at the fire, they found that it was the least of their problems – Jackie had started that fire to distract from the fact that she was robbing the place, and when they found her, they’d been faced with a gun they’d never seen before. As soon as she got back to Barry’s she messaged Linda to ask whether she knew about a way to defeat her.

“I’ll say,” Malina mutters. She nods at the screen, which is playing footage from when she and Iris were attacked by her. “See that?” she says pointing. A lone figure is pointing a large rifle at them. “It looks like a normal gun, but the bullets are heat-seeking.”

“Heat-seeking bullets?” Barry repeats. “That’s a thing now?”

“Well, they were still under development when Jackie stole them,” Linda sighs. “It was a pretty top-secret project, which is why we didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands. The bullets in a gun like that explode on impact.”

Iris throws her shoulders back. “Well, that’s why we need to come up with a plan. I think we need to surprise her. Can we figure out a way to track her?”

“You want to try to _find_ her?” Barry asks. “Before you’ve figured out how to defeat her?”

Malina shrugs. “We can improvise. Besides, I’ve survived being shot before. Hell, Iris has been shot by arrows, bullets, and alien technology.”

“And that means what, you should just waltz on over to her and get shot again?” Barry replies in a hard voice. He looks at Iris. “Are you sure about this?”

Iris looks up at him, frowning. “Barry, I…” Then she looks around. “You guys, could we have the room for a minute?” 

Malina, Nora, Chesca and Linda all share a look, but nod and leave. “Barry, what is going on with you?” she asks. “Is something bothering you at work? Is it the article?”

“No, that’s not…” he sighs. “It’s not work.”

She bites her lip. “You know, last night, when you had that bad dream, you were sort of…saying my name. You were saying my name in your sleep. Is there something you want to talk about? Is everything alright with us?”

“Iris, no, everything is perfect with us,” he assures her, putting his hands on her shoulders. “It’s me, I’m just…Gideon?”

Gideon’s face pops out of a computer. “Hello, Barry.”

“How are your power cells?”

“Fine. Iris replaced them and I am now updating at full capacity.”

“Good. Could you pull up the video taken in Iris’ lab on December 11th of 2013?”

Gideon frowns at him and loos at Iris, who faces him. “Barry, that’s…how do you know what that is?”

“Gideon showed me by mistake,” he says quietly. “I saw you…die. And Iris, I know I said I could handle being with you, and I can, but I guess I’m just realising how easy it is. How easy it is for you to be hurt, even though you have powers. And I know it’s dumb, but I hate that I can’t protect you from everything anymore.”

Iris shakes her head. “Barry, you do protect me from everything. You protect me in the way that only you can. I could be the most powerful woman in the world, but I still wouldn’t be able to do anything if I didn’t have you. Besides, that’s exactly how I feel about you."

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Barry, you’re the easiest and most visible way to get to me,” she replies. “Colin knew that the only way he could rattle me enough to beat me is through you, and that’s because I can’t protect you from everything either. From getting kidnapped by steel-plated sociopaths, to being manipulated by Colin to…to spies who are secretly plotting to kill you.”

Barry hesitates. Iris looks decidedly worried about something. “Iris?”

“Freddie called. About Patty. I have to remind her not to make herself more obvious. Just the idea of talking to her reminds me of how close she came to-”

“She didn’t, Iris,” he says. “I’m fine. We’re all fine.”

“I know,” she replies quietly. She comes to stand next to him. “But, Barry, I think we’re going to have to accept that we can’t protect each other from everything anymore. The world is more dangerous than Lance Burke and Becky Cooper.”

Barry pulls her to him. “I know. Still sucks.”

“I know.”

He sighs into her hair. “I love you.”

“I know that too.”

He pulls back and takes her hands. “Thanks for putting up with me.”

“Well, Barry Allen, you are very cute, you know that?” she asks. “Makes my job a lot easier.”

***

Barry means what he said – he knows he can’t protect Iris from everything. But he can do his damndest to protect her from most things. So a few days later, while they’re all working on a way to find Plunder, he goes to visit Henry. His office really does look like he sells insurance, even though he knows the receptionist is fake. “Hi,” he says. “I need to see a man about some pet insurance.”

“What would you like, sir?”

“I need to insure my trout.”

That’s the signal that someone wants to see Henry, so he’s led to his office. His father is reading a file that Barry is sure has nothing to do with insurance. “Barry?” he says, when he sees him. “Is everything alright?”

“I wanted to talk to you. About Colin.”

“…alright.”

“Is there some way you could get him – I don’t know, moved?”

“Why?”

“I know he’s locked up, but with him being so close, it’s not good for Iris.” Because his worries are nothing compared to hers. Henry makes a face.

“I don’t know, Barry…”

“Please? It’s important.”

He hesitates. “There is an idea that I’ve been floating for Colin to Waller. He didn’t agree to it before, but maybe if I can convince him that it’s causing Iris distress…Are you busy today?”

“Me? No, why?”

“Because we are going to see a man about a Squad.”

***

“You want to let Killer Frost join the Suicide Squad?” Barry repeats, while they’re on their way to see Waller. Henry chuckles and Barry wishes he would take this more seriously. When he got in the car with Henry, he thought maybe move him to a more secure location, not let him join a band of psychopathic criminals.

“I want you to convince Waller that he needs to be moved,” Henry corrects him, “and Amadeus has always been thinking about it. If you talk to him, maybe he’ll be convinced.”

Barry isn’t so sure about that, and it gets worse as they draw closer to his office. He’s never liked Waller all that much. Now, entering his office, he’s reminded of the callous way he’d talked about dealing with what Patty threw at him. “Well,” he says softly. “Isn’t this a surprise? What can I do for you?”

“I need you to move Colin out of this city. Into the…Suicide Squad”

“Goodness. Quite a request.”

“Having him here compromises Iris’ ability to do her job,” he points out. “If she thinks that her enemies are going to break out of custody any moment, how is she supposed to concentrate. Not to mention the danger he put me and my family in.”

“I do not do things according to the feelings of others, Mr. Allen.”

“Then consider it a favour,” he says tightly, “for letting the Thawnes enter my life right under your nose.”

Waller looks taken aback, and then looks at Henry. “He’s good, you know.”

“We’re very proud.”

“As it stands, Mr. Allen, you do have a point. Killer Frost has remained uncooperative since his being brought here, and therefore, useless. I can have him out of the city by tomorrow morning.”

Barry’s eyes widen. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Would you like to say goodbye to him?”

Henry frowns. “Why would he want to do that?”

“Actually, I would,” Barry says. There have been some things he’s wanted to say to Colin Snow. Waller nods. “Henry will show you.”

“Barry, are you sure? Colin is-”

“I know what he’s like,” Barry says. Besides, he’s doing this for Iris. “Plus you guys’ll be outside, and this won’t take long.”

Barry is strangely calm when he sits down in front of Colin a few minutes later, in a white room with florescent lighting. Henry is outside in case anything goes wrong, but Barry is looking at Colin, who is smiling at him with a deadly sort of humour. He lifts his hands – handcuffed – in greeting. “Barry Allen,” he breathes. “Long time no see.”

Colin has lost weight and looks gaunt – the food here can’t be great – but there’s still that mad glint in his brown eyes. Barry doesn’t say anything and he cocks an eyebrow. “How’s Iris?”

Barry still doesn’t say anything, merely folding his arms, but it must show on his face, because Colin grins. “Oh, there it is. Barry Allen, ace reporter. Nothing ever fazes him…except Iris West. You bring up his precious best friend and he’ll lose it. Are the two of you as irritating as ever? I remember how easy it was to get her to do things if you were involved. She always was a weak-minded idiot.”

Barry waits a while before he speaks. “You know, I spend a lot of time studying people like you. Sociopaths. And their weaknesses.” He glares at him.

“I don’t have a weakness.”

“Mm, yeah, I don’t think so. Because I saw your videos and I realised – you don’t want to be forgotten. It’s a shame it’s already happening.”

Colin frowns. “What?”

“Well, no one really remembers you. All your work at STAR Labs was pretty inconsequential. Nobody knows how involved you were with Miss Miracle. And now you’re here, where no one will ever remember you.” Colin clenches his fists.

“Shut up.”

“Because that’s what you hate, isn’t it? That’s why you stole Dr. Well’s powers and ruined Iris’ life – so people could know you as Killer Frost.” Barry laughs. “Wow, that backfired, right? Because people need to google your name to find out what you did, and they don’t even know it’s Colin.” Barry leans forward conspiratorially.

“And between you and me, I’m pretty sure people stopped caring about Colin Snow a long time ago.”

“Y-You’re full of shit,” Colin spits, but Barry just stands.

“See you, Col. Have a nice life.”

Colin’s still bellowing and cursing when he leaves.

***

Later that evening, Iris is watching Barry as he types on his sofa. He got back and she wanted to see him, to explain that she’s spoken to Patty and that she seems fine, but she doesn’t know what the response will be. He got back from having lunch with Henry and seemed strangely happy about something, but wouldn’t say what it was. She doesn’t want to ruin his mood.

“Iris,” he says suddenly.

“Yes?”

“Spit it out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something’s bothering you,” he says. He puts his laptop down. “Come on, tell me.”

Iris adjusts her glasses. “I talked to Patty,” she says carefully. He nods.

“Alright. Everything straight?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“I’m…sorry.”

He gives her a curious look. “For what?”

“Everything, I guess.” She shrugs. “I never apologised, I just went off with my own drama. But the woman that you loved tricked you and it’s okay if you think about what could have…wait, Barry, why are you laughing at me?”

Barry smiles, and the look in his eyes is so soft it almost hurts to look at him. “Because you’re an idiot if you think I ever loved anyone before I loved you.”

“I – what?”

Barry puts his laptop on the coffee table and pulls her closer to him so they’re facing each other. “I…I remember when I asked my mom what love meant. Like, what it meant when you loved someone different than the way you loved your parents or your family. I was seven when I asked, I think, and I was kind of annoying, and I think she wanted me to go away. But she said that the person you loved – like, the forever love – was the person who you loved most in the world, and they were your favourite, and you always wanted to spend time with them.” He pauses. “And, for me, that was you.”

Iris looks at him and he continues. “We were seven, but it seemed logical to me, you know? Iris is my favourite person, so if I find someone I love more than her, it must be love. And I'll know I really love someone if I love them more than I love her.” He shakes his head. “I know it’s dumb, and I grew out of it, but that part…never changed. I always compared other girls to you. With Becky, and Jessica from college. Because if I still loved my best friend more than them, obviously what we had wasn’t real. I mean, if I like my best friend more than you, that’s not exactly grounds for a relationship. None of those other girls ever came close to how I felt about you.

“But we were best friends and I thought…I thought that was what it was. That was why I missed you when I was with them and I always felt whole when I was with you. I didn’t figure it out until Patty and when you told me how you felt.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I loved her, but with her I was always...waiting. I was waiting for that moment when I would pick her over you, but I never felt that way. And I started to realise maybe I felt that way because you were always the one I was meant to love, and I would never love anyone more than you.” He pauses.

“Iris, you always say you loved me before you knew what love meant, but I think I loved you before I knew how to love. Because I think you’re the one who taught me what it was, and how it was supposed to feel. Our whole lives, I’ve never loved anyone more than I loved you, and it’s because…because you showed me how to love.” He shrugs and smiles. “You’ve always been what love feels like to me, Iris. Since the day that I met you. So no, I’m not thinking about Patty and I’m not regretting it. I’m usually always thinking about you.”

Iris blinks and blushes. He’s really catching up in the romantic speeches department. “Oh. Well, I…when you put it like that…”

Barry laughs and kisses her hand very softly, and goes back to his work. The Justice League are having their conference soon and everyone will be there – Lois and Clark are flying in, along with everyone else in the League, Francine, Nora, and Henry, and all their friends will be there, and there’ll be lots of press. Which is why Iris finds Barry, when the day finally comes, pacing in a conference room. “Barry,” she says, catching him. She’s in her suit already, getting ready to enter with the others, who will come when Clark and Barry call him. “Stop it. You’re going to be fine.”

“There are a million people out there!”

Iris grabs his face. “There are thirty people out there. And you’re going to be fine – you spoke in front of people all the time when you were a PhD student.”

Barry peers through the curtain at everyone waiting. It was fun, at first. Iris met everyone at the Hall, and Chesca let out a huge shriek when she saw Batgirl, and everyone introduced themselves. But now their entire families are out there, and their friends and colleagues. Barry puts his hands around her waist. “Right, but we worked so hard on this. I don’t want to screw it up.”

“We won’t. But let’s just enjoy for now, okay?”

Barry brushes his lips with hers. “I can think of one thing I can enjoy…”

“Barry Allen, there are other people around!”

“They can’t see us.”

“Yes, they can,” Jesse says in a bored voice as he walks in. Barry and Iris spring apart. “Are you guys ready?”

Iris looks at Barry. “Ready.”

“Good, because Chesca, your sister, both of your mothers and Linda really want to see Marvel Man in person.”

Barry doesn’t blink at all the cameras as he comes to stand next to Clark’s podium. His friend nods encouragingly and gestures for him to go first. But he doesn’t say anything, just raises a hand. Without warning, Iris flashes into the middle in her suit. Doors at the back burst open and Lois and Bree walk in, capes billowing as people scramble to take pictures. Olivia and Laurent come from behind Iris and the others, while Hal and Aria flash onto the stage. Finally, Dino rises from the front of the audience and stands behind Olivia.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Clark says. “I give you…the Justice League.”

***

Several hours later, Barry and Iris collapse on his couch, exhausted. It took hours while they volleyed questions on training, threats, rivalry. And there’ll be more, iris knows, but they’ve started something. Something amazing.

“I could stay here forever,” Barry says. “I can eat all my meals from the couch, right? Screw responsibilities.”

“Oh, God,” Iris groans, scrambling in her bag. “I need to call my landlord – with all the League stuff, I forgot.”

Barry licks his lips. “Right, your apartment.”

“Yeah. I mean I really wanted a change, but maybe I should just stay put.”

“You could move in with someone,” he suggests. When Iris looks at him, he blushes. “And I’m not saying me, or anything, but, um, maybe…maybe me?”

“Barry…”

“Just, I have all this space. And you’re here all the time anyway and I _really_ miss you when you’re not. Plus you already know where everything is, and stuff. And I have the fireplace and the walk-in wardrobes that you said you liked…and I know it’s a little further from work than your old place, b-but I could drive you, if you wanted. We could…drive. Together.” He breaks off at her expression and then shakes his head. “You’re right, it’s dumb and it's too soon, I’m sorry-”

“No, Barry.” Iris smiles at this boy who gives her the world as if it’s nothing at all. “I would love to live with you. But isn’t that a big step?”

“Maybe,” he admits. He pulls her legs up onto his lap. “But I keep thinking about my life, our lives, and I don’t want anything separating us. Not when the lives we live are so dangerous. I want to spent every moment I can with you. And since we were small, I never felt at home when you weren’t near. My home is wherever you are.”

“Okay,” she smiles, a little breathless. “I’ll…I’ll live with you.”

Barry grins and then kisses her, pulling her against him. She pulls back, putting her arms around his neck, and taking in every inch of his face. “You’re my world, Barry Allen.”

“And you’re mine, Iris West.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just three more to go! Also sorry if this felt rushed. Was dragging a bit and I needed to end it. More Lois and Clark and JL stuff next time.  
> Preview:  
> "Iris doesn't remember me!"  
> "Actually," Chesca corrects, "she likes 'Jenni'." Barry glares at them and Jesse swallows.  
> "Are you mad? He looks mad."  
> "I'm not..." Barry sighs through his nose. "I just want to know which one of you GAVE MY GIRLFRIEND AMNESIA."


	38. I Need You Close (Come Back To Me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris is at her most forgetful yet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from Holy Ghost by BØRNS  
> If I offended anyone, let me know.

“ _…see you cryin’…yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah…and I feel your broken heart…_ ”

Usually the sound of music waking Barry up on a Sunday morning would irritate him, but all he does is smile as he gets up, yawning, and pulls on some sweats before padding downstairs. Sure enough, Iris is dancing around his kitchen – _their_ kitchen, he reminds himself – singing along to Eternal as she floats things down from the cupboards.

“ _…I can feel your hurting… yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah…_ ”

Iris has all manner of things going on at once – mixing something in a bowl with her mind, brewing something in the coffeemaker, filling bowls with fruit. She also hasn’t seen him, which is why he does what he does next.

“… _if you let me be_ …” Iris sings to herself, unaware of her boyfriend standing a few feet away from her. She crosses to the spice rack to try to find cinnamon. “ _…I’ll be all you need_ …”

“ _I wanna be the only one to love you_ ,” she hears in her ear, as Barry wraps his arms around her from behind. She lets out a squeal of surprise and laughs as he lifts her and spins her around the kitchen. “ _I wanna be the only one soothe you_ ,” he sings lightly, making her giggle. “Barry.”

“ _I wanna be the only one to love you, love you_ …”

“Barry!” she laughs. “Quit it!”

“ _I wanna the only one, the only one, the_ -”

Iris stops him by kissing him and he sighs into her mouth, his hands sliding down her back. She pokes him in the chest. “You are such a dork.”

“Not as big a dork as you,” he counters, grinning. He kisses her lightly on the nose. “Morning.”

“Morning.” Barry looks around.

“You turned the kitchen into an IHOP?”

“I thought you might want some pancakes,” she says brightly, walking around the kitchen. “We have chocolate chips, whipped cream, Oreos, blueberries, lemon juice, M&Ms – crispy _and_ peanut – peanut butter, marshmallows, chocolate syrup, and good old fashioned maple syrup. Plus lots of coffee, because-”

“It’s you.”

“Of course. I have the batter all ready to go, so all we have to do is start frying and Barry and Iris’ Sunday Pancake Palooza is officially back.” Barry considers this.

“’Kay,” he says simply, and then goes to kiss her again, pulling her against him.

 “Barry,” she laughs, putting a finger to his lips. “Seriously?”

He takes her hand and starts kissing up her arm. “Mm. Yes. Very serious.”

“We’ve been doing that all weekend.”

“So?”

“Barry.” She tries to sound stern, but it’s hard when he’s pressing his lips to her neck like this. Her voice comes out light and breathy. “We should be responsible today – we’re adults!”

“We were very adult last night. And this morning.”

“Barry, we – look at my hair.” He lifts his head and frowns at her.

“What’s wrong with your hair?”

“It’s curly. Do you know why it’s curly?”

He blinks. “Because you used the shower?”

“Because I used the shower and then I missed my hair appointment on Saturday, because we haven’t done anything but each other since Friday.”

“That’s not true,” Barry disagrees, twirling a curl around his finger where it’s coming out of her headscarf. “We unpacked that first suitcase, remember?”

“Yes,” she says, folding her arms. “And then we decided to take a break and celebrate the fact that I was moving in. Whose idea was that, again?”

Barry pouts adorably at her. “Mine. But what are you doing up so early, anyway? I thought we could stay in bed and watch TV together.”

Iris points at the clock that hangs next to the noticeboard. “It’s past ten, Barry.”

“Ten is early for a Sunday,” he mumbles, lowering his head again.

“Bar – Barry…”

“Come back to bed, Iris,” he murmurs against her skin. Iris closes her eyes, trying to gather her thoughts.

“That’s – Barry, are you sure you’re not…um – hungry?”

“No,” he starts, but then his stomach rumbles, giving him away. Barry laughs at Iris’ look. “Okay, okay. You want some help?”

“No, I’ve got it,” she replies. She flicks her and the batter starts to pour itself into the griddle, crackling as it cooks immediately. “Be warned, there’s enough to make at least two dozen pancakes.”

“Don’t you have a stomach that moonlights as a black hole?”

“Don’t make me move back into my old apartment, Allen,” she warns, brandishing a spatula at him. “Actually, could you put all the fruit and stuff into bowls?”

Barry nods and obediently starts putting everything on a big tray that Iris has found. Iris goes back to the pancakes and he watches her with a fond smile. He’d been kind of worried that it was too soon to ask her to move in with him, but it felt natural. She is always here all the time, and he rarely feels at home unless she’s there with him. Plus, he did kind of get the apartment because he knew that it had things that she liked (though he still hasn’t told her that), and she pretty much decorated it herself. She did indeed move in on Friday afternoon, and Iris got as far as unpacking her overnight bag before Barry had kissed her, and then they’d ended up in bed and, well…it had pretty much been a repeat performance the entire weekend. In several different rooms.

(They’ll unpack. Eventually).

Barry finishes organising the fruit and toppings, and loops his arms around Iris’ waist just as she’s flipping the first pancake onto a plate. He tucks his chin into the crook of her shoulder, and Iris pours more batter onto the griddle. “I’ll be done soon, okay?”

He nods into her neck. “’Kay. What do you want to do today?”

“I’m totally okay with your plan of watching TV all day,” she replies. “It’s everyone’s day off, and then we can have dinner with your mom tonight. Is it our turn to bring dessert?”

“Yeah, we should probably go to market for a pie or something. Is Henry coming?”

“Um,” Iris says, flipping the second pancake. “I guess? Probably. Why?”

“Don’t know how I feel about him getting so close to mom,” he answers. “Like, I don’t mind him coming to dinner, and hanging out with us, and stuff, but he still walked out on her.”

“Right. But, I mean, your mom’s…I mean, she’s Nora. She can handle herself.”

“I know that, and I’m not mad at him or anything. But I just want to make it clear he’s not going to hurt her again. He’s my dad, but he’s not her husband.”

“Oh,” Iris says in a high voice. “Right.”

Barry grins to himself because he knows he’s going to get his ass kicked later, but it’ll totally be worth it. He decides to change the subject. “So,” he continues, nuzzling her neck, “I have a question.”

“What?”

“What are you trying to get out of me?”

As he expected, Iris freezes very briefly, before flipping the second pancake onto the plate. “W-What are you talking about?” she wants to know. “What makes you think I’m trying to get anything out of you?”

Barry turns her away from the stove. “Because,” he says, “Barry and Iris’ Sunday Pancake Palooza never happened unless it was a special occasion, like birthdays. I don’t have blueberries in the apartment, which means that you already went to the market – and I know that,” he adds, reaching for the Miss Miracle ring that’s on a chain around her neck, “because you always wear this around your neck when you go out in case of emergencies. You hate whipped cream on pancakes – you like ice-cream – but you know that I love it. And you know that when we went on that road trip to Disneyland we stopped at that diner on the way, because we were starving and hadn’t eaten anything all day, and we had pancakes with peanut butter and M&Ms, pancakes with Oreos, _and_ pancakes with marshmallows and chocolate syrup. You know I always say it was one of the best days of my life. You, Iris West,” he finishes, “are trying to get something out of me.”

Iris scrunches her mouth up. “Damn it.”

Barry points to himself proudly. “Investigative journalist.”

“Fine,” she replies, rolling her eyes. She twists her fingers together. “I kind of wanted to…run something by you.” Barry reaches behind her and pours more batter into the griddle to make another one.

“I’m all ears, sunshine.”

“So I was thinking, since we live together now, and we started the Justice League, and as far as I know no one is trying to murder us, it would be cool to do something to celebrate. Like a housewarming party.”

“A housewarming party?” he repeats.

“Yeah. We could invite your mom and my mom and…everyone. And it can be something where we’re just hanging out and being normal instead of worrying about every other thing on the planet, you know? We’d have to plan it around all of our schedules, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to have the find out where Lois gets all her food because we’re going to have at least three metahumans at this thing, but…what do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” he replies, shrugging. “It sounds like fun, and it’s an excuse for us all to get together that doesn’t include everyone yelling about dragons.”

“Really? You don’t mind?”

“Iris, the whole point of us living together is that it’s your apartment too. You don’t have to be worried about asking me stuff,” he says, wrapping his arms around her. He’s very aware that she’s been worried about things, from Dr. Wells’ powers to Flashpoint to Colin, but he hoped that with some of the wins they got with the Justice League, some of that worry would go away. But he’s been noticing that something else is on her mind, a haunted look that she blinks away with a bright smile when he notices. “I think it’ll be fun.”

“Great!” she beams at him. “I’ll ask everyone which days they can do, and – oh! I need to remember ice.”

“Ice?”

“It’s always the first thing people forget when they have parties. And I’ll have to redecorate a little-”

“Iris, you’re the one who decorated the apartment the first time.”

“Yeah, but that was me decorating the apartment so that _you_ could live in it,” she points out. “Now I have to re-do the whole thing because _I’m_ living here too.” He raises his eyebrows.

“The whole thing?”

“Well, maybe not the _whole_ thing,” she admits. “Maybe I’ll just get rid of the lounge-chair.”

“I like the lounge-chair!”

“We can discuss the lounge-chair,” she laughs. She bites her lip. “But you’re sure you’re okay with it? I know you’re not really a party person.”

“Being with you makes me want to do stuff like this,” he shrugs. “Besides, I’m okay with anything that keeps you here with me.”

Iris smiles up at him and then reaches up to kiss him. “I love you.” Then she looks around at all the food. “So, you agreed to this pretty easily, and I had a whole speech prepared, so do you actually want any of this?”

“Mm,” he says, cupping her cheek and kissing her, “I want all of it. And maybe,” he adds, bending to lift her, “I’ll have some of the food later.”

“What – Barry!” Iris laughs, wrapping her legs around him to keep from falling. “What are you doing?”

“You said,” he reminds her, walking her away from the stove and setting her on the countertop, “that we weren’t ruling out the kitchen counter.”

“I most definitely did _not_ say that.”

“Are you saying it now?”

Iris regards him and then pulls him forward to kiss him again, wrapping her arms around his neck. “No. I’m not.”

Needless to say, they burn the third pancake.

***

“…knew when Dean came back it would cause trouble,” Iris finishes, brandishing her fork at the screen. Beside her, Barry sips his coffee.

“It’s his hair,” he says finally. “I never liked it. And he married Lindsey while he was still in love with Rory.”

“Ugh, he was such a creep for that.” Iris feeds Barry another chunk of pancake covered in crushed Oreos and whipped cream and then settles back against him. They’re two hours and seventeen pancakes into their _Gilmore Girls_ marathon, and Iris has no desire to move from this spot for the next few hours. Or forever, really. She’s seriously starting to wonder how they’re going to shower and get ready for Sunday dinner. After they finally finished all the batter, they made their way back to their room with all the different toppings on trays with the pancakes, and two huge cups of coffee with them. As suspected, Barry put whipped cream with everything, but Iris’ favourite has always been the maple syrup.

“I think Logan will be here soon,” she continues, shovelling pancakes into her mouth. She’s so behind on the meal plan that she hasn’t hit her calorie count for the week, which Jesse will notice when he does her weekly check-up on Monday. Hopefully her energy levels should hold when he checks her blood sugar. As she’s eating she notices that Barry is looking at her, a contented smile on his face. She frowns at him.

“What?” she asks, mouth full.

“You’re just…really beautiful,” he replies simply. Iris stares at him. Right now, she’s wearing his Berkeley sweatshirt, baggy pants, and one of her old headscarves wrapped around her head in a topknot. She’s also wearing her biggest, most severe pair of spare glasses straight out of the nineties because hers are getting new lenses, and she’s very aware that she has maple syrup on her chin. And she still blushes because of the way Barry is looking at her. “You’re an idiot,” she says quietly, swallowing. Barry smiles at her.

“An idiot in love,” he says, his voice soft and sincere, and he laughs when she shoves him.

“I love you too, jackass,” she replies. She moves the tray onto the table with her mind, and wipes the syrup off her face. “Is the landlord still freaked out at how fast I moved in?”

“We live on the top floor of this building and we had to make like, three journeys,” he points out, putting his arm around her. “And with all your stuff, that’s no small thing.”

“I don’t have that much stuff.”

“You don’t have much _stuff_. Clothes, however…”

“I’m not that bad!”

“There’s is a section in our wardrobe dedicated to your shoes alone, Iris.”

“I have taste!” she tells him. “Sue me. Besides, you’d be lost without my fashion sense.” He raises an eyebrow.

“How do you figure that?”

“Remember how you wore that do-rag when I came to visit you at college?”

“Iris, that was a dare from the people in my dorm.”

“It was?”

“Look, I got enough crap about my lost white boy in a rap video phase from you,” he points out, chuckling. “I wasn’t going to bring it back on purpose.” Iris looks at him.

“But your roommates were always so nice! Anyone who puts you in a do-rag post-2004 is not your friend.”

“They were nice,” he remembers, tucking his face into her neck again. “Mostly.”

“I mean, they were always nice to me.”

“That’s because they thought you were my girlfriend.” She stares at him.

“They thought I was your girlfriend?”

“Yep,” he tells her. “They saw your picture on my bedside table and they started calling you ‘Barry’s girlfriend, the hot nerd’. You have no idea how many times I had to threaten them not to call you that when you came to visit. Of course, then they’d always flirt with you because they knew it annoyed me. They wanted to get me to admit it.”

“Yeah, I noticed that, they weren’t subtle,” she laughs. “Why did it annoy you?”

“What?” he asks. She smiles sweetly.

“Why did your roommates flirting with me annoy you?” When he doesn’t answer, she pokes him. “Bartholomew Allen. Were you jealous?” He scowls, folding his arms.

“No. They just…they weren’t good enough for you. I didn’t want you to get hurt by some frat boy asshole.”

“Barry.” She puts her hand on his face and makes him look at her. “I could take care of myself. And besides, how could I even look at them when I was in love with you? Lost white boy in a rap video phase aside,” she adds, giggling. He kisses her hand softly.

“That do-rag was terrible, though,” he admits. “Anyway, at least I didn’t have that when I went to visit you.”

“Barry, half the girls in my dorm used to flirt with you every time you came to visit.”

“What? No, they didn’t.”

“Yes, they did,” she says, a little sadly. It’s a bittersweet memory, Barry visiting her at college, one of many. It was hard enough being away from him, but then she’d see him at the train station, looking around for her and his face breaking out in that smile that makes her world stop whenever she sees it when he spotted her, and she’d run straight into his arms. But then they’d fall back into their familiar routine of Barry not knowing how she felt about him, so she’d have to listen to him talk about Jessica, his girlfriend, or talk him about introducing her to guys that he thought she might like, or – the worst – watch girls flirt with him or try to get her to set them up with him. The one saving grace is that Barry has always been supremely oblivious to girls liking him, and she’d usually been the one who had to tell him when a girl liked him. A small part of her feels a little sorry for Patty, because it can’t have been easy to get Barry to notice her. The only reason she hadn’t had to with Becky Cooper was because the girl had about as much subtlety as a sledgehammer.

He frowns. “I never noticed. Are you sure they weren’t just being nice?”

“No one’s that nice.”

“Oh.” Then he shrugs and pulls her back against him. “Guess a part of me knew I already had what I wanted.”

“And that is why,” she says, “you get two dozen pancakes on a Sunday.” They’re silent for a while, and then Barry says, “Maybe I was a little jealous.”

“It’s okay. You’re hot when you’re jealous. Oh!” She slips out from under his arm and sits on his lap. “I have some ideas on how to redecorate our room.” He leans forward.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

 “I think we should get sconces.”

“Sconces?”

“Yeah, for our room. I think it’d be cute. They could dim when we want them to, and they’d give off a really good vibe.”

“But we already have…” He trails off as Iris’ eyes get big behind her glasses. “Iris, I don’t know how to…” Then she pouts at him, her bottom lip poking out, and he sighs, smiling. He’s fairly certain Iris could convince him to get the sun for her and he’d do it. “Okay, sure. Sconces sound nice.”

Iris leans forward to kiss him again, balancing her hands on his shoulders. Barry pulls her closer to him with one hand and fastens his hand in her hair with the other, expertly undoing her scarf so he can feel her curls between his fingers. She shifts closer to him and Barry’s hands drop to her waist. “Barry,” she says breathlessly into his mouth.

“Y-Yeah?”

“We can unpack tomorrow.”

Barry grins and flips them over so he’s on top of her, balancing one hand on the headboard, and Iris reaches up to thread her fingers through his hair. Then he curses when he hears the doorbell. “Seriously?”

“Oh, crap,” Iris says, and he frowns down at her.

“What?”

“It might be Waller. He likes delivering stuff to me whenever he wants, like reports and stuff, and urgent updates that I have to look at, and we… kind of started the Justice League. So.”

Barry sighs and kisses her on the forehead. “He paid off our student loans,” he reminds himself as he stands and helps Iris to her feet. She laughs and takes his hand, leading them both down the stairs. “Yeah, I try to keep that in mind too.”

“Did you tell him you moved?”

“No, but you know Waller. I’m pretty sure he knows where the aliens are.”

The doorbell goes again and Iris frowns. “Dude, it’s a Sunday,” she mutters. She opens the door to see a very bored-looking mailman holding a large brown envelope. “You Dr. Barry Allen?” he asks Barry, who blinks.

“Uh, yeah,” he says after a second, sharing a look with Iris. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Sign and initial here,” he drones. Iris studies the envelope as Barry signs.

“What is it? And why are you here on a Sunday?”

“Special delivery, had to be signed for. And I just deliver the packages, lady.”

Iris stifles her retort as Barry hands him back his iPad, and he walks off without another word. “Okay, I guess it’s not from Waller,” she says, shutting the door. Barry frowns.

“It’s from CCPN,” he says. “Look at the return address. Am I getting fired?”

“I don’t think they can fire you by mail on a Sunday. Open it.”

Barry rips the envelope open and browses the letter that falls out. Then his eyes widen and his face goes slack. “Bar?” Iris says, alarmed. “Barry, what is it?”

“I…” he swallows. “I don’t…”

He trails off, stunned at something, and Iris takes the letter away from him. When she reads it, her mouth drops open.

 

_Dear Dr. Allen,_

_I am pleased to inform you that you have been nominated for Central City’s Excellence in Journalism Award in the category_ Special Interest – Crime _for your article “A League of Their Own – a Hero’s Quest for Justice”. Your sponsor, Melissa Bridge, submitted an excellent recommendation, and the committee was incredibly pleased with your work. You and the other nominees from various publications will be honoured at the Excellence in Journalism Ceremony held by Mayor Bellows on the 17 th of May 2015. Please find details…_

Iris doesn’t need to read on. “Barry!” she squeals excitedly. She catches him in a hug. “This is amazing! I’m so proud of you!”

“I didn’t – even…” he swallows. “I forgot I sent it in, I didn’t…”

“This is incredible! You have to call your mom. And everyone’s going to want to watch – is it going to be on TV?”

“They liked what Missy wrote?” Barry continues, still stunned. “What did she write? She doesn’t like people.”

“Does it matter? You’re nominated!” She grasps his shoulders. “Barry, this is, like, the first step to you winning a Pulitzer!”

A slow smile spreads across his face as it finally hits him, what this means. “It – it is, isn’t it?”

“ _Yes_! And when you win, you can rub it in Jake’s face.”

“Jake? I’m nominated with him?”

“Yeah, and with some people from the Central City Citizen.”

“Now I have to win,” Barry says, taking the piece of paper from her. “And I have to call Clark and Lois. And everyone, really.”

“Mm, Aria said she really liked the article. How she got it thousands of leagues under the sea, I have no idea, but still. I think you did the Justice League…justice, I guess.”

“That was terrible, Iris.”

“You get nominated for one award and suddenly no one else can make puns.” But she grins at him and kisses him again. “I really am proud of you, you know. The Justice League couldn’t have better faces than Clark and you.”

***

“…all questions about the League will be directed towards myself or Mr. Kent,” Barry continues to all the reporters taking notes. Behind him and Clark, standing in an unbroken line, Dino, Olivia, Laurent, Lois, Iris, Bree, Hal, and Aria look out into the crowd, the picture of power and grace. The press conferences started thirty minutes ago, and Barry is considerably less nervous than he was when it first started. It helps that he can see his parents in the crowd, as well as all his friends, and Iris is behind him in her Miss Miracle costume.

“Furthermore,” Clark adds, “Police Commissioner Jacqueline Gordon of Gotham City Police Department will be a point of contact for Batgirl should Barry or I be unable to contact her.”

“Wait,” someone says. Barry recognises them as a television reporter from the Central City Citizen. He looks around nervously at the group. “I know we had the time to ask questions, but, um – I just wanted to say, on behalf of all the people blowing up my Twitter-” everyone laughs “-thank you, to all of you, for everything that you did. I have family in Metropolis, and – thank you.”

Barry doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so he’s happy that Iris steps forward and says, her voice distorted by her mask, “We’re happy to help.”

Watching the Justice League leave a building – Hal and Iris disappear entirely, Bree, Olivia and Laurent walk out and rappel up buildings, Dino walks out and _jumps_ up a building, Aria walks out and jumps in the Bay, and Lois flies off – is quite something, even for Barry. Of course, while everyone’s getting refreshments Iris and Lois walk back in as if they were just outside getting coffee or something. Lois kisses Clark on the cheek when she sees him. “You guys did great,” she says, squeezing Barry’s hand. Iris slips her hand into his other and grins at him.

“Well done, Barry Allen, Ace Reporter. Nicely done.”

“Does that mean you’re going to stop calling me your social media manager?”

“Dude. Don’t forget your roots.”

They laugh and Clark looks around. “So, which one is Little Miss Miracle?”

“The brunette staring at Dino.”

“The one with the mini macaroni cheese bites?”

“No, that’s Chesca,” Barry says. “Little Miss Miracle is the one that looks like me.”

“Aw,” Lois says. “She’s a cutie. Iris tells me she recently came into your life? How did that happen?”

Barry pauses and looks at Iris. “It’s a long story,” he says. Iris snaps her fingers.

“Hey, Clark, my mom said that her students wanted to see you again – remind me to have you guys meet before you leave. She’s around here somewhere.”

“Of course. Maybe they can hear about Barry and I brainstorming for the article.”

“Have you guys come up with a plan for it yet?” Lois asks. Barry nods.

“Well, Clark did the recap of the aliens, so I was thinking of writing about why everyone became heroes. You know, a kind of introspective piece on the heroes.”

“Well if you’re going introspective make sure you talk about how much Lo likes donuts.”

She rolls her eyes. “Funny, Kent. You want me to tell Barry and Iris about what happens when you eat too much apple pie? Because-”

“Iris,” Clark interrupts quickly, “maybe I could talk to your mom now?”

“I think she’s kind of busy right now,” Iris giggles, “but I think Nora said she wanted to talk to you guys.”

“Oh, wait, there’s Henry,” Barry says, waving him over. He walks up holding a plate of shrimp. “Hello, everyone. Does anyone know who did the food? I’d like to hire them.”

Everyone laughs and Barry grins. “Henry, this is Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Guys, this is Henry, my dad.”

Barry doesn’t notice the touched look on Henry’s face – he quickly smooths it over and shakes both of their hands – but Iris does. His eyes are warm for a moment as they linger on Barry before focuses on the others. “It’s nice to meet you both,” he says pleasantly. “Barry is a big fan of both of yours. But I actually think that Lois and I-”

“Have met,” she says quietly. “Waller,” she explains. “Mr…Allen is his deputy.” Clark’s eyes widen a little.

“So he knows-”

“I know,” he says. “But don’t worry, I’m laying low for the time being. This entire thing is run by Iris. She’s the boss.”

“I like the sound of that,” Iris says, popping some shrimp in her mouth. Clark’s phone starts to ring, cutting the silence. He makes a face.

“Lo, I think Penny wants to talk to both of us,” he says. “Would you guys excuse us for a minute?”

“Actually, I have to duck away too,” Henry admits, looking around. “I think my daughter is getting a little excited at this many superheroes being in the room at once. She’s practically forgotten that she’s one herself.”

Henry gives Barry another warm smile before he leaves, and Barry frowns slightly. “What?” Iris asks.

“Was it me or was Henry being even more cheerful than usual?”

“Maybe a little. But he’s Henry, you know? He’s always happy about something. And…” He frowns down at her, taking a couple of champagne flutes from a passing waiter and handing her one.

“And what?”

“Well, Barry, the whole time since he’s been back in your life, you’ve always introduced him as Henry. But this time, you also said he was your dad.”

Barry blinks. “I did?”

“Yeah, you did,” she laughs. “You’ve come a long way from threatening him.”

“I guess we have,” he smiles, and then turns his head when someone taps him on the shoulder. “Dr. Allen?” one of the reporters asks. “We were wondering if we could ask you some questions…”

Barry gives her an apologetic look but she waves him off. “Go, I’ll be here. Oh, wait.” She puts her champagne down and straightens his tie. “There. Now go wow everyone, Barry Allen.”

***

“So what do you win?”

Barry laughs as he pours them more coffee. “It’s a very prestigious award, Iris. Just being nominated is enough, and winning would be a dream come true.”

Iris pauses in the act of eating the leftover Oreos. “So, what do you win?”

“I think there’s some prize money? And I get a statue with my name on it.”

“ _That’s_ what I’m talking about. You can put it here…” she says, walking over to their mantelpiece. “Which still leaves room for your Pulitzer.”

“If I win.”

“When, Barry. Positivity, remember?”

He smiles. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” she nods. She looks around. “Wow, I have my work cut out for me here.”

“Iris, I really don’t-”

“ _Iris, this is your scheduled reminder that there will be a meeting of the Miracle Workers at 1900 hours tomorrow_ ,” Gideon’s voice sounds through the apartment. Barry stares around at the sound.

“What was that?”

“That was Gideon reminding me about our team meeting tomorrow,” Iris says, frowning a little. Barry blinks.

“And why is he coming out of my speakers?”

“Because I gave him the Wi-Fi password. Although I was thinking you could just email me or send an alert to my phone, Gideon,” she adds. “Not jump out and scare us.”

Gideon inexplicably pops out of Barry’s iPad, which is on the coffee table, and at this moment Barry loses all patience with the AI. “I have sent you three emails today alone,” he says. “As I have been doing all weekend. You and Mr. Allen were…busy. Celebrating.”

“Right,” Iris says, blushing. Barry, as usual, doesn’t even look embarrassed. “Well. Thank you, Gideon. Hey, could you send me a list of days where no one has any prior engagements? And a day where Linda, Chesca, Dr. Wells and Jesse are free?”

“Of course, Iris,” he says pleasantly. Then he turns to Barry. “Barry, you have a teeth cleaning on Wednesday.”

“I – thank you,” he replies, and Gideon nods cheerfully before blinking away. “Does he know everything about us?”

“Pretty much.”

“Hey, why do you need to know when those guys are free? Is it something to do with Plunder?”

They sit down together on the couch. “No, it’s that thing I’m working on,” she explains. “I’m trying to figure out a way to access people’s memories and transmit them to viewable images.”

“Really? How?”

“Well, I can read people’s minds, and I can see what they saw even after they’ve seen it, right? So there has to be some kind of way to put that on a computer. Or there might be, I don’t know. We’re doing brain scans on me so we can figure it out.” Barry raises his eyebrows.

“Is that safe?”

“You are such a worrier, of course it’s safe,” she laughs. “I’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure. I only have one Iris, and I don’t want to lose her.”

“Well, you could always go to another earth and get another one,” she points out, and he shakes his head.

“You’re the best one.”

He kisses her and Iris takes his coffee from him and puts it on the table, before pulling him down on top of her. It’s easy love, with Iris grasping Barry’s shoulders as he eases into her and Barry sighing out her name on her skin as she locks her legs around his hips. It’s always this easy between them, since they finally got together after she got back from helping The Flash, and Iris used to wonder why. But now, on this warm Sunday with the smell of coffee and pancakes in the air, gasping as she comes with Barry’s arms around her, she no longer wonders. Because perhaps this – dating, moving in, building a life for themselves in the crazy world that they’ve found themselves in – is their reward. Perhaps after everything they’ve gone through, the universe is allowing them to have easy.

***

STAR Labs is its usual self when they arrive the next evening, buzzing with the activity of their friends. Iris has to sign for more deliveries when she gets in, which in turn reminds her that she needs to call Bree to ask whether she wants Gideon as a communications device.

“I’m not sure Bree’s the kind to have Gideon popping up at random times during the day,” Barry points out as they make their way to the Cortex. Iris slips her hand out of his briefly to press the elevator button.

“Yeah, but the whole point of an emergency alarm is that it never interrupts us when we want it to. But you’re right, maybe I should ask Gideon to keep the non-emergent interruptions to a minimum for everyone apart from us.”

“And maybe not even then,” Barry mutters, which makes Iris giggle. “I’m starting to get a complex, Iris.”

“So am I,” Gideon drones from Iris’ watch. “Dr. Chambers is right, the two of you are like rabbits.”

“Gideon, I will replace your personality chip so fast, I swear to God-”

“Ahm, but,” he says quickly, “young love is – is nothing to be ashamed of.”

It’s Barry that’s laughing when they walk into the Cortex to see Jesse and Chesca bickering about something, while Dr. Wells, who by this point has gotten extremely adept at pretending they don’t exist, smiles warmly at them. “Good evening,” she says. “I trust the two of you had a nice weekend?”

“We did, actually,” Barry says. He gestures to the other two. “What is it today?”

“Not enough Danishes in the coffee order, from what I gather,” she says. She points to the counter, where several cups of coffee and a bag of something are sitting. “Medium cappuccino and a large Americano for you two.”

“Come on, dude,” Chesca says. “I can’t have one?”

“I didn’t get them for you,” Jesse says patiently. Chesca rolls her eyes.

“Well, who did you get them for?”

“Malina.”

“Why her?”

“Because if you looked on the group chat, she said she was hungry. I’m her doctor; I need to make sure she’s eating.”

“You’re _one_ of her doctors,” she points out, “and I said I was hungry too!”

“I know,” he sniffs, “I was ignoring you.”

“Why do you ignore me but not her?”

“Because she doesn’t eat my pizza pockets-”

“Yes, she does-”

“And when she does,” he continues, “she replaces them. _You_ blame Iris and say she forgot to order more for the break room.” Iris swivels around to look at her.

“What – Chesca!”

“Oh, like that’s a stretch of the imagination,” she scoffs, waving a hand. “She’s always forgetting something.”

“Need I remind everyone who signs the cheques?”

“Ooh, team bickering,” Linda says, walking into the room with Wally in tow. “Now it’s Monday.”

“Did you get the coffee?” Wally wants to know. “I have to run the ER tonight and my shift starts in an hour. Oh, and we have Malina’s Danishes.”

Dr. Wells laughs. “I think everyone had that idea, Wally.”

“I smell Danishes!” Malina calls in a singsong voice, breezing into the room. She takes one packet from Wally and plucks the other off the counter, diving in to eat immediately. Barry looks at Iris.

“I wonder where she learned that trick from?”

“Hey!” Iris says. “A girl’s gotta eat, and a meta metabolism is no joke. I’m not knocking the hustle.”

“How come you guys didn’t know she was hungry?” Chesca wants to know. “She’s been saying that since she got out of class.”

“Oh, I think I muted the group chat,” Iris remembers. “You guys were getting into an argument about _The Walking Dead_ on Friday – you know I hate zombies.”

“Yeah, I muted it too,” Barry adds, and Linda peers at them.

“I wondered what happened to the two of you this weekend, actually. Haven’t heard a peep from you for, what – three days? What were you doing?”

Barry and Iris look at each other. “Unpacking,” they say together.

“And on that note,” Malina says quickly, hopping up on the counter, “what’s the meeting about?”

“Right.” Iris adjusts her glasses. “It’s just an update thing. I haven’t been able to locate Plunder, so we’re still looking out for her. Linda?”

“I have all her personnel files and Eddie’s helping me with talking to her friends.”

Barry sips his coffee. “What fake insurance claim are you guys making up?”

“We’re saying she was involved in an accident. That didn’t happen.”

“Good,” Iris nods. “Let me know whether you find anything. Gideon said that everyone’s around in a couple of weeks for us to try the idea I had about putting memories in computers?”

“Yep,” Chesca says. “It’s a date. You, me, Linda, Dr. W, and Dr. Asshole.”

“And she wonders why she never gets any Danishes,” Jesse mutters, not looking away from the terminals.

“Good to know,” Iris laughs. She shares a look with Barry, who rolls his shoulders back. “Um, so we kind of wanted to ask you something.”

“You cannot possibly have more clothes to move,” Jesse says in disbelief. “I almost got carpal tunnel getting everything into the van.”

“No,” Barry says. “We’re having a housewarming party, and we want you guys to come.”

“All of you,” Iris adds, looking at Dr. Wells. Linda grins.

“Aw, I love that you guys are living together! You’re like a baby us.”

“Just make sure you don’t do what Linda did for _our_ housewarming,” Wally says, and his girlfriend’s grin widens.

“Hey, it’s not my fault you guys can’t handle your alcohol.”

“Linda, I’m pretty certain that was moonshine.”

“Leave that at home,” Iris says quickly. “My mother is coming to this thing. But we’ll pick a date and check with you guys. Has everyone updated their calendars with Gideon?”

“All done, boss,” Malina says, still eating. Iris nods.

“Great. I think that’s everything…Oh.” She turns to Chesca. “Chess, I really can’t tell you who Batgirl is.”

“What? But we hit it off so well! And Dino gave Malina his number.”

“He did what?” Barry, Eddie and Jesse say together.

“Would you three relax?” Iris says. “She’s a superhero, she might want to be in the League later. He was just agreeing to give her some advice. Besides, he has a…well, a Stephanie Trevor, but don’t ask me what’s going on there. And you guys spoke for what, five minutes before the press conference started?”

“She said she liked my work,” Chesca says. “Which means she saw me. She can’t be that bad.”

Iris thinks for a moment. “Remember when Freddie was dating Ray, and she spent the whole time she was here berating me because she was so grumpy? And then she shot me?”

“Yeah…”

“That is Batgirl on a good day.” She pauses. “Does anyone have any other announcements?”

“No, but I do want to speak to you, Iris,” Dr. Wells says, and she nods.

“Sure, I don’t have to be on duty yet. Wally, Eddie, are you ready?”

Eddie stretches and kisses Chesca goodbye, and she goes off to get dinner with Linda. “Yep. Just have to grab dinner. Thai okay?”

Wally hits his shoulder. “Dude. We had Thai last time.”

“Yeah, and I won the bet – Sansa killed Ramsay, so I get to pick dinner.”

“Technically, his dogs did it.”

Eddie frowns. “’Technical’ wasn’t in the bet.”

“Look, asshole…”

Iris rolls her eyes as Wally and Eddie devolve into an argument. “Yay for me,” she says dryly, and Barry smiles. “Okay, I have to go on patrol, but I’ll see you later? You think you can get some unpacking done?”

Barry raises an eyebrow. “I’m not unpacking without you there, Iris. You’ll just move everything again.”

“I won’t!”

“When I came out of the shower this morning, the chest of drawers was on the other side of the room and the laundry basket had disappeared.”

“I moved it back!” she says. “And the laundry basket hasn’t disappeared, it’s in the kitchen.”

He wraps his arms around her. “You’re just proving my point, you know. I’ll see you at home?”

“See you at home,” she agrees, kissing him. “Mm, I love hearing you say that.” He grins, kissing her again.

“I love saying it.”

“Ahem,” Malina interrupts them. “Before the two of you start the love speeches and googly eyes and stuff. Barry, could you give me a ride home? Dad’s in Peru and Mom’s on duty.”

Barry blinks. “When did he go to Peru?” Malina shrugs.

“No clue. I think it might be aliens? Or drug lords. Or aliens posing as drug lords, I don’t know, it’s been a very long day.”

“Sure, I’ll take you home.” He eyes Iris, who is trying to keep her face neutral because she knows for a fact that Henry and Nora are at dinner tonight. “You okay?”

“Fine! I’m fine – um, I’ll see you both later.”

She waves them off and then turns to Dr. Wells. “What’s up, doc?” She pauses. “You know, that always sounded ten times less corny in my head. How can I help?”

Dr. Wells looks around. The others have gone, and Jesse is in his office. She flexes her fingers. “My – abilities,” she says quietly. “You said that we should talk if anything happened with them.”

Iris frowns. “And they have? But you’ve been keeping the cuffs on, haven’t you? You only take them off when you go to sleep.”

“Yes. And I was checking, you know – I like to see whether there’s been any change. Ever since we informed Waller, I wanted to be sure. He was never the most generous host,” she jokes quietly. She slowly takes the cuffs off and Iris tenses.

“Helena,” she says evenly. Dr. Wells swallows, flutters her fingers…and the cuff rises from the table. Iris freezes.

“When – when did-”

“Two days ago,” she replies, her voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t even notice until I saw my book floating in the air. I have no idea how this is happening, Iris, Terrence is dead. I thought when Colin stole my power it would never come back-”

“Helena,” Iris says quickly, grabbing her arm. She struggles for the words briefly. “I…Look, I have no idea what’s going on here, either, but this isn’t the end of the world.”

“Iris, I almost murdered you-”

“That _was not you_ ,” she interrupts forcefully. “I will – I’ll call Jay, she’ll know what this is about. Does Jesse know?” She nods.

“I told him as soon as I discovered it. He agreed not to say anything for now.”

“I’m glad you’re telling him things,” she says sincerely. “But listen, just keep the cuffs on until we figure out what’s happening.”

“I want to tell everyone else,” she says firmly. “It would be…dishonest to keep this from them. Especially after everything.”

“Everything will be fine, Helena,” Iris assures her. “I promise.”

“Thank you. And thank you for inviting me to your housewarming party. Would you like me to bring anything?”

“Just yourself,” she assures her. She pauses. “I mean I’m not going to stop you, I really am hungry all the time…”

Dr. Wells laughs, and Iris notices that she really does look lighter. “Thank you, Iris. I don’t know what we would do without you.”

“Remember that when I’m organising all the patrol timetables. What are you up to now?”

“Jesse is giving another talk at the university and I said I would come.”

“Is his admirer going to be there?” Iris asks. “I heard she came before, asking him even more questions.”

“Perhaps. I have to say, it’s quite encouraging to see so many people coming to support him. And she does look slightly familiar.” Iris tips her head.

“Really? What does she look like?”

“It’s nothing particularly conspicuous,” she admits. “I just feel like I might have seen her before. Blond hair, blue eyes, taller than average. Usually wears black.”

“Well, Jesse must be happy at having such a regular fan.” Dr. Wells gives her a wry smile.

“Perhaps. But I actually think he prefers brunettes to blondes, if I’m honest.” Iris smiles back, thinking of Malina.

“You know, I think you’re right.”

***

Iris finishes organising her samples just as the big hand on the clock gets to one, and then she pulls off her gloves and gets up to puts her beakers away. She’s not going to pretend that she doesn’t love her job, but her promotion means that she has almost twice the workload, and she has to help with training the interns. Plus there’s the fact that she has this trial to contend with. She has to organise all the different samples, along with their notes, so she can testify in the trial. It’s next week, but first she has to send them to an external lab for verification, and then to the courthouse so that they pass the screening process for evidence. Then she has to have a meeting with the DA during the week to talk about their case and her testimony. Between that, the Justice League, the usual team stuff, and moving in with Barry, Iris’ life has been nonstop for the past week.

She picks up the picture of him she has on her desk. If you had told her a year ago, when Colin had escaped and Patty was gone and she felt that her life was seconds away from falling apart that she would be living with the boy she’d loved since she first laid eyes on him, she wouldn’t have believed you. And even though it may seem fast for anyone else, it feels natural for them. First of all, she really is at the apartment all the time, so much so that half of her stuff ended up there. Barry pretty much let her decorate it herself, mentioning something about how her taste was much better than his. She remembers soon after he moved in they went to Ikea to get some furniture, and she ended up picking most of it for him. The saleswoman asked whether they were a couple, and even though she had chalked up Barry’s stammer of “No, no, we’re just friends, that’s all” to still feeling weird about the fact that she confessed she was in love with him, now she thinks it was more to do with him being in love with her and not being brave enough to tell her yet.

Iris puts the picture down and reminds herself to pick dinner up for the two of them tonight. And they _would_ unpack tonight. They had to, if they wanted a clear path from each room.

“Every time I come in here it’s like there are more stairs to get to your lab,” her mother says, walking through the door, and Iris smiles.

“Hey, mom. How was work?”

“It was work,” she shrugs. “Seriously, Iris, how do you do that every day?”

“I eat two breakfasts and have a smoothie beforehand,” she laughs. “Come sit down, mom. I’ll be done in a minute. I was actually waiting on a visit from the DA, since he wanted to give me a report to study before…Wow, speak of the devil,” she says, surprised. DA Horton walks in right as she’s finished speaking, a harried look on his face. “Good afternoon, Mr. Horton.”

“Miss West,” he says quickly. “Sorry I’m late, we had a…Francine, hello,” he adds when he notices her mother standing by Iris’ bookshelf. Her mother turns, surprised, and gives him a smile.

“Cecil, how are you? It’s good to see you.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Iris presses her lips together in an effort not to laugh. Her mother has been on three dates with Cecil and even though she’s attempted to be discreet, Iris knows that she really likes him. And judging from the way he’s smiling at her, he likes her as well.

“Ahem,” Iris says pointedly, and they both look at her like they’ve just realised she’s in the room. “Did you have something for me?”

“Yes! Yes, of course. Here’s the witness report from the most recent case before Heatmonger was apprehended. I know most people think they know everything from following Miss Miracle on Barry’s blog, but we like to be thorough.”

“Not all heroes wear capes,” Iris agrees, trying to keep her face straight. “Maybe I’ll get Barry to ask her whether she needs any sidekicks. I’ll read this before the trial. When is it?”

“Depends on which judge gets assigned to it and how many they’ve got on their docket,” he explains. “But it should be next week, if we get Judge Keller.”

“Right,” Iris nods. “I’ll let you know if I have any questions.”

“Of course. Have a good afternoon, Miss West…Francine.”

“Cecil,” she smiles pleasantly. After he leaves, Iris looks at her mother.

“You can go with him, you know. We can get lunch any time.”

“Oh, Iris,” she says dismissively. “Come on. He’s a very nice man, but you’re my daughter.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

Iris gets her usual from Jitters, giggling at her mother’s wide-eyed look at all the food, and they settle in one of the upstairs booths. “So, do you need me to bring anything for the housewarming?” her mother asks.

“Mom, you know you’re just going to cook three meals and put them in our freezer,” Iris points out, and her mother shrugs.

“You’re my baby. I want you to be well-fed. Have you guys picked a date yet?”

“Well, Barry and I asked everyone yesterday, and the consensus is that everyone wants it on Sunday. Can you make that?”

“Of course. Have you unpacked everything or are you still making Barry move everything in the apartment around?”

“I am not that bad!”

“Iris Ann West, you think I don’t know what you’re like? Barry would do anything for you, which is why I know you’ve rearranged that apartment at least three times since you moved into it.”

Iris makes a face and her mother laughs. “Still, I’m glad the two of you are so happy. I always knew you would be. And speaking of family gatherings, I wanted to run something by you.”

Iris tips her head. “Okay…”

“Your… grandparents,” she says carefully, and Iris already knows she’s not talking about Mama Ida, “are having a cookout in a couple of weeks, for a family reunion. Wally wanted me to ask you. He thought it might be…better, coming from me.”

Almost immediately, Iris shakes her head. “No.”

“Iris, the whole family’s going to be there-”

“They’re not my family,” she says firmly. “I have one already. And if I wanted more, it wouldn’t be people who didn’t speak to me for years, and would have left me in the foster system if it weren’t for Barry and Nora.”

“I understand that,” she says softly. “But I really do think they want to make amends.”

“Did they invite you?” she shoots back. “Did they invite the woman whose daughter they abandoned?”

 “I…no. They didn’t.”

“Then the answer’s no,” she says quietly. Even though she’s made her peace with Wally, she still can’t get over what her father’s family did to her and her mother all those years ago. It was hard enough getting to talk to her mother’s mother after everything – but then, Francine forgave her mother, so Iris had less reason to dislike her. The Christmas when Calamity attacked, she’d gone to stay with them and had lasted only a few hours before they started insulted her mother – and they’re not even inviting her to this, whatever it is.

“Alright,” her mother says gently. “Do you want me to tell Wally?”

“No. No, I can tell him.” Her mother lets out a breathy laugh.

“Okay, new topic. Have Nora and Henry told the kids they’re dating yet?”

“Mom!” Iris exclaims. “You know too?” Francine waves a hand.

“Please, I’ve known for weeks. They always avoid talking about each other – they’re like a couple of teenagers.” Iris shakes her head.

“Unbelievable.”

***

“Iris, this is your fault.”

“Okay, I really wanted to know how you landed there.”

Barry holds up the three copies of _10 Things I Hate About You_ that have made their way out of her boxes. “You lost this, like, four times, and each time you bought a new one. We have _five_ copies now, because you made me buy one and you keep one at mom’s house.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Mr. 17 Copies of _The Catcher In The Rye_.”

“The story of Holden Caulfield and his journey to self-discovery is iconic.”

“And Heath Ledger singing to Julia Stiles in the middle of a football field isn’t?”  Iris wants to know, hands on her hips. Barry rolls his eyes, but smiles at her.

“We should probably give a couple away. Okay, so next?”

While most couples wouldn’t consider spending their Friday night organising DVDs, CDs and books onto shelves fun, Barry and Iris do. Iris eats a cookie and then rifles through the box, before coming up to Barry to show him the CD. “The _Emperor’s New Groove_ soundtrack. Wow, we were a couple of cool kids.”

“Hey! Tom Jones did some amazing work on this. Not to mention Sting.”

“Whatever,” she laughs, looking for a gap on the shelf. “We can put it…wait.”

Barry has gone back to Iris’ box of stuff. “What?”

“Barry.” Her voice is very even. “What is this?”

Iris is holding up a CD, one eyebrow raised. Barry blinks. “Um. That’s _Love, Always_ by K-Ci and Jojo.”

“I see that. It wouldn’t happen to be the CD I lost the summer before we went to college, would it?”

“Um.”

“Barry!”

“…sorry?”

“Bartholomew Henry Allen!” Iris comes up to him and swats him on the arm. “I have been looking for this for a _decade_!”

“I’m sorry! I just – I borrowed it, and then Uncle Rudy said we had to drive you to Notre Dame soon because of that storm, and I forgot to mention that I had it. And I kept meaning to tell you, but I kept forgetting.”

“Hmph,” Iris grumbles. “And you get on me for forgetting things.”

Barry doesn’t say anything for a moment. “ _All my life, I’ve prayed for someone like you_ …”

“Barry, stop it.”

“ _And I thank God, that I’ve finally found you_ …”

“I really hate you, you know.” He gives her his best “don’t be mad” face.

“Don’t you flutter those stupid eyelashes at me, Allen,” she warns as he walks towards her. “I _mean_ it…”

“ _All my life, I’ve prayed for someone like you…And I pray that you feel the same way too…_ ”

“ _Barry_ …”

Barry wraps his arms around her. “ _Yes, I pray that you do love me too_.”

Iris folds her arms but does let him kiss her. “You are… _very_ lucky you’re cute, Bartholomew,” she sighs. “Wow, I totally forgot how much you liked them.”

“They always played it at the place where you went to get your hair done,” he yawns as they sit back down. “When we were kids. You know, that place uptown?”

“God, I remember that. Nora never used to let me get my hair done or you get your hair cut uptown unless we went together, but all the places in midtown were terrible.”

“It was Big Nicki’s, right? She was the best.”

“I am telling you they were the only people in the whole of Central City who knew how to do a Black woman’s hair,” Iris mutters, making Barry laugh. Whenever Nora didn’t have the time to do it, she sent Iris to a hair salon – but only after Iris herself had approved it. “Big Nicki,” she sighs wistfully. “I miss her. Anton’s great, but…”

“Remember when she sent me across the street to that barbershop her cousin owned to play videogames because I was getting in the way while I was waiting for you?”

“Oh my God, I thought you got lost. And then you walked back in with that haircut and Marcus was like ‘He can’t dance, but least your White Shadow looks good now’. And he told me that if I ever let you go back to the old guy who cut your hair he’d make Nicki overcharge me for mine.”

“I still go to him, you know,” he tells her, rifling through the CDs. “And he still calls me White Shadow.”

“That haircut was hot,” she muses. “Took you from cute to sexy in one afternoon. There was me thinking I couldn’t be more in love with you than I already was, and then you got a fade.”

“Really?” Barry asks. His cheeks colour slightly. “I didn’t think you noticed. You didn’t say much – I thought you thought it looked dumb.”

“I distinctly remember saying that your hair looked nice, Barry.”

“Yeah, but you just said that because I was your best friend,” he points out. “You said it like ‘Your hair looks nice, what’s for dinner?’.” Barry pretends to flip his hair over his shoulder and Iris glares at him.

“First of all, that is a _crappy_ impression of me,” she says, hitting him with a cushion and making him laugh, “and second, I was trying to keep up the whole ‘not telling Barry I’m completely in love with him’ thing. I had to keep it casual. Besides, don’t act like you didn’t do the same thing.” Barry pokes her.

“I didn’t. When I called you pretty I meant it.” Iris raises an eyebrow and folds her arms.

“Really?”

“Iris, you’re the prettiest girl in any room you walk into,” he shrugs. “I’ve always thought so. But, like you said, we were best friends, so it was weird for me to say it all the time and when I did, you never believed me. Plus, Becky wasn’t the biggest fan of me calling you that.”

“Fair point,” Iris agrees. She kisses him lightly. “I love you. Hey, do you have a colour preference for the new drapes?”

“Not really. What were you thinking?”

“Green.”

“Why do you love green so much?”

“Duh, it’s my favourite colour.”

“Yeah, I know, but why?” Barry asks, wrinkling his nose. “It’s _green_. It’s boring.”

“I happen to think green is beautiful,” she says. He gives her a sceptical look.

“Like peas? Or Brussel sprouts? Or, like, a frog?”

“No, jackass,” she laughs, shoving him. “It’s not just one green, it’s…like an emerald green, most of the time, like the kind you find in a jewellery store. And then when it’s light there’s green, but also hazel, and amber and…and even gold. But then when it’s dark, it’s bright green, like leaves right in the middle of summer.”

Barry narrows his eyes at her and doesn’t speak for a moment. “So what you’re saying is that you like green because it’s magic? I counted at least three greens there.”

Iris strokes his hair once. “You know what, Barry? You are an investigative journalist, you have a PhD, and you’re nominated for an award. You’ll figure it out.” She gets up and heads into the kitchen. “You want some chips?”

“Barbecue, please. How long have you liked green?”

“This specific green? Since I was about…” Iris thinks for a moment. “Six, I think.’

“Hm. And how often do you see it? Is it rare, or…”

Iris smiles. “I’m lucky enough that I get to see it every day.”

Barry looks so suspicious that Iris has to stop herself from laughing. Right then the doorbell rings. “I’ve got it,” he says, still eyeing her. “I’m going to figure it out, you know.”

“You do that, Bar,” Iris smiles. It’s the groceries, and since they’re having their party in a couple of days they have a _lot_ of food. Iris’ phone buzzes as they bring the food in, and Iris swallows. It’s a reminder of the trial and all the protocols that she has to follow when she gets to the courthouse. She bites her lip. It’s never the preparations or the information or even the speaking in front of people that rattles her about trials – it’s essentially giving a presentation under oath. But whenever she does them she’s reminded of her father’s murder trial, of feeling so angry and helpless that her fate and the fate of her mother was in the hands of people who didn’t understand. Being a superhero is one thing – she can save lives and put out fires and stop planes, but there’s something about deciding the direction of someone’s life that’s way more complicated than dressing up in leather and teleporting to places.

“Okay, so the eggs, the pastry, and the cheese are all here,” Barry declares once the delivery people have left. He opens his mouth to keep going but then the doorbell rings again. When Barry opens it, they see a completely different delivery man with a large white ice box. “Delivery for Barry Allen and Iris West?”

“We’re popular this week,” Iris mutters, putting her phone down. She walks up to the door. “What is that?”

“Eight pounds’ worth of lobster,” he says, handing them a card. “All declawed, washed and frozen.” Barry smiles when he reads the card, and then hands it to Iris:

_Thought you might want to jazz up your food a little. I expect to be invited to the next get-together. Happy housewarming!_

_Aria_

“Thanks,” he says, tipping the delivery guy and taking the ice box. Iris whistles.

“Wow, this whole Justice League thing keeps on giving, doesn’t it? Although how did she know we were having a housewarming party?”

“That would be,” Gideon says helpfully, popping out of Barry’s phone and making them both jump, “because I had to put the party on the universal calendar for League members.  Bree had wanted help in pursuing the Penguin that day, but I was forced to remind her that you were busy. To my knowledge, there is also a set of scented candles from Lois and Clark on the way.”

“Thank you, Gideon.”

“You are most welcome, Iris.”

“Gideon.”

“Yes?”

“Please stop doing that.” He pauses.

“Would you prefer if I were at least quieter?”

She smiles. “That would be great, Gideon.”

“Then I shall oblige. Did you receive DA Horton’ email?”

“I did,” she says. “Thanks.”

He disappears and Iris sighs through her nose. Barry links his fingers through hers. “Are you nervous?”

“A little,” she says quietly. Barry’s always known how she feels about trials – before they started dating he would always call her in the morning to make sure she was doing okay. She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. “I’m just…we have so much power. Me, the jury, the judge. _So much_. If we make one mistake, we could seriously screw with someone’s life – and this trial is _so_ complicated, the jury might not understand-”

“Iris,” he says, interrupting her. “Calm down. You’ve done dozens of these trials, and you’ve never messed up one. Besides, you’re the best CSI in Central City.” Iris gives him a small smile.

“You have to say that, you’re my boyfriend.”

“Actually, as you mentioned, I have a PhD. I am very smart,” he says matter-of-factly. He kisses her on the forehead. “Now, are you sure you don’t want me to come by the courthouse on the day of the trial?”

“No, I’ll be okay. Just have to stop worrying so much.”

“Are you sure? I could sit in the audience and hold up a sign that says “I Heart You, Iris”. In my capacity as a journalist, of course,” he adds seriously.

“Of course.” Iris looks around at all their food. “So, what do we use this lobster for?”

“Maybe I could put it in the quiche?” Barry suggests. “You can have lobster and spinach, right?”

“But we already have the honey-glazed chicken for the meat option, the quiche was going to be vegetarian.”

“Okay, well, we still have those tortillas that Chesca got from Costco, right?”

“A reminder to never let that woman shop when she’s hungry,” Iris mutters. “What are you thinking?”

“If we make vegetarian enchiladas and add sweet potato fries, we still have enough for everyone. And you’re doing mashed potatoes with the chicken, right?”

“Nice save. God, there is going to be so much food at this thing. Oh, don’t forget that we have to get cake on Sunday morning. And ice! We can’t forget ice.”

“We won’t forget the ice, Iris. Is your mom still bringing food?”

“Mm, gumbo,” she says, and Barry grins.

“Awesome!”

“Barry, there are three different peppers in it.”

“So?”

“I will never understand how you love spicy food so much even though it burns your tongue.” He looks at her like she’s grown three heads.

“Because it’s _good_.”

“Whatever,” Iris giggles. “Come on, let’s put this stuff away…” They work together to put all the food in the pantry, Iris methodically checking off all the meals they’re going to make. “Okay, so I’m going to marinate the chicken tomorrow, do you think we have enough drinks?”

“We have beer, wine, juice, and bottled water,” Barry says, checking their fridge. “I think we’re good. And I found these really cool placemats that we can use.”

“Great, we-”

A short, insisting beeping sounds from their apartment, and then Gideon shows up on the TV. “Gideon,” Barry says, “seriously-”

“I’m sorry, Barry, but it’s an emergency.” Iris’ hands immediately go to her necklace with the ring around it. “What kind of emergency?”

“I have a message from E52 Barry Allen and Iris West.”

“The Flash?” Barry says. He shares a look with Iris. “What’s the message?”

“They need your help,” he says gravely. “With Savitar.”

***

According to Gideon, E52 Barry and Iris only requested the two of them specifically to help them, which is why Iris doesn’t call the others. “It’s late, anyway,” Iris says, putting on all their security. “Plus it’s Friday.”

“Right,” Barry agrees. He grabs their jackets. “Are we going to STAR Labs?”

“There’s no need. I can get to Earth-52 by myself, and if we go there we have to activate the protocols that warn everyone that we’re using it in case we’re in danger. I’ve told my mom, Malina and Jesse that we’re going,” she says. “So if anything happens Chesca can come get us. Gideon?”

“I will alert you if anything happens.” Even the AI seems worried. “Hurry, Iris. Barry sounded quite distressed.”

Iris nods and takes Barry’s hands. She’s only done this once before, and only ever by herself, so she has to concentrate when she grabs Barry’s hands in her own and think of the _other_ Cortex, the one 51 earths away. There’s that strange sensation of being thrown, again, and Iris’ stomach flips into her throat. When she feels her feet are on solid ground again, she slowly opens her eyes, sighing in relief when she recognises E52 Barry’s Cortex. In front of her, Barry still has his eyes closed. “Bar? You okay?”

“Yeah, um, yeah,” he replies, opening his eyes. He looks around. “Are we…really…”

“I think so,” she says. They’ve landed in the centre of the Speed Cannon; Iris takes his hand and leads him down the steps. Then she pauses when they hear voices coming from around the corner. “…thought I heard – wait, Barry, I found them!”

It’s always weird seeing your doppelganger, even ones that aren’t happily married to the love of your life. E52 Iris looks a lot like she had when Iris saw them last, though Iris senses there’s something different. But she doesn’t have time to think about this as her doppelganger races to hug her, letting out a laugh that’s half joy and half relief. “It’s so good to see you. Both of you,” she adds as she hugs Barry.

 “Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, where’s Barry?” Iris says. “And what’s going on with Savitar?”

“That’s…a long story.”

Iris immediately knows something is very, very wrong with E52 Barry. Not only has she known her own Barry for her whole life, but she knows this one pretty well too. He looks happy to see her – they both do – but he also looks like something is eating away at him.

“We’re really glad you both came,” he says warmly. Then he looks at his Iris, and they both seem to be wearing a strange expression. Hesitant, and a little fearful. “We have a lot to talk about.”

Barry shares a look with Iris. “Well, we’re all ears. You can tell us anything.”

And they do.

The story of Savitar is only familiar to Iris because it is eerily similar to the one Dr. Wells told her about _their_ Savitar, the woman responsible for ripping open the fabric of reality until she was trapped. But this…coming out of the Speed Force specifically to kill Iris? With followers and a metal suit and the fact that only Barry, Wally and Jay can see him? No wonder E52 Barry and Iris look so terrified. He already looks like he’s refusing to let it happen, and even though E52 Iris seems just as determined, Iris thinks there’s more going on there than she’s letting on.

They’re in E52 Barry’s lab, surrounded by beakers and workbenches, with lots of glass boards with complicated equations all over them. Barry rubs his eyes.

“How…” he trails off, searching for his question. “How, exactly, did you see the future?”

“When I was putting the Philosopher’s Stone back into the Speed Force,” E52 Barry replies. He shakes his hand. “I don’t understand how it happened, exactly, but I was thrust into the future and saw it happen. I wasn’t sure if it was true, and Jay said that I should ignore it, but…”

“Plunder,” Iris finishes, looking at the board with the newsreel they’d shown them. “He attacked and you knew things were about to come true.”

They nod and Iris swallows. “Okay, well – look, the first thing we have to establish is where we are. What month is it?”

“It’s the end of January,” E52 Iris answers, and Barry stares at them.

“You guys are in 2017 already? We’re still in May – Gideon said at most you’d be in October.”

“Savitar running around must be screwing everything up more than usual,” Iris surmises.  “And you already had Wally catch Plunder instead of you?”

“Has the future changed?”

“Not yet,” E52 Iris answers quietly. “We checked with Cisco, everything’s still the same.”

Iris walks up to the board, studying the headlines. Something about a Star Labs museum, gorillas, the Music Meister (which they’ve already dealt with once), and lots of other things that will happen on the day of E52 Iris’ supposed death. “Is the date important? Does May 23rd mean anything?”

“I don’t think so, why?”

“Villains can be dramatic. But this… this is good. This could work.”

E52 Barry’s brow furrows. “Are you sure? H.R. kind of suggested, but-”

“Change these headlines, Barry. Change them _all._ Do whatever you have to do to make sure nothing is the same on that night on Infantino Street.”

“Iris is right,” Barry agrees. “You have no idea what could lead Savitar to get Iris in the future. Maybe the Music Meister helps him. Maybe you’re distracted by Killer Frost. But one of those things? That could change everything.”

“Guys, when Colin abused the Mindscape and killed my dad, he changed my whole life,” Iris tells them. She swallows. “Hell, he – he changed _me_. My life would have been completely different, and it’s exactly the same as what’s happening here.”

E52 Barry grabs that, that bit of hope, and his eyes light up. “Really?”

“Really,” his doppelgänger answers. “When Colin wanted to kill Iris, he showed me a newspaper that said she would sacrifice herself fighting Calamity. He also showed me probabilities proving that it had a good chance of happening, so any time I did something to try to prevent it, he’d know about it because the probabilities changed.”

Iris swallows and her doppelgänger blinks.

“You never told us that.”

“Not exactly a fun topic,” he laughs quietly.”, folding his arms. “But my point is, Iris still alive, and that’s because I did everything I could to change that future. I waited until the last possible moment, but I still did it. And that doesn’t even mention all the different things Colin couldn’t predict.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like Eddie trusting Chesca enough to let her take the mask off, which meant Iris knew Patty wasn’t who she said she was, so Iris got to me early. And he didn’t predict our connection, which meant Iris heard my thoughts from across town and she knew that Dr. Wells didn’t want to kill her.”

Iris nods. “If Barry hadn’t tried to change things, my future would be non-existent.”

He gives her a small smile as she says this and she smiles back, a reminder of how close they’d come to such a disaster. E52 Barry breathes out.

“What was that about Gideon? You said Colin used him to figure out the probabilities of you dying – could we do that now?” Iris blinks.

“I never even thought of – Gideon!”

He pops out of her watch, looking as amiable as ever. “You called?”

“Could you figure out how probable it is that Iris – the other Iris – is going to die in May?” His face falls, his expression uncharacteristically sad.

“I’ve already tried, Iris. I overheard you all talking and I tried to see what I could do, but it appears that he – this Savitar – is tampering with my ability to see probable futures on this earth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Barry – other Barry,” he amends. “If you would be so kind as to give me the wifi password?”

He does so, and then Gideon pops up on one of their computer screens. Then he disappears and the screen splits into a dozen little ones, showing images different videos. There’s E52 Barry and Iris on their first date, Wally using his powers, E52 Barry and Supergirl, and then…

“There’s nothing past Christmas,” E52 Iris says. She points. “Look, the most recent thing that’s on this screen happened a few days before we moved in together.”

“I fear,” Gideon says, “that because of Savitar’s prophecy, the fact that he is so very fast, and because you have already pledged to change the future, it’s in flux to the point where we can’t even predict it.”

Iris watches as both of their doppelgänger’s faces fall, but Gideon clears his throat. “If I may, Iris and Barry are correct. When Colin was using me to exact his plan, the probability of Iris’ death stood at 91 percent – which seem like impossible odds. But as you can see, Iris is still here. I would not give up just yet.”

E52 Barry looks at E52 Iris and holds his hand out. Wordlessly, she takes his hand and squeezes it, and both of them seem a little less defeated. Iris bites her lip. “Well, I mean…I kind of have another idea.”

“What is it?”

“You know exactly when it’s supposed to happen? The time and the place?”

“Midnight at Infantino Street,” her doppelgänger answers. Iris folds her arms.

“Okay. Well, um…”

“What is it, Iris?” Barry asks. She takes a deep breath.

“Just, Iris and I are the same height, we look the same – I could just take off my glasses-”

To their credit, both Barrys realise what she’s getting at almost straight away – and shut it down just as quickly. “No.”

“Savitar won’t even know the difference-”

“ _We’ll_ know the difference,” E52 Barry says firmly. Iris sighs.

“I have superpowers, I could run-”

“He is a Speed _God_ , Iris!” Barry practically explodes. “Even if you teleported, how do you know he won’t follow you and kill you both? And we’re not switching one Iris out for another – that’s just moving the problem around!”

“It’s not – Iris, I’d be safe-”

“The answer’s no,” her doppelgänger replies in a calm voice that leaves no room for argument. “I am not having anyone die for me. No,” she adds when Iris makes to argue. Maybe you won’t die. But you could. And then I have to live the rest of my life knowing that it was because of me, that I robbed a whole other world of their Iris. And that goes for all of you – nobody is dying for me, nobody is taking my place, and we are not letting anymore criminals go free because of me.” E52 Iris directs this last part to her boyfriend, who looks sufficiently guilty. “Are we clear?”

Everyone nods. “Good,” she says. She walks back to the board, studying the headlines. “I like this plan,” she admits. “It seems like it might actually work, and I work better with plans. Thanks for coming, guys.”

“Yeah, we really needed another set of ears,” E52 Barry smiles gratefully. “And it’s good to see you.”

“You too,” Iris smiles. “Was there anything else?”

Her doppelgänger starts to shake her head but E52 Barry rubs the back of his head. “There was, actually. I was thinking about it after we called. You two are…together, right?”

“Yeah, we just moved in together,” Barry smiles proudly, and Iris shakes her head at the fact that, even during this dire situation, he still finds a way to be pleased about that. His doppelgänger nods.

“Yeah, so did we. And you said you’ve already fought the Dominators with Supergirl?” Iris frowns.

“About a month ago.”

“What are you thinking, Barry?” E52 Iris asks. He rolls his shoulders.

“Look, maybe I’m just being over cautious, and it might not be happen, but it’s obvious that we’re still connected in some way. The same things keep happening to us. And if we’re connected…”

“Savitar might be a problem on our earth soon, too,” Barry realises quietly. Iris feels the world tip for just a moment and she imagines living in a present where the reality of losing Barry has been given a timer, hanging over her like an axe about to fall. She closes her eyes.

“That…makes sense.”

“Does it?” E52 Iris asks, and Iris opens her eyes. “You don’t have a Dr. Alchemy, you don’t have a Philosopher’s Stone – how do you know you have a Savitar? You can’t even created Flashpoint.”

“We have a Savitar,” Iris says quietly. “She’s in the Mindscape. But the way it was explained to me, she didn’t need to have all that to get out. She could just…leave. And I – I can create Flashpoint. It just works differently to Barry’s.”

“We can’t worry about a problem that doesn’t exist,” Barry says firmly. “Right now, I say the best thing to do is keep trying to change the future, but also get faster to defeat Savitar like Barry said. Or Wally.”

“Maybe we could get Julian to help,” E52 Iris adds. Iris wrinkles her nose.

“Draco Malfoy is on the team?”

“Who’s Draco Malfoy?”

“Dr. Alchemy,” E52 Barry says at the same time Iris says, “The asshole that works with Barry.” Barry blinks at them.

“Okay, so where’s Dumbledore?”

E52 Iris laughs. “Actually,” he says, “could I talk to you for a minute, Iris? Do you guys mind?”

Iris shrugs. “I need to talk to this one anyway.”

Barry and E52 Iris leave the others studying the board, and she leads Barry outside to the corridor. He studies her. E52 Iris is just different enough from his Iris that he notices – no glasses, a little less serious, doesn’t snort when she laughs – but there are still lots of similarities. Right now, for example, Barry can see that they both wear the same expression when they’re worried about something – like they’re holding it in and still deciding whether they’ll even say it at all.

“Heck of a time to come visit,” he tries, giving her a rueful smile. She folds her arms and leans back against the wall, smiling.

“Yeah, we hoped it would be something more fun. Like another alien invasion or something.”

“How are you doing?”

“Is that why you asked me out here? To ask me how I’m doing?”

“You’d be surprised at how long it takes people to answer that question.” But E52 Iris just shrugs.

“Well, I’m fine. Been better, but…”

Barry isn’t buying it, though. Mostly because his Iris is also brilliant at deflecting. “You can tell me, you know. The reason I invited you out here is because I know how hard it is not to break down in front of…of them.”

Her expression changes, just a little, and Barry knows he’s right – she doesn’t want to break down in front of her Barry. He waits patiently, like he does with his own Iris, and eventually she sighs.

“I just… I don’t even really think it’s hit me, you know? Or maybe sometimes it has and it’s all I can think about, or I don’t think about it at all, or I’ll be thinking about a movie I want to see and suddenly I remember I’m supposed to die in May.”

“And you haven’t told your dad?”

E52 Iris shakes her head, and she almost looks impatient. “No, I don’t want to do that yet.”

“Why not?”

“Barry, when Wally got trapped in that cocoon, he attacked it with a chainsaw even though it could have killed him. If he found out I could die, he’d find a way to get to Savitar himself.”

Barry thinks for a moment. “Alright.” She raises an eyebrow.

“You’re not going to tell me that this is a terrible idea and something you keep from your dad?”

“Iris, I’m not going to tell you how to handle this,” he replies. “It’s your…” he trails off, since “life” doesn’t seem quite right, and she notices. “It’s your situation,” he amends gently. “If there’s a right way to handle finding out that you might die in five months, I haven’t heard of it.” She looks away from him.

“You’re telling me. And it’s not just that – telling him, it…it makes it _real_ , you know? Because now it’s just the latest problem we have to deal with at Star Labs, and I can’t fight a Speed God, so I can just get on with my life. But if I tell him, it’s not going to be something I can ignore. It’ll be here, it’ll be at home…there’ll be nowhere safe from it.”

Barry nods and she regards him. “How did you handle it?”

“Handle what?”

“Knowing that Iris could die.”

Barry swallows. He remembers the day he found Colin in that vault and he told him that Iris would die for his plan. And when he decided to change it, Colin not only hurt his mother, he threaten to kill everyone in Barry’s life unless he complied. “Not well,” he admits. “I couldn’t sleep, I was always distracted, and I couldn’t tell anyone because I was afraid of what he would do. I still don’t even really know how I got through it. Why?”

E52 Iris looks back to the lab, where they can hear Iris and E52 talking. “Wondering how he’s taking it,” she says. “He keeps saying he’s fine, and that he’s just worried about me, but he already let a criminal go because he thought it could change the future.”

“Well, he’s facing the possibility of losing you. That would scare anyone into doing things they’ve never done before.” She smiles and shakes her head at him.

“God, the two of you really are connected. Corny even in a crisis. But he lost his mom and it took him years to get over it, and then he killed his dad and created Flashpoint. What is he going to do to stop this from happening?”

Her voice trembles and he steps forward, grasping her shoulders. “Iris, you guys are together now. So this thing is happening to both of you, because you’re both facing something impossible. Which means sometimes you’ll be the one helping him, and other times, he’ll be the one helping you. The important thing to remember is to never give up hope. Never stop thinking that there’s another way.”

E52 Iris takes a deep breath and closes her eyes briefly. When she opens them, they seem a little clearer. “Right. Thank you. Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“I’m fine.”

“Liar.”

E52 Iris gives him a rueful smile back and he sighs, folding his arms. “We’re happy. We work together, we live together, we started the Justice League together.”

“But?” she prompts gently.

“I’m worried about her. All this stuff that she’s been learning – Dr. Wells’ powers coming back, being able to create her own Flashpoint, there being a Savitar on our earth, knowing exactly what would have happened if her dad was still alive…It’s messing with her head. She worries about _everything_ – sometimes I catch her staring off into space but she won’t tell me what’s wrong. Sometimes I think after everything we’ve been through, and with Colin being locked up, she’d be okay. But she still has all this – this darkness in her, and I don’t know how to make it go away.”

He swallows and looks at the ground, because he’s never admitted that before, not even to himself. Iris always says she’s fine, but he knows her well enough, especially since he realised which times she was keeping things from him while being Miss Miracle, that something is bothering her. “She told me that she sees him die,” he continues. “Your Barry and my Iris – they see their parents die, every day, and it does something to them. It makes them go to places that…maybe we can’t follow them.”

E52 Iris comes to stand next to him. “I get that. Believe me, I do. It’s why I’m so worried about him. When Zoom killed his dad, it was the first time I ever saw him really, _really_ mad. Like he would have hurt someone and not cared about it. And sometimes I tell myself that I should get to be selfish and worry about myself, but I can’t help it – I’ve worried about him my whole life. I can’t stop now.”

They don’t say anything for a moment, both pondering their weird and wonderful lives. Then Barry takes her hand and squeezes. “I think,” he says quietly, “that when you live lives like ours, we have to take things one day at a time. Maybe thinking too much is what makes everything worse. So I want to tell you that if you feel like on one day you want to be reckless, then do that. If you want to be safe the next day, do that too. And if you decide that you want to be strong, you should do that as well. If doing that or feeling that gets you through the day, then you should do it. Get through each day until you get through this.”

She tips her head. “I think that’s a pretty good way of getting through it. And I think that you just have to be there for her, Barry. I have heard her talk about you, and believe me, if there’s anything that can keep darkness away from her, it’s you.”

Barry holds up his pinky finger. “Promise?”

“Seriously?”

“It worked the last time,” Barry grins. “It worked before; I have a cery cute girlfriend now. Have you met her?”

“ _Dork_.”

***

It’s bizarre, after everything they’ve heard about, to come back to unpacking boxes and putting CDs on shelves. Barry and Iris blink back into their apartment to see that even though they were on Earth-52 for at least three hours, on their earth it’s only been about twenty minutes. Iris looks up at Barry. “You good.”

“Yeah,” he replies. She lets go of his hands and rubs her eyes. “You?”

“I mean, _I’m_ okay, but those guys…”

“I know. It’s a lot. What did you talk to Barry about?”

“I was mostly trying to reassure him that the plan would work,” she admits. “And seeing whether there’s anything that Cisco learned that Chesca might want to try.”

Barry nods as Iris starts making them tea and grilled cheeses. “How was he doing?”

“As well as to be expected,” she shrugs. “It can’t be easy knowing that something you can’t track, can’t defeat and can rarely even see is going to kill the person you love most in the world in five months and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.” She pauses and removes her glasses, and Barry moves closer to her.

“Do you think they’ll be ok?”

“Do I think they’ll get through this? Yes. Do I think they’ll defeat Savitar? They’ve definitely got a fighting chance. I just hope that…”

“Iris?”

“Barry, I’ve seen what that kind of loss does to people,” she says, shaking her head. “I’ve lived it. And when Colin killed Terrence, Dr. Wells was so lost without him that she was manipulated into becoming Calamity. I’m worried, not just because of what he could do to keep her alive, but what could happen to him if she doesn’t make it.”

Iris thinks back her conversation with E52 Barry while the others had gone outside. She’d been trying to convince him that he should keep going with his plan, and that he should be encouraged by the fact that they’d already changed it. “And how do you know that you haven’t saved her already?” she’d asked. He’d frowned at her.

“What do you mean?”

“Barry, Jay said that you had to go ahead and live your life, and ignore the future. How do you know that’s not what Savitar wanted? If you ignore it, you won’t be expecting him.”

“I guess…”

“You know I’m right.” She’d grabbed his face and made him face her. “Deciding to fight at all is the thing that’s going to save Iris. Telling HR already changed the future one way.”

E52 Barry had looked at her for a moment and then nods. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. It’s just…”

“A lot. I know.” She pauses. “Are you sure you don’t want me to-”

“I’m not risking one Iris to save mine,” he says firmly. “We’ll find another way.”

And it is. If someone told her that Barry would die in five months, Iris doesn’t know how she would keep herself from losing her mind. And it doesn’t help that Savitar is a very real threat, one that she’s been thinking about more and more lately. Back in the present, Barry studies her. She knows she’s been more serious than usual with all these thoughts swirling around her head all the time. “She’ll make it, Iris,” he promises softly. “They’ll be okay?”

“I know they will.” She tries to smile but knows it doesn’t reach her eyes, so to cover it up she turns back to their dinner. “So I don’t really feel like unpacking anymore right now, so do you wanna just eat these and then go to bed?”

“Yeah,” he nods, “yeah, sure, that sounds great, but are you sure you’re okay, Iris? That’s a lot to deal with.”

“’Course I’m okay,” she says easily. She turns back to the food, shrugging. “I’m not the one who might die. Is it okay if I go see Jay tomorrow?”

“You want to ask her about Dr. Wells’ powers?”

Barry makes one cup of tea and hands it to her. “I have no idea why they’re coming back,” she points out. “Wally and Jesse ran tests, we called Dr. Stein, and there was nothing in Colin’s notes to indicate why it’s happening.”

“Well, I think it’s a good idea,” he says. “Malina’s on duty tomorrow and I’m here. Jay’s been around for a while, hopefully she’ll know how to deal with it.” She pauses. “And I wanted to ask her about…Savitar.”

“Iris, she disappeared years ago-”

“I know,” she says quietly. “But she might be out there. I can’t be unprepared again. The last time, you – I can’t be unprepared again,” she repeats firmly. “If and when Savitar shows up, I’ll be ready for her.”

***

The next day, after she’s marinated the chicken and promised Barry she’s going to say hello to their doppelgängers, Iris teleports to Earth-2 and finds herself in Jay’s office. She phoned to let the older woman know she was coming, and now she’s waiting amongst her lab equipment for her to finish her meeting. Jay is a professor on her earth, retired from working with this Earth’s Dawnette Allen, giving occasional lectures at Central City University. Iris is grateful for their contact, since the Jay Garrick on her earth died years ago. She’s also grateful that the door is locked, since it would look incredibly weird that Dr. Iris West-Allen’s doppelgänger is sitting in Jay’s office.

Almost as of she summons her, Jay herself walks in carrying a stack of papers. “Iris,” she greets her warmly, giving her a hug, “its good to see you.”

“You too. How was class?”

“The minds of tomorrow are one step closer to total enlightenment,” she smiles. Then she shrugs and sits down at the desk, gesturing for her to do the same. “Or a B in theoretical physics. But please sit, Iris. How’s Barry?”

Iris smiles. “He’s fine. We’re dating now, actually. We just moved in together.” She grins.

“I know, the two of you paid for the repairs on my motorcycle. Anyway, you sounded worried on the phone. I have to say, I’m as confused as you about Dr. Wells’ powers coming back. Terrence is dead, which I think is the only thing that would have triggered them manifesting again. But I will look into it; now we should concentrate on your more pressing matter. Savitar?”

“Yes,” Iris responds quietly. “The Flash is dealing with his version, and I thought it would be a good idea to get some info on ours.”

“Right.” She takes off her reading glasses. “Well, Iris, I only know a little more than you. I know that there’s only _one_ Savitar – unlike you or me or all of our friends, she does not have a doppelganger. The only problem is that I don’t _truly_ know when she was born.”

“What? But Dr. Wells told me that she was a pilot during World War II.”

“That’s true, she was,” Jay admits. “But don’t forget that she had the power to create alternate realities, as well as weave herself into them. She was at the beginning of the Roman times, there are records of her during the Victorian period in England, the Mongol invasion of China…Savitar is nowhere and everywhere, all at once.”

“And you don’t know how she was defeated?”

“Someone – or something – trapped her in the Mindscape. I don’t know when or how, or even have an idea of who did it, but she’s a legend and people only whisper about her now.”

It’s the way she says it. On paper, Jay’s response would reassure Iris and tell her to go back home to Barry so they could keep planning their party. But there’s something in her eyes, and her voice is too heavy. “You think she might come back.” It’s not a question.

Jay’s eyes convey the truth. “I do. She was powerful and terrifying, and even the Mindscape isn’t perfect.”

Iris swallows and Jay leans forward. “Iris, you shouldn’t worry about this. It isn’t a problem yet, and other than Earth-52’s Barry, you have no reason to believe it could be in the near future. Didn’t you say they think the time-travelling is what caused all this?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe that accelerated it. In any case, if she comes back, you won’t have to worry.”

“Why not?”

“For the same reason that The Flash is not worried,” she says simply. “You will not be alone.”

***

Some days when Barry’s on duty crime never seems to stop, and Iris or Malina or both are in the Cortex only briefly before they have to speed off again. But other days are more like today, when he’s there with Jesse, Malina and Eddie playing cards, while Chesca and Linda work on something in the corner. Barry’s taking the opportunity to figure out how the hell he’s going to use up eight pounds of lobster for his quiche recipe, writing ideas down on his laptop. He eyes the card game.

“You’re cheating,” he comments dryly, and Eddie glares at him.

“How do you know?”

“Because you always cheat.”

“There’s a mind-reader in this game, how am I the cheater?”

“I resent that, you know,” Malina adds. “I don’t do that anymore, ask Jesse.”

“Erm…”

“Dude, you’re supposed to be on my side!”

“He has a _gun_ , Malina.”

“That’s true,” Linda points out, not looking up from her soldering. “And Jesse’s kind of a wimp.”

“Thank you, Linda, I – hey!”

“Okay, let’s prove it,” Barry says. “Everyone, lay them out.”

It takes less than a second for everyone to look at Eddie’s cards and turn on him. “Edward Thaddeus Thawne, you are a _cheater_!” Malina snaps, and Jesse chokes on his juice.

“Wait,” he splutters. “Wait. _Thaddeus_?”

“Are you for real?” Linda laughs, taking off her mask. “Dude. You sound like you should have a monocle. And smoke tobacco in a pipe.”

“You sound like a supervillain,” Jesse says, and then shrugs at everyone glaring at him. “What? He does.”

“I don’t know what you’re laughing at, your middle name is Liberty,” Chesca says matter-of-factly, and Eddie whoops.

“ _Liberty_?”

“It’s a family name,” he grinds out. Barry shrugs.

“I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.”

“That’s easy for you to say, your middle name is Henry.”

“And my first name is _Bartholomew_ ,” he points out. “Do you know how long it took me to be able to spell my own name?”

“I agree with Barry, Liberty’s okay,” Malina says. “At least it sounds like it means something; my middle name is Belle.”

“Not like the Disney princess?” Chesca asks. Malina sighs.

“Yeah, her. I mean, mom really liked the book apparently, so that’s how I got my name. ‘Belle’ is so corny.”

“I was named after the flower,” Linda puts in. “Jasmine. Yeesh, I guess I was the lucky one.”

“My middle name’s Patricia,” Chesca adds. She thinks for a moment. “Yeah, maybe Liberty and Belle got the short end of the stick here.”

“I think Belle is nice,” Jesse says firmly, and Malina gives him a small smile.

“Whatever,” Barry says. “Eddie’s still a cheater. What are you guys up to?”

“We’re trying to put these power-dampeners on Chesca’s gloves,” Linda explained. “She designed them to stop people’s powers, but it’s just in case she’s out and needs to help Iris or Mal. When she doesn’t need them, she can turn them off.”

“That sounds great, just please don’t bring them to the party,” Barry says. “Iris will kill you.”

“I still haven’t forgotten you breaking my tumblers when we watched Game of Thrones last week,” Jesse reminds her.

“I got you new ones!” He stares at her.

“ _No, you didn’t_.”

“So it’s seven-thirty for dinner?” Linda asks quickly, and Barry nods.

“When Iris says she doesn’t want gifts,” Eddie asks, “that’s a lie, right? She totally wants gifts?”

“The speed with which you are re-invited to our home will depend almost exclusively on whether you bring gifts, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

Iris seemed a lot less worried than before when she left earlier in the afternoon, giving him a list of things to do and promising to help when she got back. He called the bakery to make sure the cake was done and, as far as he knows, Henry will be back from whatever mysterious thing he’s doing so he can come as well.

“Aw,” Malina grins. “Look at you, all stupid happy. _Our home_. I can’t wait until you see the gift I got – it finally got here from Beijing yesterday.”

“You ordered our gift from Beijing? How did it get here so quickly?”

“I know a guy.” Eddie frowns.

“Wait, Mal, I signed for that delivery – you got them a-”

“Shh!” she exclaims. “You’ll ruin it!”

“But-”

“Shut _up_ , Thaddeus!” she snaps, and everyone laughs.

***

Barry has lived with Iris before, and he does know her very well. She’s always been known for her bad memory, especially since she tended to remember things right in the middle of doing something else. So it doesn’t surprise him when Iris, right in the middle of putting on her dress for the party and asking him to zip her up, looks at her watch and realises their guests will get here soon and then zooms out of the room counting things on her fingers. “Iris,” he calls, buttoning up his shirt. “Wait, Iris!”

“Okay,” she says quickly, walking towards the kitchen and flicking a finger so Barry’s iPod starts playing the playlist they picked out. Barry lopes after her and manages to catch her zipper; owing to her metahuman strength, she doesn’t slow down despite the six foot two-inch-tall man attached to her dress. “So the quiche is in the oven…”

“Yes,” he nods, trying to get the zipper up.

“The beer and the wine _and_ the juice are in the fridge – is the cake-”

“Cake’s on the counter,” he nods, finally pulling the zipper up. “And Lois and Clark’s candles are on the table.”

“Great – wait!”

“What?”

“We forgot the ice!”

Barry smiles. “ _You_ forgot the ice. I put five bags in the freezer while you were on Earth-2.”

Iris sighs in relief as she goes to get the first bag out to put in the sink. “Babe, you have _never_ been sexier.” He grins.

“I know.” He watches her carefully as she wipes her hands. She got back from Earth-2 and then Hal immediately called her to help with something in Coast City – and Iris narrowly avoided having her come to apartment to eat all the food (“By the way,” she’d said to him right before they went to bed last night, “I mentioned your quiche to Hal and now she wants some, so we have to make sure we eat it all or she’ll be here all the time.”), so they hadn’t really gotten a chance to talk. He knows that Jay also said not to be worried about Savitar, and E52 Iris told him that she’s doing a lot better taking things one day at a time. “Hey, Iris?”

“Mm?”

“How are you doing, really? Are you okay?” He tips his head. “I mean, I know you said you’re not the one who’s dying, but it’s still a lot to handle, especially because they’re our friends.”

Iris hesitates for just a moment. “I’m fine,” she smiles easily. “Just being overcautious.”

“Because you know you can talk to me, right?”

“I know, Barry,” she promises. “Talking to Jay really helped with everything. I can’t deal with something that’s not here yet.”

“Right.” Iris goes back to checking the temperature on the oven and he takes a deep breath. “So, I wanted to ask you something. About us.”

She looks up at him as he comes to stand in front of her. “Yeah?”

“I didn’t…rush you into anything, did I?” At her curious look, he pulls her closer to him, lifting her hands and putting them on his shoulders while his hands settle on her waist. “I just mean that I…know I kind of brought up living together really soon, and you had nowhere else to live, so it kind of wasn’t fair. I just – I really wanted you here with me. But if it’s too soon and you maybe want to live with your mom while we take things slower-”

“Barry,” she says, putting a finger to his lips, “stop. It wasn’t soon – it felt natural. Why on earth do you think I’m about to run away from this when you’re giving me what I’ve always wanted?”

“What’s that?”

“Duh, Barry, skylights,” she answers, and they both laugh. “I love you,” she says simply. “I’ve always wanted this with you. And let’s be honest, we’ve kind of been dating our whole lives, and I did basically live here anyway.”

Barry bends down to kiss her, cupping her cheek. “Bar – Barry,” she says firmly when he pulls her against him. “We have guests!”

“They’re not here yet,” he murmurs against her mouth. Iris grins and kisses him again, and then laughs when the doorbell rings. She straightens her hair and stops Barry right before he goes for the door. “I know red is supposed to be your colour,” she says, wiping her lipstick off his face, “but maybe stick to clothes?”

“Sure, sunshine. You ready?”

“Ready,” she grins, and Barry opens the door to see everyone gathered at the door. They all file into the house, noting how nice the apartment looks, that the food smells really good, and asking where they can put the gifts. “Wow, it looks even nicer since Iris redecorated three dozen times,” Linda says wryly, making her mother laugh, and Iris shoves her.

“Keep talking like that and you won’t get any cake.”

Meanwhile, Nora is giving Barry a picture of him and Iris at one of their science trips as a gift. “Took me a while to pick,” she admits, “but I wanted you two to have something like this.”

“Mom, this is perfect,” he says, hugging her, “thank you. Where’s Henry? And – wait, where’s Mal?”

“Dad’s late,” Eddie calls, putting his and Chesca’s jackets on hooks. Everyone else is looking around. “Mal is…getting your gift.”

Barry and Iris share a look. “Why does Eddie look like Malina got us a bomb?” Iris asks quietly. Then they hear her voice from outside.

“I did not,” she says, “get you a bomb. Seriously, Eddie, they’ll like it.”

“You have to admit it’s an unusual gift.”

“It’s a cool gift,” she corrects, coming around the corner holding a large portable enclosure. She walks in and puts it on the bar. “I present to you…McSnurtle the Turtle.”

Iris puts a hand over her mouth. “You got us a _turtle_?”

“Well, a tortoise; turtles are aquatic and that seems like a lot of work. But yes, I got you a turtle.”

“Wait, we can keep him?” Barry asks, staring at it. “We get a pet?”

“ _Her_ , Barry,” Iris corrects, going to stand next to him. “McSnurtle’s a girl. Aw, look at her, she’s waking up! She’s so cute!” Eddie looks between the two of them.

“You two are so _weird_.”

“You’re just jealous because you don’t get one,” Barry says. He takes McSnurtle out of her enclosure and holds her up so Iris can coo at her. Malina folds her arms, satisfied.

“If you were listening, choirboy, you would know that Iris used to have a stuffed McSnurtle that Barry ruined by dumping chocolate ice-cream all over it. Hence, McSnurtle 2.0.”

“Oh, I know all that,” he mutters, still watching Barry and Iris talk to their new turtle as if it can talk back. “I’m just saying, you don’t think they’re weird?”

“Oh, total weirdos. Cute, though.”

“Malina, this is a great gift,” Iris says, hugging her. “Thank you!” Malina blushes a little.

“Well, turtles and tortoises are sacred in a lot of cultures, and in _feng shui_ you put it in the North of your house to promote good luck. And they represent long life and prosperity, and what better way to symbolise the start of you two living together? Not that the two of you need it, since you’re the definition of meant to be, but still.”

“Iris!” Chesca calls. “Your mom’s here!”

“Mommy!”

Francine laughs and puts her dish of food on the side, accepting the hug Iris gives her. “Everything looks great, baby.”

“Thanks, mom.” Iris takes her mother’s coat just as Nora comes to say hello to her.

“Great, you brought gumbo,” Iris says. “Maybe it was organising everything but I feel ten times hungrier than usual today.”

“Barry will be so glad you brought that,” Nora adds. “He’s been talking about it all week.”

“I have no idea why, he’s always burning his mouth on spicy food.”

Nora and her mother look at each other, smiling proudly, and Iris looks at them. “What?”

“Look at them both, Nora,” her mother sighs. “All grown up and living together.”

“Aren’t you glad she’s out of the house?”

“Oh, definitely,” her mother says, and Iris looks offended.

“Hey!”

“Oh, honey, you know I love you, but feeding you practically requires a second job.”

“Told you,” Nora says. “You should have seen the kitchen after she got out of the coma.”

“And at least this is one step closer to them getting married.”

“Mom!” Iris splutters. She glances at Barry, who’s talking to Eddie and Linda about something. “Stop it!”

“What?” she asks. “I want grandbabies.”

“ _Mom_!” she whispers furiously, looking at Nora, who shrugs.

“I don’t know why you’re looking at me, I’m with her.” Iris scowls.

“Hey, Nora, how’s Henry?”

Francine bursts out laughing. Meanwhile, Barry is going around making sure everyone has drinks. Wally, accepting a glass of wine from him, looks around. “Wow, you guys did well with this place, it’s amazing. Is that Uncle Joe’s vinyl player?”

“Yeah, and some of his old records. We’re still unpacking the rest of them.”

“Haven’t you guys been unpacking for a week?” Linda asks. “What’s taking you guys so long?” Barry blushes, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah, well, Iris has a lot of – stuff, you know, and she’s always changing her mind about where to put things… Look, Henry’s here,” he says quickly, before he gives himself away. “Excuse me. Hey, dad! You came! How was Peru?”

Henry laughs and hugs him, before handing him a gift. “It was…interesting. We got what we needed done, and I got you a gift.”

“Cool, what is it?” Henry takes an ornament out of a black felt pouch.

“It’s a Pucara bull,” he says. It’s small and black, painted in whites, reds, blues and yellows. “Or, as they call it, _Torito de Pucará_. They’re a very important part of Peruvian tradition, and they’re supposed to bring protection to homes.”

“Great, I’ll put it next to the turtle.” Henry frowns.

“The what?”

“It’s a long story,” he laughs. “Hey, why don’t you go say hi to mom?” As he suspected, Henry looks stricken at the idea.

“No, that’s fine, I’ll talk to her later-”

But Barry pretends that he doesn’t hear him. “Mom, Dad’s here!”

Iris, watching all of this from across the room, hopes that soon Nora and Henry are brave enough to tell their kids when they’re dating, because otherwise Barry is just going to keep shoving them into situations like this one without knowing what’s going on. The doorbell rings again, and this time it’s Dr. Wells and Jesse, the former wearing a simple dark blue dress and the former in a dress shirt. “I got two gifts,” Jesse says immediately. “Chesca was no help whatsoever, so I hope you like wine glasses. And this picture of Central City,” he says quickly. Iris smiles.

“They’re all great,” she replies, hugging them both. “I’m sure Barry will love them, too.”

“I was rather traditional and stuck to one gift,” Dr. Wells says. “I know how much you and Barry like to watch movies, so I thought you would benefit from a retro popcorn machine.”

“Dr. Wells, this is perfect, thank you!” Iris hugs her and, as Jesse hangs up his coat, pulls her a little to the side. “I talked to Jay; she’s looking into it.” She smiles gratefully.

“Thank you, Iris.”

“Of course. You guys want something to drink?”

Dr. Wells declines, but Jesse follows her to the fridge. “Thank you for inviting me,” he says, and Iris holds out her hand for the bottle opener, which flies into her hand.

“Why do you always sound so surprised? Like we’d have a party without you.”

“Still. The apartment looks nice. How many times did you make Barry move the furniture?”

“I didn’t make – I have superpowers, you know.” He raises an eyebrow.

“That many times?”

“Whatever,” she says, waving a hand. “I’m just glad everyone could come, and it’s great to see everyone so dressed up. I need to ask Malina where she got her dress; she looks great.”

“She always looks great,” he says absently. Iris sips her wine.

“You’re right, she does.”

Jesse seems to realise what he’s said and blushes. “I mean, I never said – she always looks great, everyone looks great. She’s great. Stop looking at me like that. Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You said it with your face.”

“Oh, real mature,” Iris mutters. She looks abseiled Jesse is looking, at Malina telling Linda, Chesca and Eddie about the time she rappelled off a cliff in Maui. “You can just tell her you like her, you know. It’s not like the world will end.”

He rubs his nose. “She probably thinks I’m an uptight ass.”

“You _are_ an uptight ass,” Iris says absently. At her look, she shrugs. “But if you’ve noticed, she’s the only one who doesn’t think so. She doesn’t make fun of you for it, or call you names, or hide whoopee cushions in your office-”

“You hide whoopee cushions in my office?”

“If I hid whoopee cushions in your office, would I tell you I hide whoopee cushions in your office?” Iris wants to know. “Jesse, I waited twenty years to tell the guy that I liked that I liked him. Don’t be like me. Don’t wait.”

“You guys are moving in together.”

“And If I’d told him sooner, maybe we’d have been together earlier,” she points out. Across the room, Barry calls to her. “Iris, the food is ready!”

Barry and Iris both stop themselves from letting slip the name of the woman who sent them all the lobster to put in the quiche, managing to simply say it was Aqualady. Despite all of Iris’ worrying the party goes well, and both of them are grateful that they get to do something with their friends and family that doesn’t involve a metahuman trying to kill them, giant sharks or jellyfish, or the literal world collapsing. Near the end of dessert, Iris’ mother stands up.

“I just wanted to say a few words, while we’re all together,” she begins. She smiles around at everyone – Linda, Wally and Eddie, who’ve been arguing about _Criminal Minds_ for most of the dinner, Nora and Henry next to them, trying to pretend like everything is normal between them, Jesse, Malina and Dr. Wells, who always finds excuses to leave them to their own conversation, and Barry and Iris, sat next to each other at the head of the table. “I think that we can all safely say we’ve been through a lot in the past couple of years, since several people went to different worlds, a couple of us became supervillains, and a certain someone has a penchant for getting herself struck by lightning,” she adds meaningfully, smiling at her daughter, and everyone laughs. Barry nudges her playfully.

“But we made it,” Francine continues. “And now we stand in the most important place that anyone will ever have in our lives. Home is more than just the place we rent or the bed we lay our heads in – it’s the people that make it for us. We can spend our entire lives searching for the person that makes home for us, and only the really lucky ones found it. I found it. I hope you all get to find it. And I am beyond happy that the two of you have found it in each other.” She raises her glass, happy tears in her eyes. “To Barry and Iris.”

Everyone else echoes the sentiment, and Barry and Iris smile and clink their own glasses together. “To us,” they say together. Right before they’re about to kiss each other, about five different alarms start blaring, including the one in their apartment. “What the – Gideon!” Iris exclaims. He jumps out of everyone’s phones and appears on their TV, all the heads moving in unison.

“Iris, I am very sorry to interrupt your dinner, I know how much-”

“Gideon! The problem?”

“Oh! Oh, yes, the problem. It’s Plunder.”

The image on the screen switches to surveillance footage of Plunder stealing from what appears to be the Central City Gold Reserve, shooting out people with both abandon and precision. Iris curses under her breath, already reaching for the ring on her necklace. “Mal, you do-”

“Got it,” she answers immediately, slipping off her ring. Iris stands and turns to Barry. “Babe, I’m sorry-” But he just waves her off.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Tell everyone in the surrounding area to get clear, and then call emergency services for all the injured people.” Iris holds out her ring and is in her suit in the next second. “That’s the Gold Reserve, right Gideon?”

“That’s right.”

Iris kisses Barry goodbye, and then nods at Malina before they blink out of the room.

***

“I really hate this chick,” Malina mutters once they’re outside the Reserve. They can see that the building is on fire in some places, and people running out of the building. “I was having a really nice night.”

“I bet you were,” Iris smiles. “Okay, you put out these fires and get the rest of the people out. I’ll go after Miss Murillo.”

Malina nods and blinks away, and Iris flies up to the top of the building. Central City Gold Reserve is a place she knows well, thanks to Captain Cold, the Royal Flush gang, and all the other people that like to make her life hell. The last time, Plunder managed to get up to the top of the roof and make her escape, but apparently she’s learned, since Iris can’t find her. Iris reaches out with her mind, but she can’t hear past all the alarms and people screaming. Just as she’s about to call the others, she hears a large crash and then sees a motorcycle burst out of one of the lower buildings, roar past the cars, and take off down the street. Iris grits her teeth and follows, careful to keep her distance – it’s best to catch her away from civilians.

Iris waits until they’re in the business district, an upper section of the city that’s quiet for the night. When she’s certain she can stop the bike, Iris flips her wrist, and then smiles in satisfaction when Murillo flies off the bike and lands on the floor. “You know,” Iris says, landing on the floor next to her, “I’m living with someone now. And we were in the middle of something, so I’m not too jazzed about you and your klepto tendencies interrupting our night.”

“Are you always…” she coughs, standing up, “this damn annoying?”

“Yes, but you gotta admit I’m _really_ cute, right?” Iris holds out her hand and the bag of gold flies into her hand. “Come on. Come quietly and I’ll get you a _really_ nice prison officer.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re right. I’m good, but not that good.”

Iris doesn’t budge when Plunder brings the gun up to her shoulder; she’s stopped bullets before, heat-seeking or not. So when the three bullets come flying out of the gun in quick succession, all she does it hold up her hand. However, instead of stopping a few inches in front of her face, like she expected, the bullets explode in a flash of light, knocking Iris into a nearby wall. Her arm lands awkwardly underneath her body and she feels bones in it snap, and her head smacks into the wall.

“You know, you’re right,” Murillo laughs, hoisting her bike up to a sitting position as Iris tries to sit up. “You’re not that good.”

***

“How is it,” Wally mutters, putting the finishing touches on her cast, “that you can’t even have a housewarming party without getting into trouble?”

Iris grimaces. “Call me special. Did everyone get out okay?”

“Yeah, Mal’s here with the others. You want to talk to them?”

“I need Linda,” she says, pulling on a STAR Labs sweatshirt. Right then Barry walks into the room and spots her. “I’m fine, Barry. It’s just my wrist; it’ll heal in a few hours.”

Iris actually sees the worry drain from his face, replaced by relief, and he comes to sit next to her. She supposes that just like she’ll never stop worrying about what could happen to him, he won’t ever stop worrying about her. She gingerly pulls her sleeve over her newly-casted arm. “Nobody died?”

“Nobody died,” he says. “A couple of people had concussions, but they’re all safe now.”

“She got away,” Iris mutters, frustrated. Barry squeezes her hand.

“You’ll get her next time.”

“Yeah, but…” she shakes her head. “Is everyone here? I need to talk to them.”

After they’ve called her mom to let her know she’s alright, Iris gathers with the others to talk. “Her gun is way more advanced than I thought,” she says. “Our powers won’t work on them.”

“Why not?” Chesca asks.

“When we use our powers to stop something, it’s the equivalent of physically stopping it. Since they explode on impact, even if we used them, we’d still be hurting ourselves. Like I did,” she adds, gesturing to the bandage on her head. “I’m starting to think we can’t go after her like we usually do.”

“I was thinking about that, actually,” Malina admits. Everyone looks at her. “Well, maybe Miss Miracle and Little Miss Miracle can’t defeat her, especially since she’s a weapons genius, right? She’s seen how we fight, so if she’s smart she’ll be figuring out how to design stuff to combat us.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I think that I should go after her. As an agent.” Iris raises her eyebrows.

“I’m listening.”

“Think about it – she’s basically a gun smuggler. Eddie and I – we know how those people think, and we know how to go after them. Linda, did you guys find out any place she could be headed to?”

She nods. “Yeah, she has some connections in Coast City, but also Midway and Star. You guys think you could track her there?”

They share a look. “We’ve done it before,” Eddie says.

“I want to hear _that_ story,” Chesca says. “But it’s up to you, Iris. You’re the boss.”

She thinks for a moment. It’s certainly a better idea than anything she could come up with, especially since she can’t fight her. “Come up with a plan and get Eddie to approve it,” she says slowly, “and if everyone’s cool with it – _including your parents_ , I don’t need that on my back – then go ahead.”

“I’m good,” Barry says.

“Me too,” Linda and Wally say together.

“Sounds good,” Chesca adds. Jesse looks even more stern than usual.

“Are you sure? Iris is good and even _she_ got defeated by her.” But Malina just gives him a playful wink.

“Not my first rodeo, cowboy,” she grins. “I’ll be fine, Jesse.”

“Fine,” he sighs. “But we’re doing a physical. And I’m giving you a meal plan. And I’m calling you both everyday.”

“You can’t call people on a secret mission,” Chesca points out. “Shoot me a list of what comms you guys need before you go.”

“And let me know if you need anything,” Iris adds. Then she gets up and stretches. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I never got to finish my cake.”

Which is how Iris finds herself curled up on the couch in front of their TV, a plate of cake in her hands and watching McSnurtle chew through some lettuce. Barry grabs their cocoa and comes to sit next to her. “So it looks like you’re two for two on broken wrists.”

“Least I didn’t break my thumb,” she shoots back.

“Ouch,” he laughs. “Below the belt, much?” Iris makes a face.

“Sorry. God, now I have to go back to STAR Labs to get this thing removed tomorrow morning. I can’t take anymore injuries to work – they’ll think I have brittle bones.” She pauses. “Sorry about the party.”

“What are you sorry about? Everything was going great right until Plunder ruined it. Everyone loved the chicken and the quiche.”

“I guess.”

“You looked nice in your dress,” he says softly. Iris smiles.

“Thanks. Oh, before I forget,” she says. She feeds him a piece of cake. “Your dad wants to meet Aqualady.” He frowns and speaks around a mouthful of chocolate fudge.

“Did you tell him she’d kill us?”

“Nothing dangerous. He wants to talk about fish.”

“Of course he does,” he mutters, swallowing. He puts an arm around her. “He’s getting along with mom, which is nice.”

“Is he?” she asks, her voice high. “Um. That’s nice. Wow, look at McSnurtle go, she’s really loving that lettuce.”

“Yeah, she’s adorable. Did you see the Pucara bull dad got for us?” He points at the mantelpiece and Iris holds her hand out for it. “They’re supposed to be good luck.”

“Aw,” Iris smiles. “ _Ooh_! Let’s call him Plunder.”

“What?” he laughs.

“Yeah, Plunder the Pucara Bull. And we can put him in here with McSnurtle next to the little treasure chest thingy and he can _plunder_ all her stuff. She deserves a friend.”

“Iris,” he chuckles. “Seriously?”

“What? It’s cute! You don’t think they’re cute?”

“I think they’re very cute,” he says. “But not as cute as you.” He kisses her and turns back to the TV. “Iris, what is your turtle doing with that lettuce on my laptop?”

“Oh, sure, she’s _my_ turtle when she does something bad.”

***

The next few days pass in a flurry of work, unpacking (still) and Team Miracle things. Malina and Eddie leave during the week, after a lot of fussing from Nora and Jesse of all people, who both insist on packing Malina’s lunch. Iris waits on any news from Jay about Dr. Wells’ powers, and tries to push Savitar out of her mind. Mostly because she has enough to worry about. The day of the trial comes and it sees Iris running around the apartment trying to get ready.

“Of course,” she mutters, pulling on her Converse. “Of _course,_ the day Judge Keller’s docket is free is the only day everyone can meet to talk about the project.”

“You sure you don’t want to cancel?” Barry asks, sipping his coffee.

“No,” she replies determinedly. “No, I am an adult. We’re just making some preliminary changes to Gideon, that’s all. Jesse’s got conferences all weekend. I can do this, then head to the trial in the afternoon. Where’s my-”

Barry points to the banister, where Iris’ outfit for the trial is hanging in a garment bag. “Thanks. What are you up to today?”

“Day off,” he shrugs, “so not much. I think Clark wanted to go over some of the reports we have on metas, so I might do that.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” She frowns, looking around. “Where did I put my-”

Barry points to the massive case file sitting on the desk in the office, and Iris runs through to get it before checking her watch. “Okay, time to go.”

“You don’t want me to drive you?”

“Nah, I picked up mom’s car from the shop and I’m meeting her for lunch, so I’ll drive that. I can get a Lyft home.” She grabs her coffee and bagel. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Iris is gone for maybe a minute when she unlocks the door again and he looks around in surprise. “What did you forget?”

“This.” And she wraps her arms around him and kisses him, and Barry curses his own obliviousness for the millionth time because if he’d known he could have been kissing Iris West all this time, he never would have looked at anyone else. She breaks away and brushes his lips with hers. “I love you.”

“I-I love you too,” he replies, dazed. He gives her a crooked smile. “I am still totally up for coming to the trial with that sign, you know?”

“Maybe save it for now.”

Barry watches her leave and stretches. He doesn’t actually have that much to do today, but he’s planning on getting her some flowers before she has to go in for her trail. Maybe that will make her feel better before she has to go in and give her testimony. He opens up his laptop and sorts through some emails, scrolling past the confirmation that he’d need one extra ticket for the Excellence in Journalism since he’s taking Iris, and the one that came through to his STAR Labs email account that said Eddie and Malina had settled in Coast City and were following a lead on Plunder. Then he sends an email to Hal letting her know that they’re in the city, and to keep an ear out in case she hears anything about Plunder’s dealings. Just as he’s shutting everything down, he gets a phone call.

“Barry Allen?” he answers, and is surprised to hear Clark’s jubilant voice.

“Barry! How are you? How’s Iris? How was the housewarming party?”

“I’m good, we’re both good. The party was great. What’s up? Is anything wrong?”

“No, not at all. What are the two of you doing the Saturday in the last week of June?”

He navigates to the group calendar. “Nothing. Why?”

“Because Lois and I are having our engagement party then, and we want you both to come.”

It takes him at least two seconds to work out what that means. “What? Clark, that’s incredible! I’m so happy for you both!”

“Thanks,” he replies, and Barry can hear the smile in his voice without even seeing his face. “So you guys can come? We’re sending out invitations, but we wanted to get an idea of the ‘super’ friends before we planned everything. You know what their appetites are like.”

“Of course we’ll be there,” he promises. “Iris will be so happy, you have no idea.”

Barry writes down the dates and promises to let Iris know, before hanging up, a small smile on his face. He can imagine Iris’ face when she finds out the news, all excited and giddy, before promptly dragging him to three different stores to get them an engagement gift (which he will agree to, because Iris has perfected her pout and he’s now utterly powerless against it). They only ever went to a few weddings growing up, but Iris always loved them. There was one time when one of Great-Uncle Rudy’s kids got married when they were eleven, and Nora took them both. She’d been living with them for a few months at that point and even though things were still kind of tense because of the therapists, Nora thought it would be nice to take them all out, especially since Rudy wanted Barry to be an usher.

Barry introduced her as “my best friend, Iris” and patently refused to hang out with anyone at the reception unless Iris could join in as well. When they were watching the bridge and groom do their first dance, Barry kept making faces and Iris had nudged him. “What’s with you?”

“Don’t you think they’re going to get bored?” he’d asked. Iris had looked at them, adjusting her glasses.

“Why would they?”

“Because it’s one person forever. That’s boring. What if they wake up and realise they don’t even like each other anymore? That would suck. Like a lot.”

Iris hadn’t replied for a long time, and Barry wondered whether he’d upset her. Her own parents had been blissfully in love before her dad died. “I don’t think it’s like that,” she’d said carefully. “I think with that…person, it’s like even if you can get bored of them sometimes, you kind of know that anyone else would be _really_ boring. I think if – if it were me, the person I was marrying would be the person I loved most in the world, even when I didn’t like them very much some of the time. And then when we got married it would be like promising that even though I don’t like you sometimes, I love you all the time. Even…even when I’m boring or he’s boring. And I’d always want to come home to him, and him to come home to me, no matter what.” She’d laughed, folding her arms self-consciously. “But anyway, it’s not like I’m getting married.”

Barry had looked at her for a minute, unsure what to say. He never really thought about that – all he knew about his own wedding, a million years in the future, was that Iris and his mother would be there and the cake would be chocolate. He didn’t particularly care about anything else. He figured that he would fall in love eventually or whatever. But in that moment, all he could think was that whoever got to marry Iris would be very lucky.

Barry realises with a jolt that it could be him – that he could get to marry Iris. _Of course you’re going to marry Iris_ , a part of him thinks, _who else would you be married to?_ For a second, he allows himself to imagine it – sharing a life together, having Iris introduce him to people as her husband, and hear her call herself Iris West-Allen. Okay, now that’s – it’s way too soon, and they literally just moved in together, and they have way more to talk about, don’t they? He shouldn’t be this damn happy at the mere idea of being married to Iris. But then he realises it’s because secretly, probably even before that wedding all those years ago, he’s always wanted to be the person Iris came home to.

***

“This is why,” Linda mutters, “I never work alone with these two.”

“I forgot how bad they were,” Iris mutters back. They watch Jesse and Chesca bicker over the helmet from E52. Originally meant to help Chesca vibe Iris, they’ve attached it to Gideon to see whether they can transmit memories from people’s brains onto the screen. Trying, anyway. Iris has studied her brain scans and given them a list of settings for the helmet for a preliminary test, but the two of them were arguing on the best way to go about it. Dr. Wells, tapping away at the terminals, gives them a small smile. “Believe me, it’s an acquired skill.”

“ _Guys_!” Iris snaps, and they both look at her. “Progress report?”

Jesse and Chesca glare at each other, and then Chesca clears her throat. “Essentially what we’ve attempted to do is replicate the activity of a CT scan, only we’re focusing a set of small lasers through these electrodes in the helmet.”

“Is it ready?”

“Almost,” Jesse says. “I wanted to check the polarity-”

“I _checked_ the polarity-”

“Would the two of you be careful?” Linda says. “I haven’t reset the voltage yet. Dr. Wells has checked the polarity; it’s fine. Iris?”

“Well, the only thing I wanted to look at was whether we’ve programmed the wires correctly,” she says. “Don’t forget that the brainwaves that I can read function the same way tachyon particles do.” She gingerly puts the hat on her head. “Okay, feels good. Where’s the process report for the test run?” Jesse folds his arms.

“We haven’t done one yet.”

“What?”

“Told you,” Chesca says. “Dr. Asshole was worried that your calculations were wrong.”

“I was not – look at these settings,” he says, leading Chesca to the computers. “This is too high, for example,” he says, turning something down.

“Not if we’re using Iris as a test subject,” she disagrees, turning it back. “Which we are – she’s a metahuman.”

“Guys,” Iris warns.

“And a lot of these electrodes are extraneous-”

“I swear to God if you don’t leave those _alone_ -”

“Guys, we  - argh!”

Jesse and Chesca stop wrestling the controls from each other when a flash of light explodes from the helmet and Iris goes flying into a wall. Linda and Dr. Wells run over to her. “Jesse, get a first-aid kit,” Linda says urgently. They try to get Iris into a sitting position. “Iris?”

“Iris, can you stand?” Dr. Wells asks. She frowns briefly at them but nods.

“I’m fine,” she says simply, standing. “But, um…”

“What?”

“Who’s Iris?” she asks, rubbing her head. She looks around. “And, um, who - who are all of you?”

“Oh,” Chesca breathes. “Oh, crap. Iris-”

“Who’s Iris?” she repeats, her eyes wide behind her glasses. “Seriously, who are you guys?”

“Iris,” Jesse tries, and she leaps away from him, hands out.

“ _Who’s Iris_?!”

“ _Chesca_ ,” Linda snaps, while Dr. Wells frowns at the terminals. “What the hell?”

“Where am I?” Iris demands. “Is this a dentist’s office? What is this place?”

“It’s…” Dr. Wells replies and shares a look with Jesse. “This is STAR Labs. You own it.”

“I own a dentist’s office? Am I a dentist?”

“No, you’re a CSI.”

Iris blinks. “A CSI? I work for the police? But I don’t - I don’t  _remember_ anything, how can I be a CSI?” She rubs her temples. “ _Why don’t I remember anything_?”

“Trying to get an answer to that myself,” Linda says through gritted teeth as Chesca looks at the computer. “Chess?”

“I think something’s wrong with Gideon…”

“Who’s Gideon?” Iris wants to know, and then Gideon himself pops out of the computer, smiling cheerfully.

“Hello, Iris! How may I help you?”

Iris screams and runs to hide behind the filing cabinets. Chesca curses. “This is all we need.”

“Y-You…” Iris says, peeking out from behind the cabinet, “you’re aliens, aren’t you?”

“We’re not aliens, Iris-”

“Yes, you are! That explains everything! It explains all this equipment, and why you keep calling me Iris even though that’s not my name, and why I can’t remember anything!” She frowns at them, panicked. “Did you kidnap me? Are you going to sell me to your leader? Were you experimenting on me?”

“We were…” Jesse pauses. “Doing an experiment, but-”

“I knew it!”

“Iris-”

“ _That’s not my name_!”

“Actually,” Gideon says helpfully, making Iris yelp, “it is. You were named Iris after the flower as a compromise, as your parents almost named you Jenni after-”

“There,” Iris points, though she’s still eyeing Gideon suspiciously, “Jenni. I like Jenni. Can we call me Jenni?”

“Jenni’s nice,” Jesse admits, and Linda hits him.

“Jesse!”

“Okay, Ir - Jenni,” Chesca says quickly, “let’s just…let’s just get you in this chair…”

“No -  _no_ ,” Iris says, backing away from them as they walk towards her, “you’re aliens!”

“We’re not aliens,” Dr. Wells says soothingly. Iris points at Gideon.

“What’s that?”

“I am an artificial user interface,” he replies somewhat grumpily. “I am  _not_  an alien.”

“That sounds like exactly what an alien would say!” Iris says. “I’m getting out of - AARGH!”

Iris has run straight into Barry, who grins down at her as he sets the flowers in his hand on the side. “Hey, sunshine,” he says, bending down to kiss her, and Iris puts her hands on his shoulders, keeping him back.

“Whoa,” she says. “I don’t - are you an alien too?”

He frowns. “Iris, what are you talking about?”

“Who are you?”

He laughs a little, still frowning. “I’m - I’m your…Barry. It’s me, Barry. You don’t… know me?”

She removes her hands. “No, should I?”

Barry stares at her, stunned. “Guys?” Barry asks in a warning tone. “Somebody wanna spill?”

“Iris - Jenni,” Linda says pointedly, “appears to have lost her memories. She was working on Gideon and I think something malfunctioned.”

“Not my fault,” he adds helpfully. “I am functioning at ninety-eight percent capacity today. And we are not aliens…Jenni.”

“I don’t know you people!” Iris says shrilly. “I don’t - I want to talk to someone I know. If you’re not aliens, can you do that?” 

Dr. Wells looks around. “Alright. Who do you want to talk to, Iris?”

“Well, someone with a really strong connection to me, or someone who knows me well. Like my roommate, or my best friend - or my boyfriend. Do I have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?”

Everyone looks at Barry, who rubs the back of his neck. He’s still trying to get around the fact that Iris is looking at him with suspicion rather than the love he’s gotten so used to. “Uh,” he says, “that’s me.” Iris regards him. “I’m your best friend,” he explains. “And your boyfriend. And - and look, we live together. See?” He fishes her driver’s license out of her purse and holds it up to his own. “751B Vista Square Apartments, Midtown Central City. Same address.”

Iris’ eyes flick back up to him and they soften as she relaxes a little. “You’re my…Barry.”

“I’m your Barry.”

“And I’m…I’m your Iris?”

He gives her an encouraging smile. “You’re my Iris.”

Iris lets out a breath. “Or Jenni. Hey,” he adds softly, stepping towards her. She looks up at him. “Nothing is going to happen to you, okay? You’re safe.” He looks around at everyone else, fixing Jesse and Chesca with a glare. “So, um…Jenni, why don’t you stay here with Linda? I need to talk to these guys.”

Jesse pales at Barry’s glare. “Actually, I kind of want to stay here with Jenni-”

“Jesse.”

“Coming.”

Jesse and Chesca have the good sense to look contrite when Barry leads them out into the Cortex. Through the door, he can see Linda and Dr. Wells talking to “Jenni”, who still looks extremely freaked out. He folds his arms and stares at them. “Well?”

Both of them immediately start talking at once. “One at a time,” Barry sighs. “Jesse?”

“It…It appears that Iris has some form of retrograde amnesia, probably from the helmet that we were working on.”

“I thought you guys said that was safe.”

“It was!” Chesca says. “In theory. But I guess – we were kind of arguing about the controls, and I think we slipped-”

“You mean you gave Iris amnesia because you couldn’t agree on something?”

“Well, when you put it like that…” Jesse mutters. Barry lets out a breath through his nose. “Look, Barry, this isn’t always permanent. Are you sure she’s lost all her memories?”

“Well, she doesn’t remember her friends, me, or her own name.”

“But she seemed really attached to the name Jenni,” Chesca points out. “Is that important?”

“Her mom was going to name her Jennifer, after the actress.”

“What, like Jennifer Lewis?” Jesse asks. Barry frowns.

“No, Jennifer Holliday.”

“You know Jennifer Lewis?” Chesca says, impressed.

“Of course, everyone knows Jennifer Lewis. Fresh Prince, Black-ish-”

“I love that show! Have you seen-”

“Oh, really?” Barry says sardonically. “You guys are doing this now? This is Iris we’re talking about. CSI, Miss Miracle, and founding member of the _Justice League_ – we can’t have her walking around with amnesia!”

“Wait,” Jesse says. “Remembering Jennifer means her memories are still intact somewhere – does she know that she’s a metahuman?”

“That could be bad,” Chesca admits. She peeks around the door to see Iris sitting demurely in a chair under a different machine. “Hey, Jenni? Catch!”

Iris lets out a squeal and misses the pen that she throws completely. “Oh, my word,” Jesse breathes. “Okay, this is bad.”

“You think?” Barry asks. He rubs his temples. “Look, just – tell me there’s some way you can reverse this.”

“I might not have to – her memories could come back on their own.”

“And if they don’t?”

Before Jesse can answer that Dr. Wells walks in. “Jenni is quite pleasant,” she remarks. “If not slightly confused. I’ve done some scans on her, and it seems that while her episodic and autobiographical memory have been erased, her procedural and some parts of her semantic memory are fine.”

“What does that mean?” Barry asks.

“Well, she knows how to walk, for one. It also means that she knows all the science behind being a CSI, but doesn’t know that she is one. She knows what a singer is, but she does not know that Beyoncé is her favourite. And while she understands the concept of a best friend, and a boyfriend, she…she does not remember you, Barry.”

Barry glances through the window again, a pit forming in his stomach. When Iris had been in the coma, one of the fears was that she wouldn’t remember her old life at all, and he’d been terrified that she would forget him. Now it had apparently happened. “I don’t – can we fix it?”

“Yes,” she says confidently, “but it will take a lot of work. We need to prime her neocortical and medial frontal lobes, and then find a way to jumpstart her memories. Linda’s gone to see whether Wally can help, and if these two can find a way to  behave for more than five minutes, we should be able to come up with something.”

“Good,” he says. “I will – I’ll keep her with me.”

***

All of this is very strange.

This room, first of all, is kind of incredible. Dr. Wells told her that she own it, but she has no idea how that happened. But then, she doesn’t even remember her own name. She still prefers Jenni. But the people are nice, at least. Linda cracked some jokes and made her feel at ease, and Jesse and Chesca seem guilty enough. She hopes they don’t feel too bad – she’s sure it was an accident. And Barry is…Barry is very tall and good-looking and his eyes get all soft when he looks at her. He promised her that she would be safe, and despite everything, she believes him.

 _You’re my Iris_.

She’d felt her heart speed up when he said that. She still doesn’t feel like an Iris – it feels like a lot. But if she had to pick, she already knows that she would be perfectly happy to be Barry’s anything.

“Hi.”

She spins to see that Barry himself has walked in, giving her a tentative look. He really is good-looking, with chestnut brown hair and broad shoulders and green eyes that seem to change colour in the light. She swallows and smiles. “H-Hi.”

He regards her for a moment, almost as if he’s trying to work through something, and she steps forward, holding a hand out. “It’s nice to meet you, Barry.”

Barry freezes and stares at her hand as if it just spoke to him, and she drops it. “Sorry,” she says quickly, “sorry, was it not – I thought it _might_ be Garry, but you don’t really look like one, so-”

“It’s Barry,” he assures her. “Sorry, I just – I don’t think I’ve ever shaken your hand before.”

She nods and studies him. “Bartholomew Henry Allen,” she says slowly, remembering the name from the driver’s license. He laughs, rubbing at his hair.

“Yeah, it’s…not a good name.”

“I like it,” she tells him. “It’s…kinda grand. You ever go by Bart?” He puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs.

“Bart doesn’t feel all that natural to me.”

“Barry it is,” she says. She studies his face, biting her lip.

“What?” he asks.

“Are you always this handsome or are you just having a really good day?”

Barry blinks and then blushes furiously, ducking his head. “Oh. Oh, I – um, you know, I just…” he trails off. Iris laughs and Barry joins in.

“Thanks. So, how are you feeling?”

“I feel fine,” she shrugs. “I just don’t really know you, or me, or anything.”

“Yes, well, we are working on that and we’ll fix it,” he says firmly. She just nods.

“Okay,” she says simply. “I’m not worried.” She looks around. “The flowers are nice. Camellias, right?”

“Yeah, I was getting for someone special.”

“Really? Who’s the lucky lady?” He gives her a half smile.

“You, Iris.”

Then it’s Iris’ turn to blush. “Oh. Um, thank you?” She picks them up and studies the card. “’Good luck at the trial today, Barry’. What trial?”

“Oh. Oh, _crap_ -”

Then there’s the sound of music coming from someone’s handbag. “Who’s phone is that?”

“It’s yours…” He digs in her purse answers it. “Iris’ phone? Oh, hey Francine. You need the car now? Yeah – yeah Iris can get it to you. Where is she? She’s fine, she’s just…busy. I’ll – we’ll see you soon. Okay. Bye.”

“Who was that?” she asks. “What’s going on?”

“That…” he sighs. “Is a complication. Hey, so there’s kind of something we need to figure out at the precinct – where you work,” he adds quickly. “It might be a little weird, and complicated, but I promise I’ll be there the whole time. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He packs up her stuff and reaches for her hand, but she recoils. “Oh,” she says quietly. “Sorry, that wasn’t – you’re still, kind of new-”

“It’s okay,” he says easily, not looking her in the eye. “You don’t really know me. I get it.”

“I want to know you,” she says, and he gives her a hopeful look. She takes a deep breath and holds her hand out. Barry takes it and rubs his thumb over her knuckles.

“I know this is all really weird,” he says quietly. “But everything will be fine. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”

And maybe something in her body knows Barry better than her mind does, but everything in her is telling her that she’s safe. That _he’s_ safe. “I trust you.”

***

Okay. This is not that bad. So Iris doesn’t remember anything about herself or him or their life. She’s died before. She’s died _twice_ , actually, and they survived that.

“Who’s that?” Iris asks, pointing at Captain Singh as they walk into the precinct. Barry puts her finger down.

“That’s Captain Singh, you work for her.”

“Oh. Hi, boss!” she calls cheerfully, waving and causing the Captain to wave awkwardly back, frowning. “She seems nice.”

Dear God, this is terrible.

“She…is,” Barry replies, trying not to laugh. She’s been like this the entire time, asking questions that he takes a minute to answer because she should know the answer. _I’m a journalist. Your birthday is in June. Your favourite food is coffee – okay, I know that’s not a food, but_ -

“West!” someone calls, and Iris is still looking around because she doesn’t know that’s her name. “Jenni?” he says quietly, pointing.

“Oh,” she whispers. She straightens as Rose approaches her. “Um, yes?”

“I left that report in your lab, could you have it to me by the end of the week?”

“…yes,” she promises firmly. “Yes, I will do that…Detective.”

Rose nods and walks off. “Who was that?” she asks. “And I have a lab?”

“Yeah, it’s upstairs.”

“Can I see it?”

“Soon, I just need to get my mom-”

“Iris!” someone calls. Francine walks down the stairs, obviously having just been looking for Iris in her lab. “Barry, there you are.”

“Francine,” he says. “We need to-”

“It’s nice to see you, Francine,” Iris says deliberately, giving Barry a look. Her mother stares at her.

“What?”

“I said it’s nice to see you. I, um, I like your…hair. Is it new?”

Francine just blinks at her. “Iris, is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine,” she replies, smiling. “Happy to be at work. Francine.”

“Barry?” Francine asks. “Did something happen?”

“You could say that, I – Mom! Mom, thank God-”

“What on earth is going on?” his mother wants to know. “What’s all this about Iris having amnesia?”

“Amnesia?” Francine splutters. “Really?”

“It’s nice to see you, Mrs. Allen,” Iris says seriously, straightening her glasses. His mother and Francine share a look.

“Barry.”

“Yes, yeah, I can see how this looks bad. Iris, this is your mom.”

“Oh!” Iris smiles happily. Then she wraps her arms around Francine in a hug. “Hi, mom! I like your hair.”

“I – thank you, honey.” Iris nudges Barry.

“I get a mom.”

“And you can just call me Nora,” his mother adds. “Not – just Nora. Now, what are we doing about this?”

“They’re working on it at STAR Labs,” Barry says. “And I wanted to ask whether you could get the trial postponed, or…”

“Barry, Judge Keller is there right now, with Coolidge and the DA. I had to come here to make sure Iris is ready, since I’m testifying too. You’re sure she doesn’t remember anything?”

“Jenni – don’t ask,” he adds quickly. “Jenni. Who’s Janet Jackson?”

“Um. The President?”

Nora curses. “Okay – look, I’m not promising anything, but let me go make a call.” She walks off towards the offices and Francine sighs. “Barry, I want to be here, but I have to get to a meeting-”

“I’ll take care of it,” he promises. “Don’t worry, Francine, she’ll be fine.” She looks at her daughter, who smiles warmly back.

“You should go to work, mom,” she says. “I’ll be fine with Barry.”

“You always have been,” Francine laughs. She kisses Iris on the forehead. “I love you, baby.”

She leaves and Iris tips her head. “She’s nice.”

“She is. Come on, let’s talk to mom.”

“Was that okay? I hope your mom’s not mad at me.”

“Don’t worry, she isn’t. This is just…not a good day for this to be happening,” he sighs. Iris bites her lip as they enter the office.

“Oh.” Before he can say anything, his mother hangs up the phone, frustrated.

“Well, Keller’s not budging. She’s going out of town tomorrow and wants this done before then, and with Coolidge, I’m not surprised.”

“Um,” Iris interrupts. “Who’s Coolidge?”

“Arsonist who has made short work of a lot of buildings in her time in Central. Can’t they think of something to help Iris get through the trial?”

“I’ll ask,” he promises. “Don’t worry, mom. But maybe you can stall for time a little?”

“If you don’t think I can do that, you don’t know your mother.” She runs a hand through her hair. “Honestly, couldn’t Jesse and Chesca have given Iris amnesia tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t be us if it was easy,” he says. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Thanks. Bye…Jenni.”

“Bye, Nora!”

Barry leans against the desk after she leaves, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry,” Iris says quietly. He looks up at her.

“For what, sunshine?”

“I – everyone seems really upset, and stressed out, and I kind of feel like it’s my fault.”

“Jenni, _none_ of this is your fault,” he says firmly. “You’re doing fine. We just want you to get back to normal.”

Iris nods. It’s still weird for him to see an Iris that isn’t affectionate with him, or one that needs prompting to hold his hand. But he has to believe that his Iris is still in there – somewhere. “Well, what’s normal for us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you said we live together. What’s a normal day like for us?”

“Oh. Well, it’s still kind of new,” he admits, sitting next to her. “Usually you wake up first, but you always pretend you’re still sleeping because you hate getting up. Then we both avoid getting out of bed for as long as possible until we really have to. We have breakfast together and then we go to work. At some point during the day you’ll text me a random science fact or a picture of a cat using a hula hoop, or a picture of yourself with like a Snapchat filter of a puppy or something.” He smiles, settling into the warm routine of their life. “Sometimes we get hang out with our friends, or go to the movies, or we have dinner with my mom or yours. Or we walk our turtle-”

“We have a turtle?” Iris giggles. He nods.

“Yeah, her name’s McSnurtle, she was a gift. Sometimes I visit you at work, or you visit me, and you always eat all my food, which I pretend makes me mad, but doesn’t really. And then we come home, and we just…be. We play video games and watch movies and cook dinner and do all the normal couple stuff. And then we wake up the next day and do it all again.”

Iris smiles. “That sounds nice.”

“It’s…everything I’ve ever wanted,” he admits.

“So, what about my dad?” Barry freezes.

“Your dad?”

“Yeah, my dad. Is he at work, or something?”

Barry has no idea how he’s going to look into Iris’ eyes, so innocent and cheerful and free of all the baggage that she’s had to carry around all these years, and tell her that her father was brutally murdered. But before he has to answer, her stomach rumbles. “And I think that means we have to get some food in you.”

***

Jitters might be heaven on earth.

Or actually, maybe the closest thing to heaven, because she’s pretty sure that anywhere Barry is is heaven. She had no idea why she suddenly felt so ravenous, but he very helpfully suggested taking her to Jitters so she could get food. Now she’s standing in line looking at all the food, wondering why she suddenly wants to devour everything, and waiting for Barry. He’s outside right now, taking a call from work, and Iris watches him.

 _I’m your Barry_.

She is not quite used to that. It is one thing to have a name and a job and a whole life that belong to you. That, she can understand, even as she’s getting used to possessing none of the memories that make it up. But she is not used to having a whole other person belong to her. Because she has no doubt about it – in whatever life they have built for each other, in all the ways that matter, Barry Allen belongs to Iris West. She can see it in everything he does – from the way he looks at her, like she’s the reason the sun comes up in the morning and the smile she’s starting to suspect he’s reserved only for her, to the way he holds her hand.

Mostly, though, it’s in the way he says her name.

She’s still not ready to be “Iris” yet – it feels like a lot, and mostly, Barry has been good to call her Jenni. But sometimes it drops out of her mouth in the middle of a conversation and it hits her, the way he says it. Quiet and reverent, like a prayer. So in that moment, when he says her name, she understands that Barry completely and utterly belongs to her. Or rather, the her who remembers how she got this life in the first place.

(And she’s going to have to work out what “sunshine” means)

“You want your usual, Iris?”

She jolts out of her reverie to see someone asking her a question and completely blanks. “I – um. Sure. Usual sounds fine. And Barry’s,” she says quickly. “Whatever Barry’s usual is, too.”

After having survived that interaction, she finds a table and sits down. Barry finishes his call and walks in, looking around for her, and then smiles when he spots her. That. She’s fine with the whole memory-less thing as long as she gets to keep that. “What’d you get?”

“Our usual,” she says proudly. Then she hesitates. “Wait, what kind of food do I like? You said coffee, which is bullshit-”

“It’s not!”

“Barry, coffee isn’t food.”

“It is the way you consume it,” he shoots back. “If we did a blood test on you during any given day, your blood would be 75% caffeine. You’ve been that way since high school.”

She tips her head. “We knew each other in high school?”

“Best friends.”

“What was I like?”

“Believe it or not, even nerdier than you are right now.”

“Seriously?”

“Give me your phone.” She hands it over and he navigates to all the photos before handing it back to her. Iris scrolls through all the pictures and her eyes widen. “Okay, wow. I was a _nerd_.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh my God. Key club, chess club, science club…anime?”

“Yes,” he agrees. “Dragonball Z. I believe you called Vegeta the hottest extra-terrestrial anime warrior in all of Akira Toriyama’s work.”

“I understood maybe three of those words.”

“You’re gonna have to google it, sunshine, because I have no idea where to begin with that.” He pauses as someone brings all their food over and her eyes widen at the sheer amount. “This is our usual?”

“That’s your usual,” he corrects. He takes his single club sandwich and triple chocolate chip cookie. Iris stares.

“Who _am_ I?”

Barry laughs. “Keep looking, you’ll find out.”

“Okay…Oh, I was a cheerleader? How’d that work?”

“They needed someone small to stand on top of the pyramid.” She narrows her eyes at him. “Sorry,” he says quickly. “Petite.”

“You bet your ass I’m petite,” she mutters, and he laughs again. Iris goes quiet and looks at one picture in particular. “You okay?” he asks.

“We went to Homecoming together,” she says softly, and he rubs the back of his neck.

“Ah, no. I was there with my girlfriend, and you were there with your boyfriend.”

“So we didn’t date in high school?”

“We didn’t.”

She keeps going and finds a picture of Barry with a blonde with bright blue eyes, clearly on the same night as Homecoming. “Is this her?”

“Yeah. Becky Cooper. We all went together, kind of, except Becky got Homecoming Queen and your boyfriend got Homecoming King, which meant they had to dance together. So we just hung out.”

“Sounds nice,” she says softly.

“It was,” he agrees. She studies the picture and tries to pretend a small part of her isn’t irritated that she got to have Barry first. Maybe she is warming to the idea that he’s _her_ Barry after all.

“Hm. Becky Cooper,” she says slowly, eating her panini.

“Do you have to say it like that?”

She smiles innocently at him. “Like what?”

“Like _Becky Cooper_ ,” he replies in a terrible imitation of her. “Although that’s very Iris of you, that’s exactly how you said her name.”

“I’m sure she’s…nice.” He grins at her.

“You’re jealous.”

“Am not.”

“You don’t have to be. I’m all yours.”

Something in her warms at that. “Well, I’ll never get tired of hearing that. What was my boyfriend’s name?” Barry sits back in his chair.

“Brad.”

“Oh, okay, if you can call out Becky Cooper, I’m calling out Brad. Why do you say his name like that?”

“I’m not saying his name like anything.”

“Yes, you are. You said it like you forgot to add the “That Asshole” after it.”

“Brad,” he says carefully, “was…very nice.”

“Now who’s jealous?”

“Of that Backstreet Boy clone?”

“Who are the Backstreet Boys?”

“Brad and four other guys who look like him.”

She laughs so hard she lets out an unexpected snort, and then covers her mouth. “Is that normal?”

“Totally normal. And very cute.”

“Alright, well…Okay, you are officially a crappy friend.”

“What did I do?”

“You let me leave the house in suspenders,” she says, still scrolling, “denim on denim and… _body glitter_? Are you kidding me?”

“You liked it!”

“Barry Allen, I hope you are a better boyfriend than you are a bestie, because this is visual terrorism.”

“Ir – Jenni,” he corrects, “telling you what to do is not something that many people survive.”

“I’m not saying you should have told me what to do. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t have let me out of the house wearing a _denim cowboy hat_.”

“You said you were channelling Britney Spears!”

“You didn’t think it looked bad?”

“I thought it looked terrible, but you said you liked it!”

“Jackass,” she mutters.

“Nerd,” he shoots back, and she laughs. Barry lingers on her for a moment, letting out a soft breath as his eyes rove over her face. “What?”

“Mm? Oh, nothing. It’s just good to see you so happy.” She studies him.

“What, am I all broody normally?”

“Not really,” he assures her. “Just…lately you’ve been worrying a lot.”

“I have? Really?”

“A little. But now you’re so… light. It’s nice to see you smiling so much.” She smiles at him.

“Anyone would smile if they got to come home to you.” Barry blushes again, making his freckles stand out. “Tell me more stuff about me.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

“Well… Like I said, you inhale ungodly amounts of coffee on the regular. Your favourite real food is noodles with fried chicken and cashews, because your dad used to make it for you. You really love your PlayStation, even though the Xbox is better. You’re allergic to this really random chemical that’s found in some makeup, which makes shopping really fun. Um…your favourite Disney movie is _Beauty and the Beast_ -”

“What’s Disney?”

“Wow, we’re about to have a lot of fun. You’re the reason I like ‘90s R’n’B. You know all these really weird science facts that you come out with randomly – like one time we were seeing a movie, and I said I thought it was engineered to make people smile, and you just started talking about endorphins.”

“Well, endorphins are actually very fascinating,” she says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “They’re the basis of all our feelings, like sadness, anger, or love. People think that their feelings are this unique phenomenon, but it’s all science.” Barry tilts his head at her, a small smile on his face.

“I don’t think I believe that.”

“Why not? I probably don’t remember where I read them, but I’m sure there are studies to back it up.”

“I know,” he says simply. “I read about that stuff for my PhD, and most of the time, I believe it, but…”

“But what?”

“But then I see you smile,” he shrugs. “And I think maybe everyone else’s feelings are decided by endorphins and serotonin levels and everything else, but what I just saw? Man, that cannot be science.”

Iris feels her face heat. How Barry manages to sound sincere whenever he says this stuff is amazing. “Barry Allen,” she says quietly, a wondrous note in her voice. “You should come with a warning, you know that?”

“As a journalist, we are duty-bound to report the truth,” he says simply, smiling himself, and Iris adjusts her glasses. Then Barry focuses on something behind her. “Hey, you guys. You got something?”

Chesca and Jesse have arrived, and Jesse is holding a pair of glasses. “Hi, everyone,” Iris says cheerfully. “What’s up?”

“We are getting you ready for this trial,” Chesca says determinedly. She takes the glasses off her face.

“Wow, I am really blind without these.” Then her vision clears when Chesca gives her the glasses back, but this time there’s something in her ears. “What’s-”

“Walkie-talkies,” Jesse explains. “Chesca and I will be able to speak to you and get your through the trial, easy as pie. Even if you only remember some of the science, we have your case notes.”

“O-Okay,” she says uncertainly. “Um, yeah. Sure. Just let me get my stuff.” She gathers her purse and garment bag together and then looks at the door. “Barry?”

“Could you guys give us a minute?” he says.

Jesse and Chesca go to stand by the door, and she looks up at him. “You say I do this type of thing all the time, right?”

“You’re going to be fine,” he promises. “You know what you’re talking about – you just need a little encouragement.”

“Okay,” she says, buoyed. “Great. I’ll see you later?”

He automatically leans down to kiss her, and then thinks better of it. “See you,” he says softly, and Iris knows he’s still watching her as she leaves.

***

In hindsight, she thinks that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all.

It was all going reasonably well, at first. She got to the stand, and then the nice DA started asking her all these questions. Jesse and Chesca were in the audience next to Barry’s mother, reading from their notes. She was even pretty good at it.

“What substance do you see in this photograph?”

“ _Shellac flakes_ ,” Chesca whispers in her ear.

“I…see shellac flakes,” she says firmly. She continues to listen. “Shellac is a resin secreted by female lac bigs found in large quantities of the trees in Thailand.”

The judge frowns at her. “Lac…bigs?”

“Bugs,” she corrects. “Bugs, because…bigs wouldn’t make sense. Obviously.”

“Miss West,” the judge says. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” she says. She clears her throat. “Fine. Um. Please continue.”

“What else is unique about shellac?”

“It is the fire accelerant used in all the arson cases associated with Heatmonger,” she says triumphantly, and the DA nods. Jesse says something and Coolidge turns to glare at her, and Chesca giggles.

“And how would you know,” the DA continues, “that shellac was used?”

“We calculate flame temperature and burn patterns, and a tell-tale sign is when…I don’t need dollar bills to have…fun to…night…” she trails off, frowning. Jesse and Chesca are sharing panicked looks.

“Uh-oh,” Nora mutters.

“Miss West,” the judge frowns. “Can you continue?”

She continued.

And ended up accidentally singing several songs by artists that she later found out were Rihanna, Adele and Beyonce (which was really catchy and she wants to remind Barry to help her look it up later). He does try to cheer her up, but all she can think about is letting everyone down.

“It’s not your fault the walkie talkies picked up radio stations,” he says, letting them into their apartment.

“I know,” she sighs. “I just wish I could help, you know? I don’t get why I remember some science, but not all of it.” Barry gives her a small smile as he shuts the door.

“What? Is that not something Iris would say?”

“Actually, it’s exactly what Iris would say. Helping people is one of the many things people love about you.”

“Hm. Wait…we live here?” She looks around the apartment, awed. “Dude. Don’t we have student loans?”

“Actually, we don’t,” he says. “Long story.”

“Well, you have _amazing_ taste.”

“This is all you, actually.”

“I thought you said you lived here first and I moved in.”

Barry folds his arms self-consciously. “Yeah, I did. Just…well, I was looking for a place, and I guess the part of me that was already half in love with you just got an apartment that I thought you would like and then let you decorate it. I guess that part of me always wanted you to feel at home here.”

“Oh,” she smiles. Then she spots a picture of a little girl on the side. “Is this me?”

“Yep. First-grade field trip to the zoo, I believe.”

“Wait, there’s my dad!” Iris says. “Aw, he’s cute. Where is he?”

Barry hesitates. Iris had been so bummed about the trial, but there’s no way he can hide this from her. “Jenni,” he says carefully, and she looks at him. “Your dad…died. A long time ago. When we were both small.” Iris’ face falls. “But it was peaceful,” he lies, hating himself. “So…”

“Oh. Well, okay. I guess I can’t miss what I can’t remember.”

“It’s why you came to live with me and my mom.”

“And that’s when we met?”

“No, actually the first day we met was in first grade,” he smiles. “I remember when I saw you, and I knew I wanted to be friends with you right then.” Iris regards him, a question in her eyes, and he remembers the first time he realised he was in love with her, at that booth in Jitters.

“Must be a nice memory, if you’re smiling like that.”

“Yeah, it’s…you saved my life.”

“I did what?”

“The first day we met, you saved my life. I guess I taught myself how to throw cashews in the air and catch them with my mouth, but one of them got caught in my throat, and then you gave me the Heimlich manoeuvre and took me to the nurse’s office. And then I asked you to be my best friend.”

“Barry!” she admonishes. “That’s dangerous! I hope you don’t do that anymore.”

“…no.”

“Barry!”

“What? It’s cool!”

“You could have died.”

“But I didn’t,” he points out, “because you were there.” She sighs, shaking her head.

“What made you want to be my friend?”

“Oh. Well, I was really nervous about school, and I was worried that I wouldn’t make any friends. It had just been me and my mom for a long time, you know? But then when I got there I saw you, and the first thing you did was run to the books and get this book about space. You were just so excited, and happy, so I…wanted to be your friend. So I told you I liked your glasses, and then almost choked myself to death, and here we are. But you made me feel safe, that’s why I wanted you to be my best friend.”

“I made you feel safe?” Barry nods.

“I guess, because my dad left,” he says quietly, and her heart breaks for him right in that moment, almost as if she witnessed it herself. “And my sister died, I kind of felt…rocky. Like everything could change at any moment. And then you came along and you saved my life, and I guess I always thought that if you were my friend, I’d always be safe.” He shrugs. “I’ve never stopped feeling safe around you, all because of that day.” Iris’ eyes are so soft.

“Well, how could I let the world go on without you in it?”

Impossible. It’s completely in possible that he’s falling in love with Iris _again_. But that’s what’s happening, because even though she doesn’t know him and he doesn’t really understand her yet, he knows that he wants to draw her against him and kiss her. She must feel the same because her eyes flicker down to his lips and then back up to his eyes again. She stands up on her toes and kisses him lightly, sighing against his mouth, and then draws back. “Um.”

“We can stop if you want to, Jenni,” he breathes out. She bites her lip.

“Iris.”

“Are you sure?”

“I like the way you say it.”

“How do I say it?” he laughs

“I don’t know,” she laughs shyly back, and then looks right into his eyes, and yeah, this is definitely him falling love with a version of Iris with no memories. “Like…like it’s everything.”

This, he can answer. “You’re my everything,” he says simply.

Iris kisses him again, and he’s careful even though he knows her. He lets her guide him into the kiss, her hands balancing on his shoulders as he bends, because this is not an Iris who knows them or their equilibrium, how long it took for them to get past the best friend barrier. But Iris seems fine with it, sliding her arms around his shoulders and opening her mouth, and the sound she makes when he wraps her arms around her waist makes him forget where he is.

And then she starts floating.

“What – Barry!” she shrieks, panicked. She’s hanging about three feet off the ground, a stricken expression on her face. “What’s going on?”

“Iris, don’t worry,” he assures her, “this is normal…”

“I _float_ when she _kiss_?”

“You’re not floating, exactly. You’re flying.” She blinks at him.

“So you’re saying when we kiss I get superpowers?”

“Technically, no,” he admits. “I just…activate them. I’m your lightning rod.” At her helpless look, he shakes his head. “Sorry, that doesn’t help. Look, we should go see the others, they can explain.”

“Okay. Barry?”

“Yes?”

“How do I get down?”

***

The revelation that Iris has superpowers is by far her favourite thing of the day, as far as Barry can see. When Wally runs tests on her and shows her what they mean, the first thing she does is go upstairs and practice. Barry and Wally watch her teleport around the Mind Palace, grinning as she appears in front of them. “You guys, these powers are _amazing_ ,” she says. “Do you think I could be a superhero? Because I think I could.”

“I’m on-board with that,” Barry smiles.

“We need more supers in the world.”

“Well, I am gonna go fly some more,” she says. “Because I can do that.”

She disappears outside, and Wally sighs. “Wow. She’s a ray of sunshine.”

“Yeah, she’s a lot happier when she’s worrying so much,” Barry agrees. Wally regards him.

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“I’m thinking maybe someone doesn’t want Iris to get her memories back.”

Barry hesitates. “Look, Wally, I…I love her. And I see what this does to her, everyday she has to worry about her old enemies coming back to kill her, or new ones, or worry about the people she can’t save, or looking after all of this. I can’t say seeing her being happy and light isn’t something that I’ve wanted for her, because it is.”

“Barry, you didn’t fall in love with Miss Miracle,” he says. “You fell in love with Iris West.”

“I know this is a different version of her, but she’s still Iris to me.” Wally pauses.

“You know when Iris was doing the tests, I mentioned that we were cousins. And she asked whether we ever hang out with the family, and she ended up asking if she could come to the party. But that wasn’t Iris, Barry. She doesn’t know what our family did to her, and that’s why she agreed. Do you know how much I wish we could undo that, and have everything be easy?” He shakes his head. "The person we're seeing isn't our Iris, because she doesn't have any of the memories or experience that make her who she is."

"I know," he sighs. "I just wish I could...make her pain stop, you know?"

He shrugs. “We can’t always take pain away from the people we love. Sometimes we just have to love them.”

***

“She’s so cute,” Iris says for the fifth time, and Barry laughs as he makes up the couch to sleep on. Once Iris got the hang of her powers Wally said they could go home, since she can’t hurt herself anymore. She uncrosses her legs and puts McSnurtle back into her enclosure. “Your sister got her for us?

“Yeah, from Beijing. Now, are you sure you don’t have any more questions?”

“No, Wally was very thorough. Although I’m wondering about this thing Jesse wants to try – I think it involves zapping me?”

“I’m not letting that man zap you,” Barry mutters, and she laughs. “That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. Don’t worry about it, Iris. Just try to get some sleep, okay?”

She pauses. “Thank you for understanding, about-”

“It’s okay, Iris. We’re not…It would be weird for us to be totally normal, and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. I can sleep out here.”

“You want some help?”

“No, why?”

“Because you’re mauling that pillow,” she laughs. She takes it from him and fluffs it properly. “There. What are we doing tomorrow?”

“Well, mom convinced the DA that you were having an allergic reaction to your medication, so you have the day off. Hopefully we should figure something out before then.”

“Okay. Goodnight.” She reaches up to give him a sweet kiss (she’s totally cool with this).

“I love you,” he says easily, and her eyes widen.

“I-”

“You don’t have to say it back, Iris. You don’t know us yet. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Iris can’t sleep, though.

She conks out for maybe three hours at most, but then she’s awake again, wondering about her life. Because she has more pieces now – she’s a daughter, and a friend, and a cousin. She’s a superhero, and she has people that rely on her.

And she’s someone’s everything.

Iris wonders how the version of her with memories manages to function whenever Barry makes one of those declarations, because he’s done it at least three times, not to mention telling her he loves her, as easy as breathing. But he’s right – she does not know them. Not really. She sighs and sits up. Now she’s hungry in addition to everything else, so she gets up and tries to remember where the fridge is so she doesn’t wake Barry. But she shouldn’t have worried.

Barry is awake, flicking through channels absently, the glare from the TV reflecting off his face. Then, almost as if he hears her, he looks up. Immediately, his expression changes. “Iris? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Just…hungry.”

“Right, your metabolism. You want a grilled cheese?”

“Are you sure?”

He shrugs. “I can’t sleep, anyway.”

Iris watches as he gets down cheese and black pepper, like this is something that happens all the time. “Barry.”

“Yes.”

“How did…how did we get here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I…” she struggles for the words. “I kind of know me. I know you, sort of. And I know what we were like in high school, and first grade, and in college. But I don’t know _us_. How did we go from Barry, and Iris to…Barry and Iris?”

Barry nods slowly. “Right. Um, do you want to sit down?”

Iris settles in the couch across from him, food in hand. “Well, I…I guess I should say that I’ve never really needed anyone other than you in my life. You’ve always been my favourite person, and you mattered the most to me. And I think I had a crush on you in middle school, but I thought all best friends went through that.” He pauses.

“I think I’ve always been yours, really. I’ve always been your Barry. I remember when I came home from college and seeing you was always my favourite part of vacation, and when I got into grad school and I had to tell you. A part of me always knew, though. There was a voice that kept saying _She’s not always going to be your Iris_. I ignored it, for as long as I could, and I told myself we’d always have each other because you were my best friend.

“And then you got hit by lightning, and – that’s still the most terrifying night of my life. I felt like I spent nine months walking around trying to function with one lung. But even then, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see how I felt about you until you woke up and told me.” He swallows. “I was…I was so mad at you. Because if you told me sooner we would have been together, I know that now, but I was with Patty. But then you said you moved on and all I could think was _Wait, I’m not ready_. I wasn’t ready for you to not love me anymore.”

He drags his hand through his hair, and Iris gets the feeling this is the first he’s spoken of this. “After Patty left, I thought we could be normal,” he continues. “I couldn’t lose you, so I just ignored everything. I told myself it didn’t matter that I could see us together and happy. I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t jealous when you started dating someone else. And I tried to be okay with that voice that kept telling me that you weren’t mine, that I’d missed my chance with you, and eventually I’d have to watch you fall in love with someone else. Then they would get to hold your hand and make you laugh and be there for you when you needed them. I tried, even though it was killing me because I was falling in love with you and I was trying with everything in me to convince myself that it wasn't what I wanted. That _you_ weren't what I wanted. And I thought that I didn't deserve it."

"Deserve..." Iris frowns. He shakes his head.

"I thought that after all this, what had happened between us," he explains, "I didn't get to want you as much as I did. I wasn't allowed, because you loved me for so long and I never saw you. I didn't think it was fair to you to put you in that position when you were moving on and happy. So for a while I was just in denial about it. I even tried to talk myself out of it, of being in love with you. Didn’t work, though,” he laughs quietly. “And then I was just the idiot who fell for his best friend too late. But I didn’t want to push you, so I just…hoped you would fall in love with me again.”

"And if..." Iris opens her mouth and closes it again. Barry watches her, patiently waiting for her to say whatever it is she wants to say. "What if I...didn't?"

"What if you didn't what?"

"What if I didn't fall in love with you again? I mean I'm glad that I did, clearly," she laughs, gesturing to the two of them, the apartment, their life. "But what if I just moved on to someone else?"

"I would have been fine," he replies immediately. "Well. Not - not  _fine_ , I'm pretty sure you're it for me, but I would have...kept it in. I would have found a way to be happy for you."

"Really?"

He shrugs. "You did the same for me."

Iris can’t speak, but Barry isn’t done. He faces her, his expression so open that Iris finds it a little overwhelming to look at him. “I don’t know how to explain how we got here, Iris. Because, for me, what we are to other…it’s escaped definition. But know that all my life, you’ve always been the only girl I knew how to love.”

She doesn’t speak. She just kisses Barry once, presses her forehead against his. Then she settles back with him on the couch. She doesn’t speak for another hour.

“Barry.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for loving me.”

She hears the smile in his voice. “My pleasure, sunshine.”

***

Iris spends the next day at STAR Labs, trying to remember, because she can’t leave Barry alone in this. She can’t make him teach her how to be Iris again. She's the love of his life, she knows that now, and she can't take that away from him.

Iris reads logs of her missions. She reads her reports from work. She even sifts through photo albums, to no avail. It’s as she’s doing this, late into the evening while everyone is working, that she hears an alarm.

“Iris!” Gideon says, popping out of the screen, and she’s proud because she only jumped a little. “Where are the others?”

“Downstairs. What is it? What’s going on?”

“Heatmonger,” he says, and Iris sees a building blazing with fire, and just as she’s opening her mouth to call everyone, Jesse runs into the room.

“Iris, we figured out a way to get your memory back,” he says urgently. Chesca follows close behind him, as well as Dr. Wells. “Get your suit on and get to that building. Gideon, direct her.”

“Of course.”

Iris swallows and Gideon appears on her watch instead. “Do not worry, Iris. I will be with you. And I have faith in you.”

“You’re a computer.”

“A smart computer.”

Iris changes into her suit and closes her eyes, remembering what Wally and Dr. Wells said, but then opens them again. "Where's Barry?"

"I'm right here," he says, appearing behind Jesse. Iris takes his hand and leads him out to the corridor. "Iris, what's-"

She reaches up and kisses him, stopping his words. He settles into the kiss, pressing his palms flat against her back. 

"I love you," she says quietly. He sighs.

"Iris, you don't have to-"

"I'm not. I mean it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." She takes a deep breath and slides a hand over his chest, feeing his heart beat rapidly under her palm. "Because...this is what love feels like." She looks up at him, searching his face. "Isn't it?"

He gives her a helpless smile. "Since the day you walked into my life."

"IRIS!"

"Go," he instructs her. "I'll be here."

People are already screaming and running away when she gets there, and she swallows. "Okay, I'm ready. What next?"

“Iris,” Chesca says. “You’re going to feel something big. Might hurt, might sting, might suck.”

“Wait, what?”

“Probably all three. Okay, go.”

“What – _arghhhhhh_! Ow, OW, God…”

Iris closes her eyes against searing pain in her mind, holding herself still through as the pain rocked through her. Eventually, the pain subsides. “Iris?” Chesca calls.

“Yeah, I still don’t…I don’t remember.”

“That was supposed to work,” Jesse mutters, and a window explodes. “We need something to spark her memory.”

“Guys?”

“Iris.” Barry’s voice is the one that she hears next. “I need you to remember, okay?”

“Barry,” she says shakily. “I don’t – I can’t.”

“ _Yes, you can_. Look, Iris…When I told you that your dad died peacefully, I lied. He was murdered.”

“What?” she whispers.

“I didn’t know how to tell you. But my mom came to get you and brought you to the house, and you were in shock and you didn’t even cry. You didn’t cry until later, when we were supposed to be sleeping. I didn’t know how to make it stop, so I sang to you. I sang you this:

_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine_

_You make me happy, when skies are grey_

_You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you_

_Please don’t take my sunshine away_ ”

Electricity seems to rip through Iris and she sees her life in fragments, all slotting themselves into place. She feels like she’s on solid ground again, and she breathes in the cool night air.

"Barry?"

"Iris, you've been through a lot. More than...more than most people. But for every bad memory you have, there'll always be a good one to get you through it."

And it's like being hit by lightning again.

“I remember,” she says. “I remember everything. Now for this fire…”

She flits up and down the building, teleporting as quickly as she can so the fire dissipates. “You guys, I’m not fast enough to do this alone!”

“You don’t have to.”

And Iris is shocked that the person she sees next to her, blue lightning trailing behind as she flies, is Dr. Wells, she doesn’t say anything. They extinguish the fire within minutes, and Iris captures Heatmonger and drops her off with the police. Then she turns to Dr. Wells. “This doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want to,” she says. “Buy you’re a hero now whether you like it or not.”

Dr. Wells smiles. “We’ll see.”

***

“I have…” Iris mutters, looking at Gideon. “The _worst_ ideas.”

She picks up the helmet that caused all this. Once she got back they tested her memory to see that she was fine, but she’s resolved to keep some of her more ambitious projects under wraps. And if tonight is any indication, the next problem they'll have to tackle is Dr. Wells being a superhero.

“You trying to disappear on me again?”

Iris smiles. “I didn’t disappear, Bar. Besides, are you sure you didn’t like “Jenni” better? She was a lot more fun.”

Barry walks further into the room, and she ducks her head. “Seeing you not worry so much, and without all that darkness was nice, Iris. I don’t know, you say you’re fine all the time, but today and yesterday you actually felt free.”

“But I need it,” she shrugs simply. “I wouldn’t be me without it, and I couldn’t be a hero without it. Maybe I need to learn to manage it better, but I wouldn’t be Iris without the darkness. I think as long as I have you and all our friends, I have some light, too.”

“Then I don’t care,” he replies, “as long as I get my Iris.”

“And you always will.” Then she grins. “So. You had a crush on me, huh?”

“Iris, we live together.”

“Still.”

“You’re such a dork,” he chuckles, but he cups her face and kisses her. And it last about ten seconds before Jesse walks in.

“You – oh. Sorry.”

“Dude, I am going to smack you,” Barry growls. “You don’t know how to knock?”

“It’s not my fault you two left before the debriefing!”

“Right, the debriefing,” Iris says. “And since I’m leader, that debriefing will involve me punching the two idiots who _zapped me_ with a _laser_.”

Jesse leaves them alone.

***

And they’re able to create their normal.

Iris is a superhero and Barry is a journalist, and they build their life together. It works, for them, and there are arguments, but they always know they have each other to run home to as the days go on. And as much as Barry looks after Iris, she looks after him just as much. Sometimes, she needs to.

She comes home during a patrol one evening to get some water, and finds Barry working at the breakfast bar. “Barry?”

“I had an idea,” he says sheepishly, pointing at his laptop.

“It’s three in the – come on, you’re going to bed.”

“But-”

“No buts. Barry your eyes are red and you keep yawning.”

“But I’m not…” he yawns. “Tired. Okay, that was bad.”

“Chess? Call me if it’s an emergency. Come on, you.”

She flashes him to bed and gets his shirt off. “Iris West,” he yawns. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

Only he’s yawning so much it comes out as “Irish Wesh, aiyoo tring…soodosh me?”

“This is not how I seduce people, Barry. Come on, lie down.” He lays his head in her lap and she pulls the covers over him, before turning on their TV. “It was a good idea,” he mumbles sleepily.

“I know, baby.”

Barry grins sleepily up at her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I’m gonna marry you one day, Iris West.”

Iris, unable to understand a word he’s said, frowns. “What?”

“Love you,” he mutters, and she rolls her eyes and smiles, unaware of what he’s thinking. _Just you wait_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more!


	39. City of Miracles, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry and Iris are going to need a few miracles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad person, and I have no excuse for this chapter being this late.  
> But the reason it's SO late is because I didn't realise how long it was. I was writing away, yelling at myself for being such a slow writer, and I checked my wordcount, which is over 40K words, and I'm only halfway through.  
> Luckily the chapter ends in a place where there's enough tension and stuff, I just hope it's good enough.  
> Also, minor NSFW.  
> Enjoy!

“… _God_ , your ass is hot.”

As she suspected (and, okay, hoped), Barry’s cheeks colour as he finishes his tie. She half-turns away from the mirror to look at her, a small smile on his face. “Go back to sleep, Iris.”

“What? It’s true.”

“True or not, you have to go to sleep. And _I_ have to work, and it’s your fault I’m late.”

“You’re always late.”

“I am when my girlfriend is the one who wakes me up before my alarm to have sex.”

“Yeah, but I woke you up _before_ the alarm,” she points out. He raises an eyebrow in the mirror at her.

“Who’s the one with the metahuman stamina?”

“I didn’t hear you complaining, Allen. Besides, I’m not…” but then her body betrays her and then she yawns. “Drat.” Barry laughs, coming over to her and sitting next to her on the bed.

“Iris,” he says, taking her hand.

“Barry.”

“Today is your day off from work.”

“I know that.”

“And you worked two all-nighters this week and I know you’ve been spending a lot of your free time at the Hall trying to get everything up to scratch.”

“Because we should be using it more often, I-”

“Have been overworking yourself,” he points out. “Not to mention you were helping Liv last week and you got hit by a car.”

“I went to a check-up,” she says. “It was just a broken arm. Wally said I was fine.”

“Yes, Wally said you were fine, and Jesse said you were fine, and Dr. Wells said that your powers have never been stronger, and there are a whole team of people dedicated to making sure Miss Miracle is okay, but _I_ ,” he says, cupping her cheek, “am dedicated to making sure that Iris West is okay.”

Iris smiles gratefully and he rubs his thumb over her cheek. “And you’re not going to be able to keep the city safe if you’re not at your best, which you won’t be if you’re tired. So, will you please get some rest? For me?”

Iris makes a face at him. Barry can pretty much convince her to do anything, and that’s when he’s not even trying. But when he’s life this, all earnest smiles and soft green eyes and stroking her cheek like this, she’s powerless to resist. She does pretend, though.

“Okay, fine,” she relents, rolling her eyes, and he grins at her.

“Thank you. I have a meeting, but if you need anything-”

“I’ll be fine, Bar. Go save the world, one article at a time.”

He leans forward to kiss her and she rests both hands on his neck, opening her mouth to deepen the kiss. “Wait – Iris,” he murmurs, “I have – _work_ …”

She grins into the kiss. “Who cares about work?”

“Our landlord, for one,” he tells her, laughing, and Iris thinks she’s going to have to do a better job at distracting him when his phone starts buzzing. He pulls away from her reluctantly to answer it. “Barry Allen,” he answers, and she smiles when she realises his cheeks are red. “Hi, Erica. He needs the meeting pushed to _when_? Ten-thirty? That’s fine, but does that mean we’re moving the layout meeting around? Okay, fine, see you soon.” He hangs up. “I really have to go – I’ll call you at lunch?”

“Call me at lunch,” she agrees. She pulls him forward to kiss him on the cheek, behaving herself this time. “Love you.”

“Love you.”

She watches him leave and, with a smile, settles back in their pillows. And she tries to figure out how, exactly, she’d gotten to this point.

Iris hadn’t realised when Barry’s feelings changed, and even he’s admitted recently that it isn’t that his feelings changed so much as he realised what it was that he was feeling. She first realised that what she felt for Barry was love when she was eleven, when Todd Carter kissed her on a dare, her first actual kiss…and the only thing she felt was that she wanted it to be Barry. Of course, this was a few months before her father died and she had to go live with them, so that hadn’t exactly been helpful for her feelings. Not to mention it highlighted exactly how unhelpful it was to be in love with your best friend.

As a teenager she hoped she’d grow out of it. She swallowed her feelings, acted nonchalant when people asked if they were dating, feigned cheerfulness when he asked her about girls. She dated Lance, and then Brad, and she watched Barry date Becky, but it didn’t take. Lance was a self-centred ass, and Brad eventually told her that he wasn’t going to be the person that she wasted time with until Barry decided he was ready to date her. Becky just made her jealous, especially since she saw how Iris felt about Barry and flaunted their relationship in front of her.

When Iris got to college she had new resolve. She was away from Barry for most of the year, she didn’t have to live with the agony of seeing him and wanting to be with him everyday. That didn’t work, either – she got used to it, but she always felt a little bit off-balance, like the world was no longer spinning on its axis. When Barry came to visit her, or she him, or they went home for the holidays, she felt right again.

Iris tried again when she got home. She got her own apartment, away from him, so they didn’t have to be around each other all the time. She tried dating other people, tried having her own life away from him, but that didn’t work because how was she supposed to live her life away from the person that had always been her home? Once, she even tried literally writing a list of reasons for her not to date him: _His hair is dumb. He’s too tall. He snores. He throws his jacket on everything but a hook. He has too many freckles. He sleeps like an octopus. He’s always making me watch musicals._

Superficial, shallow reasons that didn’t really mean anything when she thought about it. She likes his hair, Barry is six foot two and taller than _everyone_ , not least her five foot four self, she’s not going to care about the snoring if she gets to sleep next to him, the jacket thing is never usually a big deal because he always apologises, his freckles are cute, the octopus thing has always been a bonus because he’d sing her to sleep then fall asleep himself with his arms wrapped around her, and she likes musicals too. She knows she was just putting it off, pretending that there was any reason to negate the thing that has always been true of Barry Allen when it comes to her.

He makes her world stop.

Stop, and start again. So she gave up eventually, telling herself that she would tell him one day, and she really was going to, even after she fell after chasing that robber, she was going to tell him the next day. Then the lightning struck, and there was Patty, and she finally told him at Christmas even though it was the most painful thing she’s ever done because she knew she was hurting him. Still, she never gave up, knowing that somehow they were meant to be together, be Barry and Iris as they always had, through Patty and Scott and Colin almost murdering them all, and even when she was pretending that their married doppelgangers didn’t mean anything to her.

And then came the Mindscape. And she started to accept that – maybe – it was not on the cards for her. That Colin had altered their lives too much, that she was different from the woman in her original future, that Barry had been through too much with Patty. So even as she accepted that Barry would always be the love of her life, she started to come to terms with the fact that they wouldn’t be together. That happened, sometimes, and people were happy, right? People were happy even if they didn’t marry the love of their life. Barry would still be in her life, and…and she’s sure he would marry a nice girl, and they’d get along. She hoped it would be better than Jessica, who even though seemed to like Iris well enough at first, always got a little weird when Barry said he was going to hang out with her – and Iris knows that the reason they broke up soon after she visited during Christmas vacation was because he insisted on driving Iris to the prison when her mother got sick, even though he never admitted it.

But still, she had been fine with it.

Of course, that’s apparently when Barry decided that he _wasn’t_ fine with it.

She’d noticed and she hadn’t. She noticed that his behaviour had changed, a bit, but she either put it down to him trying to figure out how to be friends with someone who had confessed to an all-consuming love for him, or just listened when he waved it off. Barry would swing between being his usual affectionate self around her and being shy around her all of a sudden, jumping when she brushed up against him accidentally or keeping himself very still on his couch when she came over for their movie nights. He would also…linger on her, a few times, enough for her to notice, his eyes curiously soft and a small, warm smile on his face, before brushing off her questions about whether she had something on her face with a compliment about her hair or comment on her glasses.

Iris even recalls a time when they were getting coffee and, while Barry was in the bathroom, a girl had given Iris her number to give to him (after making sure that _they_ weren’t a couple). And since Iris had decided years ago that, her own feelings for him aside, she was not going to be _that_ girl – the one who didn’t tell the guy she liked about any girls that liked him because she did too – she gladly took down the number. His reaction, though, hadn’t been what she was expecting.

“Jackass.”

“What?” Barry wanted to know, feigning ignorance.

“You’re a jackass.”

“I’m not!”

“You tricked me into giving you classified information about a case we’re not even supposed to know about yet!”

“Oh, please,” he’d laughed. “Since when do I have to trick anything out of you, Miss Blabbermouth?”

“Since you know how I am when I’m hungry,” she’d said, gesturing to their food. “You think I haven’t figured out why you showed up at the lab so eager to take me to lunch? And paid for everything?”

He’d shrugged. “I just wanted to see you, Iris. A guy can’t want to take his best friend to lunch?”

“Hmph.”

He’d grinned at her and she’d sighed. “Barry, please don’t print anything until I at least authorisation to tell everyone we’re investigating it,” she’d asked. He nodded, putting a hand on his heart.

“I promise. Scout’s honour.”

She’d rolled her eyes and continued with her food until she realised that Barry was looking at her, a small smile on his face and his eyes curiously warm. “What?” she’d asked suspiciously.

“Nothing.”

“No, not ‘nothing’. You’ve been looking at me like that all through lunch,” she’d realised, throwing a fry at him. “What’s with you? Are my glasses broken or something?”

“Your glasses are perfect. You’re – everything’s fine, I’m just distracted,” he’d said quickly, standing. “I’ll be right back. Drank too much water. Don’t steal my grapes.” He’d gone, and then she’d stolen a couple of his grapes.

“Excuse me.” Iris had turned to see a pretty dark-haired woman with light brown skin and caramel-coloured eyes. “You’re, um – you’re Iris West, right?”

“Yeah…” she replies slowly. “Sorry, I’m really bad with faces…”

“No, you don’t know me. My name’s Meena Dhawan, I’m a doctoral candidate at the university. I recognised you from Barry Allen’s Facebook page?”

“Oh,” Iris replies, putting down her coffee. “Oh, right, of course, you’re a fan of his?” Her eyes widen.

“That’s really him? That’s Dr. Barry Allen?” Iris had smiled.

“The one, the only. You want to meet him? He won’t mind.” Meena had blushed.

“Well, I was actually – I mean, I actually wanted to come up and talk to him, because he was recording that podcast about the rise of modern vigilantism at the university and I wandered into the auditorium and I could not stop listening, because it was amazing! Isn’t he amazing?”

“He’s amazing,” Iris agrees, steeling herself for what’s coming up next. This happened every time they went out together. Meena had taken a deep breath.

“Anyway, I sort of got this total crush on him, and I saw him here and I wanted to talk to him, but I have to go teach a class in a minute. It’s just that – well, you’re in a lot of his Instagram photos, and I wasn’t sure whether you were his girlfriend-”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” she’d interrupted, trying for a breezy tone. “We’re just friends.” A frown from Meena.

“Are you sure? Because from where I was sitting it kind of seemed like he was into you. Like, _really_ into you.”

Iris had shaken her head. “Best friends. We’ve been friends since we were kids.” Meena had looked slightly unsure so Iris had taken the leap, the leap she always took whenever things like this happened. At least then she’d give Barry the number and he could call her and she could fall back into the familiar. “Look, do you want me to give him your number?”

“Would you? That would be great!” Iris had taken the number down and Meena had rushed off, still blushing and very grateful, and that was when Barry came back out of the bathroom, his face brightening when he saw her.

“So, someone paid you a compliment,” she’d said as he sat back down. He’d smiled at her, stealing one of her chips.

“Oh, yeah? Was it someone else wanting Miss Miracle’s autograph? Because that’s more of a compliment to you than me, you know.”

“Haha, no, doofus. A girl gave me her number for you.” She’d injected some false brightness into her voice, pitched perfectly after years of practice, and slid it across the table. “She seems nice! Meena, her name is.”

“Oh.” He’d still been smiling, but there was a kind of frown on his face. “I…Oh.”

“Yeah, she’s a PhD student at the university, and she heard one of your seminars. I know you don’t know her, but she thought you were cute, she was pretty, and she’d be a nice change from Patty.”

Then the smile had completely disappeared. “You think so?”

“I do.” She’d scooted closer in her chair. “I know it has to be…scary, the idea of dating after Patty. But you shouldn’t keep yourself closed off, Barry, or you’ll miss out on something great. You of all people deserve to date someone amazing.”

He’d looked down at the number briefly, then back at her. “And you think I should?”

“Why not?”

“Well, I was…I’m not really dating anyone,” he’d said, giving her an odd look. “Because of – work, and…other stuff.”

“What other stuff? Barry, if it’s about Miss Miracle stuff, I’m sure we can figure out the team schedule so you can actually have a personal life. Linda says she wants more experience with the comms, she can replace you on shifts with me-”

“No!” he’d said quickly. “No, that’s fine – it’s not…I’ll think about it. Um. You really think it’s a good idea?”

“Well, I may have to do a background check on her to make sure she doesn’t have a vendetta against our families,” she’d laughed, “but I think it’s a great idea. Unless there’s someone else you’re thinking of dating?”

“No. No, there’s no one.” He’d stuffed the number in his pocket, not looking at her. “Hey, what about you?”

“What about me?”

He’d folded his arms on the table. “Are you…thinking of dating anyone?”

She’d shrugged, stirring her coffee. “Actually, I think I’m done with the whole dating thing for a while.”

Barry had swallowed. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, my life is way too complicated. Eighty percent of it is still Miss Miracle stuff – I haven’t found the right balance yet, and then I’d have to date someone who’s cool with me putting on golden leather and then running off to save the world, but not telling him about it. Where am I going to find a guy like that?”

“Well, I wouldn’t – I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, if he liked you. The right guy for you would…” He’d shaken his head. “There’s nothing on any earth that would stop him from wanting to be with you, Iris. There’s nobody in the world who could ever come close to what you would mean to him. And all that stuff with being a superhero would just make you more precious to him than you already are. So.” He’d shrugged. “Besides, it’s you. Anybody who didn’t recognise that they’d be the luckiest guy on the planet if they had you needs their head examined.”

“You’re my best friend,” she’d laughed, going back to her food, “you have to say that.”

They’d had to go back to work soon after that, but she’d noticed that Barry had seemed a bit sad throughout the rest of their conversation. (“Of course I was sad, Iris,” he’d laughed when she brought it up last week. “The girl I was in love with was telling me to go date other people.”) But now she’s noticing, they’ve always been the centre of each other’s world. She had spent so long agonising about whether Barry felt the same way about her that she’d missed all the signs. And when she lost her memory, and Barry had explained to “Jenni” that she was the only girl that he knew how to love, she realised how true it was. Barry may not have known about his feelings, but he put her above himself all the time, he supported and believed in whatever it was she wanted to do, he protected her from every awful thing that the world gave her. So they’ve always been on this path, really. They’ve always been together.

For just as long as she’s always been his Iris, he’s always been her Barry.

***

Barry sends off the last of his final drafts off to be copy-edited before sitting back in his chair, rubbing his eyes and then glancing at the clock. He’s supposed to meet Malina, Eddie and his parents for lunch at Jitters, but he does want to call Iris again to see how she’s doing. He did, a few minutes ago, but she didn’t pick up and he’s glad. Iris is terrible about taking days off, often worrying that people will figure out that Miss Miracle is taking time off and attack then, or someone too powerful for Malina would attack. Between himself and Francine, it’s a gargantuan effort keeping her to her designated resting time.

“But it’s important,” Jesse had told him last week, right before he went off to his meeting. “In the nine months since I’ve met her, Iris has been attacked by a shark twice, almost stabbed by an immortal magician, _actually_ stabbed by an alien from another planet, attacked by two different aliens from two other planets, one of whom was Superwoman, set on fire, almost blown up, smacked in the head with a metal pole, shot with a gun that freezes people, thrown at a bus, and I’m pretty sure she can name each of her concussions and start a football team with them. Oh, and she died and came back to life. She might be one of the most powerful people on the planet, but she is not invincible and she needs rest.”

“You want me to tell her to have a nap?”

“I want you to make sure she sleeps on her day off and doesn’t do anything too taxing,” Jesse says. “That woman is hard-headed as ever-living hell, but she listens to you. Bat your eyelashes at her or make one of your speeches, that’ll work.”

“Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you, Jesse?”

But still, he’s right. Sometimes when she’s tired her powers go haywire, and then objects start moving around their apartment at random. Twice this week, Iris has crawled into bed beside him way past midnight, only to be gone on an early patrol before he wakes up the next morning, and that’s even outside of the all-nighters. She’s training the intern at work, training Malina as her powers increase, and working on patents for other people and making modifications to her suit. The fact that he woke up this morning and Iris was actually next to him is kind of amazing given what’s been happening of late. Tonight, he’s looking forward to dinner and a DVD with his girlfriend.

Someone knocks on his door and Barry groans inwardly when he sees Jake. “Going out for lunch?”

“Yeah, I’m meeting some people. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“I wanted to ask you about some of your cases,” he says, sitting across from him. Barry nods, closing down his email program.

“Shoot.”

“That Woodward chick.”

“Girder? What about her?”

“Didn’t she go to school with you and Iris?”

Barry frowns briefly. “Yeah, Carmichael Elementary.”

“Small world,” he says. “Is that why she came after you?”

“She came after me because she wanted me to write about her,” he frowns, trying to remember the details. “And she had a crush on me, I guess. I don’t think she actually liked me so much as she liked the idea of me paying her any attention. She was kind of a bully.”

“I bet Iris didn’t like the person who used to bully her in elementary school coming after her best friend.”

Barry pauses. “I never put that in the story.” But Jake just shrugs, waving a hand.

“I’m a reporter, I dig and I hear stuff. So, you said in your update that “a friend gave you an idea for a new name” for Miss Miracle. Who was it?”

By this point he can feel his suspicions rising a bit. “Iris,” he says slowly. “She came to see me in the hospital after Girder attacked and she suggested it.”

“And Miss Miracle agreed to it? Just like that?”

“Well, there were only a few people who believed in her, and I made her look good,” he replies lightly to hide his irritation. Why is Jake so interested in Miss Miracle, all of a sudden? He’s always thought she was a phony and overrated. And why all the questions about Iris? Just as he’s about to say something else, there’s a knock on the door. “Barry?”

“Linda?” he says, surprised. She slips into his office, shutting the door behind her. “Sorry, if I’m interrupting-”

“It’s fine. Linda, this is Jake Tapper, Crime. Jake, this is my friend Linda, she works for Wayne Industries.”

“I make the guns,” she says cheerfully, shaking his hand. She looks between him and Barry. “I can come back, if-”

“It’s fine, Linda,” Barry repeats. “Jake was just leaving. Unless you have any more questions about people who have tried to kill me because I’m Miss Miracle’s social media manager?”

Jake just shrugs and leaves without a word, and Linda sits in the chair he just vacated, reaching for the M&Ms in the bowl on his desk. “Is that the guy Malina says dyes his hair?”

“Yeah, Jake. He’s an ass.”

“He’s weird. Hey, did you know he was a rodeo clown in high school? Malina showed us pictures.”

Barry raises an eyebrow. “She’s not supposed to use her privileges for that, is she?”

“No, but who cares?” She pauses, looks around. “Are you busy?”

He frowns. “No, Linda, I’m not busy. Are you okay?”

“Not…really.” She sighs, sitting back in her chair. “Look, I don’t even know if I need to tell you this-”

“Linda,” he says gently. “I’m your friend. If you’re worried about something, you can tell me.”

“Right. I – kind of – feel like I’m being followed.”

“Followed?”

“Yeah, a little. I’ll be getting coffee or be walking to the market and suddenly I feel this…prickling on the back of my neck, like somoene’s watching me. It’s been happening for a while, but I never see who it is. And then last week, at work…”

He frowns, getting out a notepad. “What happened at work?” He writes down _Jitters, Harvey’s Market, Wayne Industries_ , and then taps his pen on the desk. She takes a deep breath.

“You remember when you came to interview me at Wayne Industries? And you saw all the security guards standing out by the front?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I was leaving the other day and apparently, someone asked one of the guards about me. But that place is where all the employees eat lunch – outside on the quad, so the guards could barely remember what they looked like since so many people pass by looking for people. And they managed to ask the guards in one of the places that isn’t covered by the cameras.”

“Right,” Barry says. “And no one’s come up to talk to you? Nothing else has happened that’s out of the ordinary?”

“No, and…Normally I wouldn’t worry about it. Like I would probably think it was nothing, you know? But with everything that’s been happening – Calamity made me a villain, Eddie and Henry and Mal are spies, you’re a reporter working for the Justice League-”

“Linda, it’s fine,” he assures her, his mind already working. Linda is a senior technician for Wayne Industries – there’s any number of people who could be following her. “I’m glad you told me. But why didn’t you tell Eddie? Or my dad, for that matter?”

“I didn’t want to bother them.” She wrinkles her nose. “They might have thought I was being stupid.

“You know they wouldn’t have thought that,” he replies, but she shrugs.

“It’s not just that. They’re spies, they would have gone into attack mode immediately. But you’re so _Barry_ , you’re reassuring. I see the way you are with Iris when she gets worried, how you always calm her down and make her think rationally before she does something. I was actually gonna call her-”

“No,” he interrupts. “No, my girlfriend was actually sleeping when I called her, so nobody is talking to her about anything until she gets a decent night’s rest.”

“Aw,” Linda grins. “Look at you, all protective. I can see why she talks about you all the time.”

He smiles a little. “She talks about me?”

“Yeah, she does. It’s really dumb to swallow cashews without chewing them, Barry.”

“And on that note, you can go,” he says, pointing to the door, and Linda laughs.

“Kidding!”

“Whatever. I’ll talk to Eddie and see what’s up with everything, but it’ll be fine, alright? I promise.”

“Good,” she says, standing up. Barry grabs his jacket and follows her out. “Are you on duty tonight?”

“Yeah, apparently, Iris put on the schedule that Mal and Chesca are going out today. Dr. Asshole and I are supporting. Hopefully there’s not too many heart-eyes being thrown around the place.”

As usual, this topic makes Barry frown and he makes a noncommittal noise in his throat. Linda laughs again. “Oh, my God, Barry – you cannot still have a problem with this.”

“He’s an asshole,” he mutters. “And he’s grumpy. And it’s _Jesse_.”

“And Mal likes him,” she points out. “And he likes her. And they’re actually kind of sweet together.”

“Hmph.”

“You’re just upset because you were the last to know – which you shouldn’t have been _because it was so obvious_.”

***

“Do I look like that when I pace?”

Iris, barely looking up from the report that Malina and Eddie sent them before coming back to the city, nods. “Yes.”

“Really?”

“Actually, Jesse might be worse than you right now, Barry,” Chesca yawns. She throws a Twizzler at him. “Oh my God, would you calm down? They’re on their way.”

Jesse stops his pacing to briefly glare at Chesca, who’s back to looking at her iPad. “You said that three hours ago.”

“That’s because it was true three hours ago.”

“Why are they taking so long?”

“Traffic on the Coast City Expressway, they left late, and they had to make a detour to go talk to Waller,” Barry answers. “Dude, cool it. They put Plunder away, they’re bringing all the guns back. Maybe smile or something?”

Jesse scowls instead and goes back to his pacing. Iris nudges Barry. “Your pacing is cuter, at least,” she tells him. Barry shakes his head.

“I just don’t get why he’s so worried. Eddie and Mal are both trained in this, and the threat’s been neutralised.”

A few days after Iris lost – and then regained – her memories, Mal called saying that they’d apprehended Jackie Murillo. Apparently stalking her like a civilian had paid off, since she hadn’t been expecting someone that wasn’t Miss Miracle to come after her. Now, after dropped Murillo off with the authorities, they were on their way back for a debriefing. Iris looks at him.

“He’s worried because…well, you’ll see.”

“What is it? Did one of them get-”

“Oh my God,” Linda interrupts, putting down her soldering gun. She takes off her goggles and points it at Jesse. “Iris, if you do not make him stop, I will.”

“This is Malina’s first mission without a metahuman backing her up,” Jesse points out. “She didn’t have Iris covering for her – and _she_ screws up all the time.”

“Okay, ow,” Iris says, irritated. Barry laughs and she rubs her eyes. “Ignoring that drive-by to say that Malina put in her report that neither she nor Eddie suffered any big injuries from when Plunder attacked them with the gun. So would you please sit down?”

“They’re late!”

“And you’re giving me motion sickness,” Linda replies. She waves the gun threateningly. “They will be fine, so unless you want me to glue your ass to a desk-”

 “They’re here,” Iris says quickly. Jesse stares at her.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve been watching the elevators instead of wearing a hole in the floor.” Iris presses the intercom. “Dr. Wells, could you come up from your office, please?”

Jesse starts to get his medical supplies in order and Chesca rolls her eyes. “He’s almost as bad as Dr. Frost. Sociopathic tendencies aside, of course.”

“Of course,” Barry says wryly. Chesca shrugs.

“If I knew he was going to be so annoying, I would have showed him the tracking on the GPS.”

Barry and Iris stare at her. “Chesca,” Iris says calmly. “Did you put trackers on Eddie and Mal and then _let Jesse drive me insane with his damn pacing_?”

“It seemed funny at the time!”

“CHESCA!” they say together.

“Hey, it’s kind of common knowledge – everyone has trackers because we keep getting kidnapped. Barry even has two because not only does he have the tracker in the phone, he also has the watch from when you ran around flirting with him-”

“Trying to protect him,” Iris says, and her friend waves a hand.

“Whatever. And we can always tell where everyone is – which Jesse knows. He’s just worrying because it’s Mal.”

Barry frowns. “Why would it being Mal worry him?”

Iris and Chesca share a look, but before he can say anything Jesse comes back in the room with his supplies. “Are they here yet?”

“Elevator doors are opening,” Iris informs them, and then tries not to smile when Jesse starts fixing his hair. They hear Eddie and Mal talking before they see them, their voices floating down the corridor.

“Stanton totally would not have beaten me,” Mal says dismissively. “Are you kidding?”

“She was better at recon than you.”

“Only because she never stops whispering.”

“You are a _spy_ , Malina.”

Iris smiles. “Yeah, they sound fine alright.”

Malina walks into the room first, her face lighting up when she sees everyone. She hugs Barry first, while Eddie goes straight to Chesca. “Hey, beanpole!” she says fondly. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” he says. Then he lets her go and hugs Eddie as well, while he hugs Iris. “Glad to see you guys made it home in one piece.”

“Me too, especially with the way this one drives,” he replies.

“You let her drive?”

“Nobody _lets_ me do anything,” she sniffs. “Eddie lost the bet, I’m the one who found Jackie’s location, so I got to drive back.”

“Next time I’ll just take the hit,” he mutters. “I was almost a memory.”

Barry grins. “I’m gonna go call mom and dad, okay? I’ll be right back.”

Malina doesn’t hear any of this, because she’s now standing in front of Jesse with a small smile on her face. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he replies quietly. He smiles as well. “You – you’re back.”

“I told you I would be.” Linda sidles up next to Iris and Chesca.

“This is about to be the easiest money I made since you jumped into Barry’s arms at the airport.”

Jesse, meanwhile, has started looking at the medical report that they sent over. “Are you alright? It says that you hurt yourself while you broke into Plunder’s apartment.”

“Piece of cake,” she shrugs, still smiling. “But I appreciate you worrying.” Jesse’s cheeks flame.

“Well, I appreciate…you appreciating. Um. Well. If you’re sure. Because I can do a full medical workup if you want, since you’re the only one we need to worry about – Oh.” He says, finally seeing Eddie standing next to his sister with an irritated expression on his face. “Hi, Eddie.”

“I’m here,” he says. “Been here the whole time, actually.”

“Oh. How do you feel?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Great.” He turns back to Malina. “Now, about that medical…”

Eddie comes and stands next to the girls. “I feel strangely neglected,” he sighs. Linda looks at him.

“What about Chesca?”

“We’re at the point in our relationship where I’m used to dating a spy,” she replies. She kisses Eddie on the cheek. “And he knows how I feel about him.”

“And if not I could always tell you about all the times she worried about you,” Iris says blandly. Eddie looks pleased by this.

“You worried about me?”

“All the time. _What do you think he’s like under the mask, Iris? Do you think Waller punished him for not catching Patty, Iris? Do you think I should talk to him about his sister, Iris?_ ”

“Oh, but your constant talking about Barry was what?” Chesca counters, blushing. “Fun? I thought I was in love with him by the end of the first month.”

“Um, guys?” Linda interrupts, pointing. Iris and Chesca shut up immediately when they see that Malina and Jesse aren’t talking at all – because they’re kissing in the middle of the Cortex. Eddie raises his eyebrows, Iris whistles, and that, of course, is the moment that Barry comes back into the room with Dr. Wells behind him.

“Okay, so mom and dad are…what the hell?”

“Ahem,” Iris says quickly. “Dr. Wells, when Mal is…done, could you check her powers? Barry, come with me.”

“When,” he splutters, looking back as Iris leads him into the corridor. “Are they-”

“Kind of.”

“How long have-”

“A couple of months.”

“They were dating for-”

“They’re not dating, they just like each other.”

Barry blinks down at her, confused. “I – did not know that,” he says, glancing between them and Iris. “How did you know?”

“Barry, I’m a mind-reader. Besides, they were kind of obvious.”

“They were? Who else knows?”

“Pretty sure everyone knows, Bar.”

“Oh.” He’s quiet for a few seconds. “Yeah, okay, but _Jesse_?”

***

“He’s actually pretty mellow when he’s with her,” Linda continues as they walk outside. “And he smiles more. It’s kind of amazing.”

“Hmph.”

“Barry, come on, she’s your sister and she’s happy.”

“Right,” he says. And it’s not that he’s not happy _for_ her, it’s just…well, he was kind of blindsided by it. She and Jesse have been on a few dates (which he knows because Iris never stops talking about how cute they are, despite his repeated insistence that she stop), and they seem pretty into each other, but he has no idea when it happened. “Of course, you’re right. Hey, I’m meeting the others, you want me to walk you back to work?”

“No, I’m good,” she says. She hugs him. “And thanks for listening, Barry, really.”

“Of course. I’ll get Eddie and Henry on it, maybe talk to Gideon as well, so-”

The thing that Barry will recall later is the fact that it was lightning. Not only is it patently strange – it’s the middle of the day, and there had been no summer storms to indicate its arrival – there was no thunder preceding it. But he has very little time to process that because in the same second that the lightning strikes – a vicious slash of electricity that rips through the sky – an explosion rocks the world under their feet. “Are you okay?” Barry asks.

“Yeah, fine – what _was_ …Oh my God. Oh my God, Barry, _look_!”

Barry looks to where Linda is pointing, just in time to see a giant fireball bursting into the sky, leaving behind a thick fog of black smoke as whatever has just exploded starts to burn. Screams of panic and horror erupt all around them and Barry turns to Linda.

“Can you get back to STAR Labs?”

“If I get in my car before news about this spreads, traffic won’t be so bad. What are you gonna do?”

“What I do best,” he says grimly. “Gideon?”

“Yes, Mr. Allen?”

“Call the social media assistant at CCPD and tell them I’m coming in to liaise with them about what Miss Miracle and Little Miss Miracle are doing. Then call CCPN and tell them where I am, and tell them I will update them on the safety on the affected area if I find out anything before they do. Call Chesca, Dr. Wells and Jesse, tell them to stop whatever they’re doing and Linda will meet them there – we’re going to need all the help we can get with this. And then call Mal and Iris and tell them…tell them to hurry, Gideon.”

***

Her city is on fire.

That’s what it looks like when Gideon wakes her up with an alarm that rips her straight out of sleep. She has a message from Linda, about six missed calls from Chesca, and a slew of pictures from Gideon that have apparently been taken by a number of bystanders on and around the Coast City Expressway, which was carrying an oil tanker on its way from a port before it was struck by a bolt of lightning. And exploded.

Iris is used to this enough that she acts on autopilot – tying her hair up in a ponytail, grabbing her ring and slipping it on, taking a power bar that Barry makes her keep in the beside drawer because she’s always lightheaded when she wakes up – but she’s still shocked when she looks out of the window. She and Barry live in Midtown Central City and the Expressway is on the other side, a long highway connecting Coast City to Star City and Central City. But even from here she can see the black clouds of smoke rising into the air and almost feels like she’s choking on it herself.

The phone in her suit starts ringing and she squares her shoulders. “This is Miss Miracle.”

“Iris?”

“Barry,” she replies. “Where are you?”

“I’m at CCPD, you?”

“I’m heading out, what do we got?”

“Lightning hit the tank and exploded. The first explosion was small and they got the driver out, but there is oil _everywhere_ , it’s burning, and since it was right after a toll booth people are trapped. You need to-”

“Evacuate the people before emergency services can get there and put out the fire,” she finishes. “Have you called Mal?”

“Yeah, she should be meeting you there.”

“Good. Wally should be on the scene too, the hospital usually send everyone they can for stuff like this, but we’re going to need Jesse at STAR Labs in case anything happens to us so he can’t offer his services.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Barry.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

She hears Barry let out a breath on the phone before he replies. “I love you,” he says quietly. Iris hangs up quickly before she lets herself dwell on it. They have a rule, since just after they started dating, that before she goes on a mission, they have to say _I love you_. Not because they’ve forgotten, or even for encouragement – but because Iris once told Barry that, if she didn’t make it back from a mission, she wants the last thing she heard from him, in a small, intimate moment like this that belongs only to them, to be that he loves her. And that she loves him. All of the stuff in the field – giving instructions, sharing updates, firing out warnings – don’t really count, because then they are Miss Miracle and Barry Allen, her reporter. Before they go into those roles, she wants to remember what they’ve always been and what they always will be – she’s his Iris and he’s her Barry.

Iris doesn’t need directions – the plumes of smoke are acrid and relentless, frighteningly visible against the clear blue sky. She flies instead of teleporting so she can assess the damage, and for a moment she has no idea what to think. The tanker on its side, flames billowing upwards, but Iris can see that this isn’t the worst of it. It’s blocking the toll booth, preventing anyone from getting past it because of its size, not to mention the fact that oil is leaking out of it and spilling onto the road. Because of the traffic on both sides, everyone’s backed up on the freeway, trying to make their way away from the wreckage. The fact that the smoke is billowing faster and faster worries her, because it means that the oil is burning quickly.

“She’s here!”

“Help us, Miss Miracle!”

“Miss Miracle’s here!”

It always overwhelms her, the relief that people feel when they see her. She had felt like she was alone the night her father was murdered, terrified that no one was coming to save her, so the thought that she’s giving the comfort no one gave to her that night is almost overwhelming. Everyone is moving quickly away from their cars, but they’re choking up the road so no one can move quickly. “Chesca, can you calculate the blast radius from what happens if the whole tanker explodes?”

She hears tapping and then her friend’s voice comes into her ears. “Something of this size? About two miles, why?”

“Because it’s going to take too long before the firefighters get here,” she says. “If I get everyone away from the tollbooth, there’ll be less casualties.”

“Don’t forget about me, Miss Miracle.”

Iris smiles in relief when Malina flashes up next to her, eyes narrowed against the smoke. “Where do you need me, boss?”

“I need you on the other side of this booth. Anyone have any idea where the fire engines are?”

“There are half a dozen heading over there now,” Barry tells them. “The chief of CCFD just told me – three squad, three truck.”

“You and I are going to evacuate these people away from the oil,” Iris explains. “The first explosion was small and the oil is leaking out, but the minute the fire catches up to it-”

“Got it,” she nods.

“And when we’re done with that, we need to clear a path for the firefighters,” she continues, “so they can tackle the fire. Barry, I need you to call any emergency services that need to airlift people out of here to gather at the edges of the two-mile perimeter that we’re going to set up. Tell the police, and Chesca – send them the coordinates. Malina,” she adds to her partner. “From now on, no flying anywhere near that tank and keep your eye on the flames. That thing could go up any second and we can’t risk getting caught out by it. For now, concentrate on the people with the burns.”

Malina salutes. “Yes, ma’am.”

They work quickly, trying to fight the rising panic over the fact that there’s literally a bomb separating them. Iris and Malina teleport people away from the leak, leaving the fire to rage as emergency services finally arrive and treat the people who got burned in the first explosion. The oil has continued to spread and she’s grateful everyone has turned off their engines. From what she’s gathered and what she knows about these kinds of fires, the lightning meant that the tanker crashed into the tollbooth and set the whole thing alight, but the fact that the leak started before the explosion mean that it wasn’t as big as it could have been. But there’s still oil everywhere and the fire isn’t out, so until each and every person is away, they aren’t going to rest.

The heat bears down on her as she works and she tries to remain calm, very aware that if she starts panicking, everyone around her will as well. She makes her way over to a family that are standing on top of their car to avoid the oil that’s slowly leaking towards them, waiting to be rescued. There’s two small children, a dog, and their mothers.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” she says briskly, as if everything is totally normal. It’s something she learned early on, and something she taught Malina – if you stay collected, people will feel safer. “Okay, first thing, is anyone hurt?”

They all shake their heads no and Iris nods, turning to the small children. They’re twins, a boy and a girl of about five. “Can you all tell me your names?”

They rattle off their names and Iris repeats them for Barry’s benefit, who she knows will have the Miss Miracle Facebook and Twitter pages up so he can report that people were marked as rescued by her, assuring their loved ones that they’re safe. “Okay, I’m going to take you to the ambulances first, then come back to your parents. I need you both to hold hands, and one of you to hold…”

“N-Noodles,” the boy fills in.

“Noodles. Ready?”

Iris wraps her arms tight around them both; the more people she has to teleport at once, the more tired she’ll get. She drops them off and comes back for the mothers, who are more relieved that their children are safe than anything else. She takes them next, after going back and getting their IDs and valuables. And then she keeps going, getting families, couples, tourists and more out of their cars, one eye on the fire that’s still burning.

“Fire Departments here,” Malina tells her over the comms, voice tight with exertion. Iris grunts with effort as she tries to dislodge a man who’s arm got trapped by his car seat when it crashed trying to avoid the blast. When she finishes, she looks up and frowns. “What? I don’t see them.”

“They’re on my side. They’re putting out the fire with their trucks.”

“ _What_? Malina – how far are you with evacuating?”

“About mile,” she replies, worry creeping into her voice. “Why? Iris, what’s going on?”

Iris curses as she spots several geysers of water attacking the fire from the other side of the booth. “Shit,” she mutters. “ _Shit_ – Barry, someone tell them to stop! Tell them to wait!”

“Wait? Why?”

“Because we’re not done! They’re putting out the fire, yeah, but they’re also making steam as the water evaporates. That’s going to heat the oil up even more and if the temperature gets higher than 400 degrees-”

“The whole thing could do up all at once,” Chesca realises. Iris starts moving faster as the flames increase. The steam is roiling and tumbling towards the sky, heating everything within distance.

“ _Tell them to wa_ -”

It happens between one breath and the next. One minute she’s heading towards the next family stood atop their car, and the next the entire world has exploded, bathing everything around her in orange. Tears come to her eyes as the smoke blooms around her.

And then screaming starts.

The fire’s spreading, faster than she ever thought fire could travel, and then Iris is grabbing people frantically out of the way. She feels like she’s in a never-ending cycle – as soon as she gets someone to safety, the flames dance tantalising closer, fed by the stream of oil on the floor. Just as she’s nearing the end, a large column of flame shoots out towards a father and his daughter as they run. Without thinking, Iris flies straight to them.

“Wait – Iris!” Malina says. “What are you doing?”

Chesca’s tapping frantically at the controls. “Iris, _stop_!”

“IRIS!” Barry shouts, his voice the loudest over everyone’s yelling at her not to go. “ _IRIS!”_

The flames lick at her back as she grabs the girl and covers her with her own body, gritting her teeth against the brutal heat. She can’t breathe, can barely see, but she still looks around frantically around for her father. But she can’t see him.

Iris hears the warning signs of the explosion before it happens and teleports them out before they’re hit. The tanker goes up, completely, columns of flame blasting upwards. Iris drags them both away, smarting from the burns on her arms, and only then does she notice the girl is screaming something. “Dad!” she shouts. “ _Daddy_!”

Iris grits her teeth and flies back – and is immediately thrown back by another, smaller explosion. Her head bangs against a car and she thinks she feels one of her ribs break. The last thing she remembers before Malina arrives is that little girl, screaming for her father until her voice goes hoarse.

***

Barry practically wears a hole in the floor.

He’s used to it. He is, especially since they’re always paired on shifts together since they have a shorthand – nobody understands Iris better than Barry. So he knows that Iris can handle pretty much anything thrown at her. That does not mean he wants to see her jump into explosions.

Both times he felt as if his heart were going to stop. He’d moved to his apartment by that time since he didn’t want to confuse the police messages with the Miss Miracle ones, so he was communicating with Iris and STAR Labs at the same time. That is, until Iris said that the fire department had to stop – then, he was trying to contact them. But it had been too late and everything exploded, and it looked like not even Iris could survive that. Then she went in a second time, and even though he knows she came out, he hasn’t been able to stay calm since Malina took her back so STAR Labs. The worst part was that he couldn’t even be there.

“Is she okay?” he’d asked Jesse. “Is she breathing?”

“She’s breathing, Barry-”

“Can I see her?”

“Barry, she’s unconscious-”

“ _What_? What happened?”

“She inhaled way more smoke that she should have,” he replies. “And she has three bruised ribs and third-degree burns on one of her arms. She’s fine,” he adds, knowing Barry’s about to interrupt. “She just…well, you saw today. Her mom is here, though. And you can’t be here, Barry, you know that. People think that Miss Miracle died, you have-”

As if on cue, the call waiting dings and Barry curses. Everyone, from CCPN to the Mayor, not to mention Lois, Bree and Hal (who called from space) have been calling him to find out Miss Miracle’s status. That doesn’t even touch on the amount of people who are tweeting and messaging and writing frantic messages on the Facebook wall. It’s times like this when he just wants to make sure the woman he loves is alright, but they both have a responsibility to the city first.

“Okay,” he sighs. “Okay, fine, it – you said Mal was alright-”

“She’s fine,” Jesse replies. “She had some minor burns and she broke a finger, but things weren’t as intense on her side of the tollbooth. Look, Barry, I have to go. Francine will bring Iris home.”

“Okay,” he repeats, because he really can’t ignore the Mayor’s office anymore. “Thanks, Jesse.”

He hangs up and then spends at least another hour fielding calls and answering emails, all the while watching and waiting for Iris to walk in the door. The fires went out hours ago but he can still see the smoke from their apartment, and he doesn’t even want to think about the damage they’re going to have to deal with in the morning.

“No, Mayor Bellows,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “No, she’s fine. Of course, I’ll ask her about the clean-up but you know she usually does these on her own…Well, as soon as you know a date, I’ll-”

As he’s speaking the door opens and Francine walks in, followed by Iris. Barry smiles in relief and Iris smiles back, just as the Mayor starts making a list of demands. “I’ll let her know as soon as she’s recovered. No, she _is_ fine, the rescue just took a lot out of her…”

Francine hugs him and kisses him quickly on the cheek before saying something to Iris. “Of course, if there’s a metahuman element to the attack, I and CCPN will of course be on hand to investigate what’s happening. With the full support of the CCPD, of course.”

Francine leaves and Iris takes off her jacket as he keeps talking. She looks normal, if not a little tired, the only visible sign of injury a bandage on her lower arm. She smiles at him a little to let him know she’s okay and folds her arms, waiting for him to finish. “Well, I don’t actually own the building,” he continues. “So if anything needs to be conducted there I need to ask Iris and the employees. Of course, I’m-”

Barry breaks off right then, because Iris’ face has crumpled and she’s shoved a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking. She says something that resembles his name through her sobs, reaching for him, and Barry goes to her, wrapping an arm around her. “Madam Mayor, I’m going to have to call you back about STAR Labs,” he says quickly. “By the end of today. Have a good evening. _Hey_ ,” he says, after he’s hung up the phone. He cups her face with one hand. “Iris, what is it? Are you hurt? Do you want me to call Jesse?”

“N-No,” she replies, sniffling. “I – I just… _God_ , Barry, I t-tried, I really did…”

“Of course you tried,” he says. “A lot more people would have died if you hadn’t been there.”

“But I should have saved more,” she replies, her voice wobbling. “I sh-should…I should have saved him…”

“What are you talking about? Who’s him?”

“Before the blast knocked me out,” she says. “When the heat made the tank explode, there was this little girl, and her dad, and I went in to go get them. But it was so… _hot_ , Barry, I was covering her with my body and I couldn’t see anything, and my whole body felt like it was b-burning, and when I went back to get the dad I got hit.” She pauses, her tears coming fresh. “And then when I woke up Malina said he had been burned to death. I wasn’t fast enough to save him-”

“Iris-”

“And now someone else is going to grow up without a dad because of me-”

Iris dissolves into sobs, the force of them shaking her body in his arms. Barry sighs and pulls her into him, keeping her safe in his embrace, because this is the part that nobody ever sees or talks about when you’re a superhero – the simple, brutal truth that you cannot save everyone who needs you. And there is no real protection from it, either, so this is all her can do. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a superhero or a journalist or a cop, the one fear that they all share is helplessness in the face of something like this.

“Shh,” he whispers, stroking her hair softly. “Shh, Iris, it’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s _not_ okay, Barry,” she disagrees. “I’m supposed to save them, I’m supposed to be better-”

“ _Hey_ ,” he interrupts firmly. He cups her face and tilts it up to him. Her brown eyes are shining with tears, and Barry brushes them away with his thumbs. “Look at me. There is _no one_ , on this earth or any other, that the people of Central City would rather have protecting them than you, do you understand me? You’re enough for them, you – you’re _more_ than enough for them. I know you, so I know there will never be a time when you don’t give everything you have to protect this city. Don’t stop believing that, don’t you are. Alright?”

Iris blinks, tears falling down her cheeks, and nods. “O-Okay.”

“Okay. Do you need me to do anything? You’re sure don’t want me to call Jesse?”

She sighs, wiping her eyes herself. “No. No, I’m fine. Would you mind just…holding me? For a minute?”

Barry pulls her back to him and she folds her arms against his chest, resting her head against the soft cotton of his shirt. His arms wrap around her and he rests his cheek on her hair. He’s getting better at this, the not losing his mind to panic every time Iris goes on a mission, but that doesn’t mean he always wants to hold her like this – to know in his bones that she’s okay. “Your heart’s beating really fast,” she remarks absently after a several minutes, her voice steadier than it was before.

“My girlfriend jumped into a fireball. Twice.”

“Sorry.”

Barry swallows and kisses her on the forehead, before pulling back to look at her. She has a bandage on her forehead and she’s a little feverish, and there are small cuts in various places. He pushes some hair away from her head, touching one of the bruises on her face. “What’d they do to my girl, huh?” he asks quietly. Iris gives him a soft smile.

“I’m just a little banged up, Barry.” He sighs, pressing his forehead against hers.

“You’re okay,” he smiles, finally letting himself be relieved.

“I’m okay.”

“I love you.”

She looks up at him, stroking his cheek softly. “Not like I love you.”

“Wanna bet?”

Barry manages to get some food in her, and she finally falls asleep, exhausted and curled up with her head in his lap in front of the TV. He strokes her hair absently as he watches the footage of the fires and the clips of Malina and Iris flitting in and out of them, and then feels himself pulling her tighter against him. Times like this, he’s always reminded of how close he comes to losing her. His phone buzzes and he breathes a sigh of relief when he sees it isn’t the police or anyone from the paper or the Mayor’s office. “Jesse?”

“Hi, Barry,” Jesse says. He turns the volume of the TV down. “How are you?”

“Tired,” he admits. “But good. You?”

“The same, fortunately. How’s the patient?”

“Her temperature is normal now, she doesn’t feel any dizziness or nausea, and she felt some fatigue but I figure that must just be from the day.”

“Has she eaten? Could she keep her food down?”

“Yeah, she’s been fine the whole night so far.”

“Good. Now, the first thing we should do is test her breathing. Tell her to take three deep breaths and describe what you hear.”

“I…” Barry looks down at Iris, her head resting on a cushion and her cheek resting in her palm. “Jesse, come on, she’s sleeping. I don’t want to wake her.”

He sighs. “Right, well, you’re obviously the best person to keep an eye on her. Just make sure she doesn’t have difficulty breathing and if she starts coughing uncontrollably, call me.”

“Will do. Thanks, Jesse, really. We appreciate it.”

“Of course,” he says easily, before pausing. “How are you doing?”

Barry shakes his head. “I don’t know. Usually it’s just another Tuesday in Central City but…there was a school bus, Jesse.”

“Yeah, I heard. Trip to the zoo. What are we thinking?”

“Iris thinks it’s a meta and I might have an idea of who it is, but there’s a lot of stuff she says we need to get through first. Tomorrow Iris is going to the scene after the hazmat people have cleared the area to determine what caused the explosion and how the fire started. Then I have to get myself assigned to the story and mom and Julio have to get themselves on the case if it _is_ a meta, which means we’ll need Chesca and Mal as well.”

“Well, we do call ourselves the Miracle Workers for a reason,” he says lightly. “I see we’re going to have to pull off several in the near future.” Barry laughs.

“Looks like it. You getting some sleep? Can’t have our favourite asshole doctor on anything less than top form.”

“We’re having dinner. I’m at aunt Helena’s house,” he explains. “Didn’t want to be alone after…everything.”

“Right.” Barry pulls the blanket tighter around Iris. “See you tomorrow, Jesse.”

Just as he hangs up Iris shifts, snuffling into the pillow, and then sits up, looking around frantically. “What?” she asks groggily. “What happened? Do I have to go?”

“Iris-”

“Damn it, where’s my ring-”

“Shh, honey, nothing happened,” he says soothingly, cupping her cheek. “It was just Jesse on the phone. You can go back to sleep.”

She blinks, rubbing her eyes. “How long was I out for?”

“About an hour.”

She holds out her hand for her glasses, which fly into her hand. “You’re right,” she says, putting them on. “We should probably get some sleep, we have a long day tomorrow.” She uses her powers to turn off the TV, move the plates to the sink, and pull all the blinds shut. Barry raises his eyebrows.

“Impressive, Miss Miracle.”

“I also fly,” she yawns. “God, our room is far. Carry me?”

“Our room’s not that far.”

She pouts. “Please?”

“You have _superpowers_ , Iris.”

Iris grabs his chin. “I thought you were supposed to be crazy about me.”

“I am crazy about you,” he laughs, “but that doesn’t mean I-” She leans forward and kisses him quickly. “-mind carrying you anywhere you want,” he finishes. “Your wish is my command, sunshine.”

But Iris just laughs. “No, it’s okay, I’m kidding. I should probably stretch my legs anyway.”

“It’s cool. You’re, what, four foot three at most? Should be easy.”

“You’ve sure got a lot of jokes for someone who’s got a neck like a giraffe,” she mutters, but she lets Barry scoop her up in his arms and carry her up the stairs. She tucks her head underneath his chin, the steady thump of his heart beating a comforting rhythm against her ear, and suddenly thinks, _this is how he would carry me on our wedding night_. The thought makes her start a little and Barry looks down at her. “You okay down there?”

“Oh, yeah, fine. I just remembered I need to make sure the new Butane torches came.”

They’re not there yet, and Barry’s certainly not thinking about that. She might be, ever since they were kids, but she’s the one who’s been in love with him for years. They just moved in together a few weeks ago, for God’s sake. They’re fine exactly the way they are, and they have their hands full with protecting the city anyway.

(Barry is thinking about it, though. Ever since Lois and Clark got engaged. But Iris doesn’t need to know that).

***

The next day sees Iris and her two interns, Sally and Chris, headed towards the scene in the back of the police truck along with Nora, Julio, and several other cops. The Captain apparently got there early this morning, and when Iris gets there she can see why. The entire area is a mess of hazmat officials, detectives, clean-up crew, reporters, and people from the mayor’s office, including Mayor Bellows herself. As she climbs down from the truck, she sees Scott setting up with a camera crew.

“Alright,” she says to them both. “Neither of you have done something like this before, and there’s going to be a lot of moving parts. The main thing that we have to do is establish how the fire started, look at the damage on the truck, and overall, paint a picture of the sequence of events that led to everything happening. Chris, you go and talk to some of the hazmat team and get as much information about the explosion as possible. Sally, you label every piece of debris, scorch mark and all the evidence that’s lying around the scene. I’ll come by so we can talk about it later. Do not talk to any police officers unless you’re certain of what you’re telling them, and do not talk to any reporters unless I’m there with you. They’re looking to get a story and some of them don’t have as many scruples as others.”

They nod and move off to get their equipment just as Nora walks up to them, sipping some coffee. “Morning,” she says. “Aw, look at you taking the ducklings out for a swim.”

“Baptism through fire, right?”

Nora pauses. “Malina told me what happened. You okay?”

“Ready to work,” Iris says curtly. “Has the captain found anything out yet?”

She regards her for a moment. “Oil truck was travelling through Coast City on its way to Arizona when the lightning hit. Driver is badly burned and we’re waiting on a toxicology report, but we have no reason to believe he’s in any way responsible.”

“Right,” she nods. “Well if it’s a meta he wouldn’t be. What are you gonna do?”

“I was at the hospital last night and spoke to some of the witnesses, so today we’re talking to the crew and then giving a press conference.”

“Yeah, Barry said that he, Scott and Jake are covering it.”

She groans. “Jake? Really?”

“You hate him too?”

“He’s such a smarmy little ass. He’s always trying to cosy up to the detectives or bully the rookies. And he dyes his hair.”

“I have got to tell Mal to stop using that damn computer,” Iris mutters. “Well he’s going around seeing whether he can make a case for environmental crime while Barry tries to prove that it’s a meta, which means I get to work with him too. And he’s…”

“What?”

“I always kinda feel like he’s…watching me. Whenever I go visit Barry it’s like he’s asking me one thing but he’s really trying to find out something else.”

“That’s because you’re used to _one_ reporter batting his eyelashes at you,” she points out, laughing. “Barry loves you so he has reason to respect your boundaries. All reporters are looking for an angle, it’s just that the one you have to deal with on a regular basis happens to be the man you’re in love with.”

“True,” she sighs. “Well, let me know what you find. If it is a meta, I want to get started straight away – you know what Waller is like.”

Iris moves off and starts taking pictures of the scene, pausing so she can dictate her notes to Sally. “Iris?” he asks.

“Yep?”

“These scorch marks…none of them came from the lightning. They _all_ came from the fire.”

Iris nods. “Yeah, I noticed that, too. What do you think it means?”

“Theoretically it would mean that there was only one bolt of lightning during the attack, but that never happens. Does it?”

“That,” she says grimly, pulling on some gloves, “is what I’m about to find out. Collect all the labels and then go help Chris, okay?”

Iris makes her way over to the hazmat leader, who’s standing by the truck on the phone. When she sees Iris approaching, she hangs up and holds her hand out. “CSI West? I’m Emily Gellar, head of the hazmat team, I was told you want to take some pictures and ask me about this vehicle?”

“That’s correct. I don’t need much, just the exterior of the truck and the point of impact from when the lightning hit.”

Gellar raises an eyebrow. “Really? Most CSIs would want to know the ins and outs. The juicy details.”

“I’m not most CSIs,” she says cheerfully. Iris is shown all around the truck, each picture confirming her suspicion – this was a deliberate attack. Nowhere else on the truck are there any stray lightning marks, like there would have been if it were natural. After Iris is done with her pictures, she leaves the camera hanging around her neck. “Ms. Gellar, I’m correct in thinking that this truck is operated by Enron?”

“You are.”

“And as such it’s subject to the inspections laid out by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration when it comes to the transportation of hazardous materials stroke dangerous goods?”

“That’s correct.”

“And how long ago was the most recent one carried out?”

She thinks for a moment. “Three months ago.”

Iris nods – still within regulations. “And if I wanted a copy of this report?”

“Contact the FMCSA. But,” she adds, “it might take a while. Probably several weeks, maybe even months.”

She sighs. “Right. Thank you for your time, Ms. Gellar.”

Iris walks back over to the truck, studying her notes. She had suspected that she would need some sort of outside corroboration for all of this, but she’s really not looking forward to waiting all that time just for a damn report. When she looks up, she can see that the news crews from CCPN are already there, with Scott doing his live segment, Jake talking some of the witnesses, and Barry talking to the chief, Nora, Julio, and someone she doesn’t recognise. He’s of medium height and stocky build, and when he turns Iris is surprised to see a Special Agent badge attached to his hip. When she walks up, she can hear that they’ve clearly been having this discussion for a while.

“…the type of threat you’ve dealt with before,” Barry is saying calmly, which Iris knows for a fact means that he’s minutes away from losing his temper. “This is not something you should be taking lightly.”

“And I told you that there’s no way I am going to leave this investigation in the hands of a local police department and a reporter.”

“With all due respect,” Julio says, “this isn’t just a local police department. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve had metahumans here for years.”

“Hello, everyone,” Iris says as she joins the group. She holds out her hand to the man, committing his face to memory. “CSI Iris West. And you are…”

“Special Agent Maurice Jones,” he replies curtly. “I’m with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.”

“Will you be working with us on this investigation?”

“I’ll be taking over this investigation.”

Iris frowns. “Excuse me?”

“Special Agent Jones seems to think his department is more suited to handling this,” Captain Singh says evenly.

“Which is a mistake,” Barry points out. Special Agent Jones sighs.

“Mr. Allen-”

Barry hands him a folder of notes and pictures. “In the past month, there have been four random lightning strikes, a thunderstorm that last fifteen minutes before being followed by four hours of scorching sun, gale force winds in the middle of the afternoon, and hail. In May. On the west coast of America.” He folds his arms. “Can you honestly say that you’ve handled this before, or that you have the resources to handle it? Why are you so sure that your department is the only one that can?”

“Because this is a case of an oil tanker blowing up, and you are a small police department and a reporter.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Iris says calmly. “ _Dr_. Allen is the only person in the city trusted to write about Miss Miracle and Little Miss Miracle, he keeps an extensive database of every metahuman that has passed through the city, and he works for the Justice League.”

“Not to mention the fact that this department has its own task force designed to handle these kinds of threats,” Captain Singh adds. “CSI West herself also owns and operates STAR Laboratories, which has been invaluable in supplementing our work when our own resources run thin.”

“Then I am sure she’ll be only too happy to offer those resources to assist in the federal investigation,” he says swiftly. Then he turns to Barry. “And I am sure I will be asking you to request that Miss Miracle help us should this turn out to be a metahuman affair.”

Barry narrows his eyes. “I don’t tell her what to do.”

“If this is a big case, you’ll have to. I’m sorry, Captain Singh, but there is just no way I’m leaving this case under your purview. Once we’ve finished the initial assessment, we will be taking over. Excuse me.”

He walks off to go take a call, and the Captain curses. “Macho jerks,” Nora mutters. “This is why I hate working with the state department – always come in throwing their weight around.”

“What did you find, Iris?” the Captain asks.

“Well, like I said, I’ll need that report to confirm, but this was definitely a meta attack – it was too precise to be an accident. And what Barry just said just makes me surer.”

She sighs. “I believe you, and of course I think we should be the ones pursuing this, but it’s out of our hands.”

“Iris,” Barry says, glancing at Jones, “could you show me what you found? I’m going to have to use some of it for the article anyway.”

He gives her a significant look, and she knows they won’t just be talking about her pictures. Iris leads him over to a table and starts spreading her pictures on the table. “What is it?” she asks quietly, moving one of them so it looks like she’s explaining something.

“We can’t let him take over this case,” he replies. He picks up a picture as if to study it. “He has no idea where to look. And I don’t want him telling Miss Miracle what to do – it sets a bad precedent.”

“Right, but how do we get him kicked off?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “If – wait. Act natural.”

Iris watches as Barry gets out his phone and dials a number. “Hey, Eddie? It’s Barry. Listen, there’s a Special Agent Maurice Jones who wants to take over our investigation into this whole truck thing, could you – thanks.” He hangs up.

“Well?”

“He said he’ll take care of it,” Barry says. “How I don’t know – there must be a million Maurice Jones’ hanging around.”

“Well, we can hope,” she says, still looking at her pictures. After a while she notices that Barry is smirking at her. “What?”

“You’re hot when you get defensive of me.”

She looks up at him. “I wasn’t being – I was just telling the truth.”

“It was kind of a turn-on.”

“I – Barry, we’re at work,” she says quietly, glancing around. “I’m not your girlfriend here, you can’t flirt with me.”

“I’m not flirting with my girlfriend, I’m flirting with the sexy CSI who’s putting everyone around her to shame with her beauty.”

“Barry-”

He leans forward, green eyes sparkling. “You know, you should come with a warning. Leaving the house looking like that should be illegal.”

“Stop it,” she says, trying not to smile as she turns back to her work. Barry’s grin widens. “And may I remind you, because you’ve clearly forgotten, that you have a girlfriend, _Dr. Allen_?”

“Then I’d better not tell her about you, CSI West,” he replies easily, winking at her. “Because I think I might be in love.” Iris’ cheeks flame but before she can say anything else, Jones has walked over to them, holding up his phone.

 “That was my superior,” he says tightly. “He says that I have to hand this case over to you and the department, effective immediately, and fast track any documentation you may need.”

“I appreciate that, Special Agent Jones,” Barry says seriously, and Iris knows he’s trying not to laugh. Jones looks him suspiciously.

“You wanna tell me how you got the head of a federal department to hand you a case as dangerous as this one?”

Barry grins. “I got mad skills.”

Jones glares at him before turning on his heel and walking off. “That was fast,” Iris says. She takes Barry’s phone and dials Eddie’s number again and puts it on speakerphone. “Hello?” he says.

“Eddie, how the hell did you get Jones to agree to that so fast?” Barry asks. “Did you call his boss?”

“In a…manner of speaking,” he hedges. Barry and Iris share a look.

“What do you mean “in a manner of speaking”?” she asks slowly. “Who did you call?”

“I called the agency executive of the Pentagon that’s in charge of national security.”

“The agency executive in charge of – you called the _Secretary of Defence_?” Iris hisses.

“You _know_ the Secretary of Defence?” Barry adds.

“She owes me a favour.”

“A favour?” they repeat.

“I taught her son how to play Parcheesi,” he says dismissively. “It was while I was working her security detail.” Barry rubs his eyes.

“I cannot believe my brother has the Secretary of Defence on speed dial.”

“I don’t have the Secretary of Defence on speed dial. I have the Director of the NSA on speed dial and he gave me her number.”

“What kind of operation is Waller running over there?”

“Hey, you got your investigation, be happy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, someone wants to insure their koi carp, and since I’m not actually an insurance salesman, I have some bluffing to do.”

“Right,” Iris says. “Thanks, Eddie.”

“You’re welcome. Are you guys still up for dinner at this weekend?”

“At Henry’s?” Iris asks. “Should be.”

“What’s dad making?”

“The sea bass from Fiji.”

“Again?” Barry groans. Iris wrinkles her nose.

“Come on, guys. He likes it.”

“And he’s the only one,” Eddie mutters. “I’ll talk to you both later.”

Barry and Iris look at each other just as the captain and Nora walk up to them. “So, Special Agent Jones just told me the good news,” Singh says. “So Nora, you and Julio will be running point on this and I want a progress report at the end of every day. Barry, I’m going to have to ask that you give us your sources-”

“Can’t do that, Captain,” he says firmly, and she gives him a small smile.

“Worth a try. Will you at least give us the locations where these people saw all these freak weather attacks?”

“That, I can do.”

“Good,” she says. She turns to Iris. “West, I’m guessing our resources at CCPD may not be enough to help you, so I’m authorising use of STAR Labs in case you need it to aid in the investigation. And Miss Ramon will be permitted to help as well, despite her tendency to be…enthusiastic during some inopportune moments.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she says. “I’ll, um, try to keep Chesca in check.”

“See that you do. Finish up here and meet us by the van; I need to do a press conference with Scott Evans in a moment.”

Iris nods and the Captain walks off, while Nora turns to them both. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!” they say together, and she raises an eyebrow.

“Special Agent Cowboy is over here taking the investigation, the two of you make the fact that you both think I haven’t worked out means you’re hiding something, and the next thing I know Jones is getting a call that lasts ten seconds and makes all the blood leave his face. What did you do?”

“Pulled some strings,” Barry says, shrugging, and she looks at him.

“Who does Eddie know this time?”

“I… don’t think we’re at liberty to say. I don’t think Eddie was actually supposed to tell us.”

Nora blinks. “You kids,” she mutters. “Alright, well, we have to get back to work as soon as this press conference is over and…well, speak of the devil.”

Scott and Jake walk over to them. “Barry, Iris,” Scott nods. “Detective West.”

“Scott,” she smiles lightly. She turns to Jake. “And…”

“Jake Tapper,” he says, and she nods.

“Sorry, names are usually the first thing I forget. Like this one, who’s he?”

“Very funny,” Barry laughs. He nods at Jake’s notes. “You get everything you need?”

“Mostly,” he admits. “I just got wind that it’s a meta, so you’re taking care of it, right Allen?”

“Metas that cause lightning strikes,” he says grimly. “Can’t wait. You?”

“Well, meta or not, there’s still the environmental crime angle to tackle, since this thing will be bad for pollution for the foreseeable future. But I’m having trouble with some of the science stuff, so I was hoping I could ask you about it, Iris?”

Iris blinks. “Oh, I – sure. Of course, I’m happy to help. Can I see your notes?” He hands them over and Iris tuts. “Yeah, this looks like it’ll be complicated, but nothing I can’t help with. It’ll take a while though, do you mind?”

“Not at all,” he says easily. “Can’t work too hard to uncover the truth, right, Barry?”

“Yeah,” he says, frowning slightly. “Sure.”

“Let me give you my number,” Iris says, writing it down on a piece of paper, “and then you can call me to set something up.”

“Thanks, for the number, Iris.” He looks up at Barry and grins. “I hope Allen doesn’t get jealous.”

“He’s not going to be jealous,” Scott says dismissively. “Now, if it were me he’d be jealous, but that’s a different issue.” Nora rolls her eyes at all of this.

“This is exactly why I don’t like reporters. Alright, Evans, looks like they’re playing our song. Let’s get this conference over and done with so we can all get back to work. Meet you back at the truck, Iris?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she says easily. Scott and Jake follow Nora back to the gathering crowd of reporters around the podium. Barry gathers up his stuff and puts it away, before turning back to Iris.

“Thank you for your help, CSI West. Have a good afternoon.”

Iris rolls her eyes and blushes when he winks at her again. “You too…Dr. Allen.”

***

The Cortex is empty when Iris arrives but she knows where they are – she dumps her stuff in her office and heads downstairs. She’s made this journey a million times before, when Dr. Wells was training her, when she started training Malina…and now that her and Chesca are training Dr. Wells.

It’s been a slow process, but ever since Iris got her memories back after Dr. Wells helped to put out that fire, they thought it would be best if Dr. Wells at least _started_ training with her powers before they told Waller about it. She knows that technically he’s supposed to know because _technically_ she’s still kind of a criminal, but those are just semantics. She’s the one running the team, and besides which, Iris doesn’t want to freak her out.

When she gets downstairs, Chesca is sat at the controls of a computer while Dr. Wells stands in the middle of the room, her eyes closed and palms out. A few feet in front of her, a small generator hovers perfectly in mid-air. Iris comes up behind Chesca. “How’s she doing?” she asks quietly, sitting down. She nods at the screen, which are showing her brains scans from the last few hours.

“Incredible,” she says. “She’s as powerful as you, when she wants to be.”

“When she wants to be?” Iris frowns. When they’d been here the previous week, Dr. Wells had been reading minds and dodging attacks from Iris with ease. Chesca turns to her.

“I don’t know, Iris, it’s like she’s…scared of her powers. When you started, you were scared, yeah, but that’s mostly because you’d woken up from a nine-month coma. Once you saved everyone from the Weather Warden, you were fine. But Dr. Wells is afraid of letting go.”

“Right,” Iris sighs. “That just might take time, I guess. But first…” Iris concentrates briefly and as expected, Dr. Wells opens her eyes. Her concentration wobbles and the generator starts to fall, but Iris catches it with her own mind.

“Iris!” she says, surprised. “How did you-”

“Mind-shielding,” she explains. She walks over to her. “How are things? Chesca says you’re doing really well.”

“It’s been…interesting,” she says. She takes off her gloves – she doesn’t have an outfit – and puts them down. “I think we’re moving along at a good pace.”

“Maybe,” she says. “Look, Dr. Wells, I’m glad you’re comfortable with where you are, but are you sure there’s nothing holding you back? You can tell us if there is.”

“Yeah,” Chesca adds, walking up to them. “We’re your team.”

But Dr. Wells shakes her head. “You are both more than I deserve, but no. Iris, do you remember when you were discovering your powers?”

“The random hypoglycaemia or the intense migraines?” Iris asks.

“No,” she laughs. “The wonder. The joy. When Colin took control of me, I forgot what it was like to enjoy what I do. What _we_ do. And what we do, Iris, it’s…”

“Miraculous?” she finishes, and Dr. Wells smiles again.

“Something like that.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy. Although I’m thinking next week we can move onto lightning.”

“Whoa!” Chesca says. “Not so fast! I think we should get her a suit before we do any of that.”

“Chesca, I-”

“Always with the suits with you,” Iris says. “Could you at least give her a few weeks?”

“I see someone’s jealous the suit I lent you isn’t top on my list of my priorities.”

“This is my suit!” Iris exclaims. “I’m the one who made this one to fit into the ring.” Chesca sniffs.

“I’ve seen your specs and they’re subpar.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s not what Batgirl said to me.”

Chesca gasps and points. “You did _not_ just use the B-word with me.”

Iris shrugs. “I think I just did, Vibe.”

“She said she liked my design!”

“And she said that she wants me to show her the Breach Blaster _and_ the Miracle Rings.”

“You little-”

Before they can devolve into an argument, Dr. Wells clears her throat. “You know, I think I just heard Jesse come in, why don’t we go and see him?”

Still muttering, they all traipse upstairs to see that Jesse is tapping away at the computers. “Hey, doc,” Chesca greets him. “What’s up? How was the conference?”

“Fine,” he says absently. “Fine. What do the two of you think of these?”

Iris and Chesca watch as he shows them three separate ties. “I like the blue one,” Iris says, pointing to a sky-blue number. Chesca stares at him.

“I still don’t know why you insist on wearing ties to work. It’s not like Iris has a dress code.”

“This isn’t for work – though I would appreciate it if you subscribed to my level of attire in a professional environment,” he sniffs. Chesca rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, you hate fun and sunshine and puppies, what else is new? What’s up?”

“Yes, Jesse, you’ve never asked us for our opinions on your clothes before,” Dr. Wells points out. He sighs.

“I’m going to dinner with Malina at Henry’s.”

Iris and Chesca’s eyes widen. “You’re coming to dinner on Sunday?”

“Yes, she invited me. And I need to make the right impression when I meet Henry.”

“You’ve met Henry.”

“Not as her boyfriend.”

“Oh, you’re boyfriend and girlfriend?” Chesca asks. “I didn’t know you guys were exclusive, congratulations. Glad she didn’t get sick of you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Any time. In any case, I think a tie is the least of your problems,” she continues. Jesse gives her a nervous look.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, duh. Henry’s an international spy who’s feared all over the world, and you’re dating one of his kids.”

“The two of you are dating his kids!”

“Yes, but I’m me,” she points out. “And, please, do you really think Henry would have a problem with Iris? Barry would cut him off completely. _You’re_ dating his baby girl. You make her cry and he’ll shoot you. Or he’ll get Eddie to do it. I think that’s what happened to the last one.”

“What?” Jesse squeaks and Iris clears her throat.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Jesse, don’t listen to her. And you don’t need the tie. Just be yourself.”

“How did you get him to like you?”

“Well,” she says, “I saved his life from a violent metahuman who was holding him hostage in an alternate universe. _And_ his daughter’s life.”

“I’m his daughter’s doctor,” he points out quietly. Iris nods.

“Lead with that. Anyway, that wasn’t what I came here to tell you. CCPD is taking over the oil tanker case from the FMCSA.”

“You took over a case from a federal agency?” Dr. Wells frowns. “How did you manage that?”

“Eddie,” Iris replies, and Chesca perks up.

“Oh, did he call his friend at the Pentagon?”

“The _Pentagon_?” Dr. Wells and Jesse repeat.

“Well, not the Pentagon,” she amends. “The NSA.”

“Who did he call?” Jesse asks.

“The Director of the NSA, who called the Secretary of Defence,” Iris answers, rubbing her eyes. “She owed him a favour.”

“Really?”

“He taught her son how to play Parcheesi.”

“Eddie really is rather good at Parcheesi,” Dr. Wells says idly.

“He taught me, actually,” Jesse adds. “He’s a good teacher.”

“Isn’t he?” Chesca says proudly. “My man.”

“Anyway,” Iris says, “I’m running tests on the samples to see if anything weird happened with that lightning, but I’m not counting on it, honestly. What kind of meta do you think it would be?”

“Maybe it was Blackout?” Jesse suggests, but Chesca shakes her head.

“No, after we saved her son we gave her power-dampening cuffs and she moved to Midvale. I check on her from time to time – she’s fine.”

Dr. Wells studies the pictures she gave her. “No, this is not Blackout. And what’s more, it’s not a miracle worker either.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Look at these scorch marks,” she explains. “If it was me, or Iris, or Malina, they’d be smaller and less spread out. This is precise, I’ll give you that, but it’s also more powerful than anything any of us could produce at this moment.”

“Which is why we need to run these tests,” Iris explains. “Barry’s trying to find out where all the other freak weather happenings have been, and then me, you and Malina can see if there’s anything weird going on there,” she says, gesturing to Chesca.

“We can retask the satellite to scan for any freak weather conditions as well,” Dr. Wells adds, and Iris nods.

“Great. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get dinner with my mom.”

Who, when Iris arrives, is excitedly talking to Barry’s mother about their vegetable gardens, which has to be one of the most “mom” things that Iris has ever witnessed. Iris catches the tail-end of the conversation as she shrugs her jacket off and puts it on a hook before wandering over to the stove.

“Well, it’s how you water them,” her mother is saying. Iris peers into the pot and inhales. “And the soil you get, that’s very important. _Iris_ ,” she warns as Iris tries to sneak a piece of chicken. Iris grins sheepishly.

“Sorry.”

“…that’s exactly what I was thinking. Well, I’m thinking that we have a fish fry and then we can put the onions in the potato pancakes. With all the fish that Henry keeps bringing back from his trips, I think we’ll have enough…”

Iris looks up briefly from setting the table in the kitchen and reminds herself to tell her mother that Aria sent more fish to the apartment for her. One of the advantages of being in the Justice League, she supposes.

“Okay,” her mother says, hanging up the phone. “We’re having a fish fry here in a couple of weeks, tell everyone, because Nora and I are seeing whether what we did with the vegetables is going to work out.”

“A couple of weeks? Make sure it’s not the day of-”

“You and Barry will not be missing his awards show, don’t worry,” she smiles fondly. She puts the phone down. “Is he excited?”

“Mm,” she nods enthusiastically. “He’s trying to play it cool, you know Barry, but he’s excited. And nervous.”

“He shouldn’t be,” her mother says. “His article is brilliant. All of my students are in love with him, by the way. He comes to visit and everyone starts swooning.”

“Tell them to get their own man!” Iris laughs. “I wanted twenty years for mine, I’m not about to share.”

“Okay, honey,” her mother laughs. “Will you finish with the table? I need to get the wine from the cellar.”

Her mother goes off towards the back of the kitchen and Iris starts laying out the bread rolls (two dozen, which her mother is certain she can’t eat) when the phone starts ringing. “Hello, West residence?”

“Francine, good,” a woman’s voice says. “Valerie told me you were bringing someone to the cookout, did you say he was allergic to seafood or that he really liked it?”

Iris frowns. “I’m sorry, who may I ask is calling?”

“Francine, it’s me. Bernadette.” Iris freezes.

 _Her father’s mother_. _Her grandmother_.

“Um,” she says quietly. “Um, sorry, it’s not – Francine. It’s Iris.”

Iris hears her let out a breath. “Oh, I – hello, Iris, h-how are you?”

“Fine,” she replies in a small voice. “I’m fine.”

“And…Barry? How-”

“I’ll get mom for you,” she says quickly, tearing the phone away from her ear. “Mom! Mom,” she says when her mother comes back into the room. “It’s, um – D-Dad’s mom? She wants to…” Iris trails off, gesturing with the phone. Her mother takes it and Iris sits at the table, fiddling with her phone. She hears vague mentions of cobbler and driving directions and discussions about who’s going to bring what, but blocks most of it out. Her mother is going to the cookout and she isn’t – her grandparents finally made up with her mother and invited her to the family reunion, and she’s fine with that. It’s in a few weeks and from everything that Wally and Linda have been telling her, there’s going to be a lot of food. And people; apparently, a lot of the family is coming.

Everyone, except her.

She doesn’t hate her father’s family. She let go of that pain a while ago, mostly, in sessions with the counsellor she sees with her mother. But she’s never needed them the way you’d expect most people to need their family. She forgave them – her mother would never speak to them unless she did – but she does not want to be involved with them just yet. It’s different for her mother, who met her dad when they were in college and were inseparable ever since, who only has her own grandmother and a sibling that Iris barely remembers. Francine deserves this family doing everything they can to forgive her. But Iris does not – she has her mother, and Nora, and Wally and all her friends. And she has her Barry.

And, truth be told, it’s hard thinking about them and imagining papering over the feeling of being abandoned by them. She does not need to invite that kind of pain back into her life. She reaches out with her mind, looking to calm her nerves.

_Barry?_

Nothing, for a few seconds, then – _Iris? What’s wrong?_

 _Nothing much. Just wanted to hear your voice_. She laughs out loud. _Well, hear your voice in my head. What are you up to?_

_On duty with Malina._

_Fun?_

_Iris, stop changing the subject. I know you’re upset about something_.

_How do you know that?_

_Because while I was sitting here playing chess with Eddie I suddenly got the urge to run away, and since I’m not scared of him, it must have been you. Lightning rod, remember_?

Iris takes off her glasses. _Right. Yeah, it’s…complicated. I’ll tell you when I get home_.

Her phone buzzes and she opens it up to see that he’s messaged her.

I love you

_I love you_ , she sends back, just as her mother walks back into the room. “Iris-”

“It’s fine, mom,” she says quickly, but her mother shakes her head.

“No it isn’t, Iris. Are you sure you’re okay with me going? Because I can still cancel-”

“Mom, no. You’ve been looking forward to this for weeks, and they’re really looking forward to seeing you. Wally even said so.”

“Wally also told me how sad they are that you aren’t coming,” she says. “I don’t want you to miss out on something that could be really good for you.”

“I have everything that’s good for me,” she counters stubbornly. “My whole life, I have only ever needed you, Barry and Nora. But it’s different for you, mom.”

“How is it different for me?”

“Because they were your family before they were mine. When Dad was murdered, you still had me, but Mama Ida didn’t visit, neither did your sister, and they didn’t. And as I got older, I stopped being mad that they abandoned me and started being mad that they abandoned you.”

“But I thought you forgave them,” her mother says quietly. Iris nods.

“I did. And I’m not mad at them anymore. I’m glad that you forgave them and they’re accepting you back. I’ve forgiven them, too.” She pauses. “But they need to realise that my forgiveness doesn’t erase the fact that for fifteen years, they were not my family. I grew up with another one, and I love them. I never needed another one. I understand why they left the woman who they think killed their son, and why they left the granddaughter who hated them for it. But when they did that, they closed the door on me seeing them as my family They were your family before you had me, and they can be your family now. But I stopped needing them years ago, and I don’t need them to be mine now. Maybe in the future. Slowly. But no, not now.”

There is silence as her mother digests these words. “Alright. As long as you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “So, you’re taking Cecil? Big step.”

“It is,” she agrees. Her mother twists her fingers together. “He…told me something.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asks. “Was it the secrets of the criminal justice system of Central City, 52nd district? Because he’s not supposed to share those with you.”

“No, Iris. He said that he…loved me.”

Iris’ eyes widen. “Mom! That’s great! Are you – wait, it _is_ great, right? Do I need to have a conversation with him? Have you said it back?”

Her mother sighs and sits down. “No, I haven’t.”

“Do you not want to?”

“Yes – no. I don’t…know.” Her mother rubs her eyes. “Honey, my entire life, I have only ever needed two people in my life – you and your dad. You’re my baby, so there’s that. But I’m never going to love anyone the way I loved your dad. I guess I’m just…worried about committing to that word when it won’t be true.”

“Mom,” she says, shaking her head. “Of course it’ll be _true_. You just have to…Look, mom, you don’t need to love anyone the way you loved dad. You need to love Cecil – if you do – the way you love him. Do you?”

Her mother gives her a small smile. “I might.”

“Then you owe it to yourself to find out.” She picks up another bread roll. “Of course, I need to do a background check on him, and look at his financials – and maybe I’ll get Henry to tail him-”

“Iris!”

“Okay, Eddie can do it.”

***

“…I know we should definitely get three,” Iris muses. “Because I’m going to be there, and so is Mal.”

“True,” Barry agrees. Iris looks between the pies.

“Okay, banana cream and Mississippi mud for sure,” she continues, pointing them out to the baker. He takes his eyes off Barry, who’s looking around the bakery, and nods.

“Right away, ma’am. Anything else?”

“One more, but I’m not sure which one. Bar? What do you think, babe?”

Barry walks over and the baker’s eyes snap back to him. Iris smiles to herself. She supposes that a couple taking their turtle for a walk isn’t a sight you normally see in Central City, but it’s just a normal thing between them now. McSnurtle is dozing, safely hiding in her shell away from all the noise, but Barry is still holding her like he’d hold a baby, firmly in the circle of his arms so no one jostles her.

“I think cherry,” he says, checking to see if McSnurtle is okay. “It’s Malina’s favourite, and you’ll know I’ll eat whatever.”

“You will not eat whatever,” Iris says, shaking her head fondly. “You’re going to get to your dad’s place and eat the whole Mississippi mud pie all by yourself and not even be sorry, because you are _obsessed_ with chocolate. Actually,” she says to the baker, “could we have two? And supersize them?”

“I can’t believe out of the two of us here you’re making fun of me for my eating habits,” he laughs. She rounds on him.

“And just what is that supposed to mean, Allen?”

“You’re the one with the appetite the size of Texas.”

“Because of my…lightning psychosis,” she amends, and the baker looks at her.

“What’s that?”

“I was one of the people who was struck by lightning because of the Particle Accelerator a couple of years ago, which screwed with my metabolism” she explains, raising an eyebrow at Barry, “and instead of sympathy, I get a boyfriend who’s always making fun of me.”

“Done with love,” he replies swiftly, grinning, and she rolls her eyes.

“Whatever. Okay, so that’s two banana cream and two cherry pies, and two supersized Mississippi mud pies. And they’ll be ready-”

“In a few hours,” he promises, writing down her order.

“Great, we can pick them up on our way to your dad’s,” she nods. She reaches for her purse, but Barry stops her.

“You got them the last time, remember. Here, take McSnurtle…” He hands her the turtle and gets out his wallet while Iris takes the turtle back. “You okay in there, girl?” she says quietly, peering at her. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you in the sun soon.”

“It’s so funny that everyone stares,” Barry says when they’re outside. Iris laughs and holds McSnurtle closer to her chest. It’s a Sunday and they’re taking McSnurtle for a walk, letting her enjoy the sun before they have to go his dad’s for dinner. After all the stresses of the week – not to mention the fact that she needs to go out into nature on a regular basis – Barry suggested it. They meander through the city, Iris cradling McSnurtle, Barry with the backpack that had their lunch and a picnic blanket in it, until they get to the outskirts of the city. They found the small pond and surrounding greenery on Google Maps and tried it the first week they got McSnurtle. They reach the pond and Barry lays out the blanket and their food as they continue their conversation.

“…because everything seemed up to date,” Iris says, sitting down. “I mean, the checks were done meticulously, the materials were brand new, and all the safety procedures were followed. You?”

“Same,” he sighs, sitting down next to her and opening the basket. “I’ve looked through every instance of weird weather phenomena that people have sent me, and I think we’re definitely looking at a meta, but there’s nothing connecting them. None of the locations have anything in common, they all happened at different times, there’s no pattern to the attacks, and in some of the attacks there were injuries, but some were just random weather phenomena in an abandoned area.”

“Great.” Iris sets McSnurtle down on the blanket and starts digging in her bag. “I mean I have a story to give Jake – he’s going with the impact of environmental crime instead of being able to blame some big corporation for it – but we need to find the person responsible.”

Barry nods in agreement. They’ve been looking for the mysterious lightning-thrower since the attack on Monday, in between Iris and Malina helping with the clean-up. They haven’t had any more problems pursuing the case (Iris still can’t quite believe that Eddie’s Parcheesi skills is all it takes to get an audience with the Secretary of Defence), but that doesn’t mean they’ve got answers.

“Anyway,” Iris continues, having found what she’s looking for. “Let’s worry about that tomorrow. Ready, McSnurtle?”

Barry gently lifts McSnurtle while Iris brings out a small device attached to a metal strap. She ties it around her so the small round box is sitting snugly over the top of her shell. “Is it on?” he asks.

“It’s on.” Iris walks over to the pond while Barry gets the iPad out and opens up the app “McSnurtle Watch”. Almost immediately, a video feed comes up; right now, it’s trained on Barry’s face. Iris watches as Barry gently kneels by the pond and holds McSnurtle over it.

“Careful,” Iris says, watching them, and he laughs.

“It’s fine, Iris. She’s a big turtle, she can handle herself.”

“But the vet said we have to be careful,” she reminds him as he sits next to her. She looks at the video again. “This is freshwater, isn’t it? And what’s the wildlife like? Now, this is Central City, so her natural predators aren’t here, but-”

“Iris!” he interrupts, laughing. “Stop worrying, okay? Look, we ordered that transmitter thingy, and you wrote that app that means we can track her. Look, we can see what she sees, we can monitor her temperature, and if anything goes wrong we have the alarm. Now, get over here and eat something.”

“But-”

“That’s an order, West.”

Iris makes a face at him but obliges, kissing him on the cheek as they unpack their food. They came up with it a while ago, while trying to figure out how they could keep track of McSnurtle when they took her on walks. Barry suggested looking up how they tracked turtles in the wild, and they found out that they could attach a transmitter to her back that would send signals to the STAR Labs satellite, which would send those signals back to the receiving station on the STAR Labs roof and allow them to see what was happening on the computer. This would let them see what McSnurtle’s activities on the app as long as they had an internet connection.

As they get their food out, Iris props the iPad up next to the basket so they can see what she’s doing. “She looks bigger,” Barry comments. “I think the supplements we’ve been giving her with her food have been working.”

“Oh my God, I was totally thinking she looks bigger! When’s her next appointment with the vet?”

“The fourth of next month,” Barry answers. “Don’t forget, we have to take that diary of her eating habits with her.”

“I’m not going to forget.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve set a reminder and she is our _turtle_ , Barry,” she says. “She’s our responsibility; I’m not going to forget about her.”

They enjoy their lunch in the sun, keeping an eye on McSnurtle as she swims around in the pond. They’re always so preoccupied with saving the city and running the team, not to mention the craziness with this new weather meta, that they always have to make time for each other. Specifically, Barry has to make sure that Iris doesn’t work herself to death, and Iris has to take Barry’s laptop away from him when she finds him up at three in the morning still writing. One of the things they disagree about.

“…no story is worth you being awake when _I_ am still on patrol, Barry,” she tells him. Barry, who has his head in her lap and his legs crossed, face turned up to the sun, shakes his head.

“It was a good idea! The rising level of superheroism can’t not be linked with the political leanings of the states in which they’re found,” he says. He starts listing them on his fingers. “It’s so obvious! You, me, Liv and her team are in a liberal state, so are Clark and Lois, so is Hal, and Bree-”

“Lives in one of the most corrupt and decidedly _not_ liberal cities on the eastern seaboard,” she points out, laughing. “In fact, I don’t think it actually matters, since I’m pretty certain the whole thing is being run by the mob.”

“But that’s what I mean!” he says excitedly. “The demographic of the citizens is mostly liberal, and everyone knows Batgirl _and_ Bree are both liberal. The contradiction is just…I mean, Iris, seriously, the piece practically writes itself.”

Iris laughs, stroking his hair. “Well, I’m sure whatever you write will be amazing, Barry. And maybe after you win that award at Central City’s Excellence in Journalism Awards, this next article can get you your Pulitzer.”

“I might not win, Iris,” Barry points out. But she shakes her head.

“You’re going to win.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m Iris and I know things, doofus.” She bends down to kiss him. “You’re going to win, and then you’re going to win a Pulitzer, and then you and Clark can compare your thoughts on the Watergate scandal while Lois and I eat all the free shrimp.”

Barry just smiles serenely at her, his green eyes dotted with flecks of amber and gold in the afternoon sun, and Iris tips her head. “What?” she asks.

“How am I the guy who gets to love you?”

“I – Barry, what do you mean?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, I just… When we were in high school, and college, and then after, and you were dating those guys, I always thought that whoever you picked, whoever you chose to be with you, they would just be really lucky. I always told myself that you were Iris, you were so kind and so funny and _so_ smart and beautiful – you could have anyone you wanted, you know? I knew, because it was you, that whoever got to love you would be just as kind and funny and smart – they would have to be, to deserve you. I was kind of dreading the day I’d have to meet him,” he admits, laughing a little. “Because then I’d have to face the fact that there was a guy out there that you needed more than you needed me – and he’d be the guy who got to love you. But you picked me, and I’m just saying that I’m happy I’m get to be the guy who’s lucky enough to love you.”

Iris blinks down at him, speechless. Barry often says things like this, sometimes randomly during breakfast or on the comms or even just as he’s going out to buy milk, but it never ceases to amaze her. She smiles. “Barry Allen,” she says quietly, “you are very cute, you know that?”

“I’m one-quarter bunny rabbit,” he says matter-of-factly. “My cute is a family trait.” Iris raises her eyebrows.

“Oh, really?”

“Mm, on my mom’s side through _her_ mom.”

“Your grandmother Dawnette was a bunny rabbit?”

He gives her a serious look. “How else do you explain the cute? Bunny rabbit is peak cute, and so was grandmother Dawnette.”

“I remember her,” Iris says, stroking his hair again. “She was nice.”

Barry closes his eyes. “She was. She taught me how to make those brownies you like.”

“That’s totally the reason I’m in love with you, by the way. Thank bunny rabbit grandmother Dawnette for the fact that we’re dating.”

“Sending up a prayer for bunny rabbit grandmother Dawnette,” he laughs quietly. That was the first funeral they both went to – he and Iris, for his grandmother. He was nine, and it was too much like losing his father and his sister again. He remembers the morning and sitting on the couch in his suit that felt too stiff, not really wanting to say anything when Great-Uncle Rudy and his kids and his mom were talking, wondering how he was going to get through the day. But then there was a knock at the door and when his mother went to answer it, she found Joe standing there with a very impatient Iris. “I want to go to the funeral with Barry,” she’d said, before anyone could say anything. She had her hair in two pigtails tied with white ribbons, and wearing a smart black dress. Joe had sighed. He was in a suit and tie, as if _he_ was going to the funeral.

“I’m sorry, Nora,” he sighed. “We – Iris had us up at six am this morning, she was worried about Barry and the funeral, she said he would be sad and she wanted to be there for him. She got showered and dressed and she would not take no for an answer – I know it’s not our place, and of course you can just send us home, but we heard about your mother and she will be as quiet as a mouse-”

“It’s fine, Joe,” his mother said, smiling even as her eyes filled up with tears. She looked down at Iris. “He’s on the couch, honey.”

Iris made a beeline for Barry while Joe sighed. “I have never seen her get up this early for something that wasn’t a Powerpuff Girl or a Looney Tune before,” he said. He hugged Nora. “Thank you for not turning her away.”

“I think if there’s anybody that would make Barry feel better, it’s Iris,” she replied, and Joe smiled.

“Yeah, they’re real sweet together. What time do you want me to pick her up?”

“Well – I mean, you’re welcome to join us, Joe.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t impose-” But Nora just waves a hand.

“I insist. We’d love you to come. Rudy, this is Iris’ dad…”

Iris was on the couch talking to Barry, not paying attention to the stares of his distant cousins who didn’t recognise the tiny bespectacled girl with her head of braided hair in two pigtails. “It’s okay to cry, you know,” she says seriously. “My mom says that’s how all the pain gets out. It’s good for you.”

Barry just nodded, and Iris held his hand, and she did all through the funeral except when he had to get up and put dirt on the coffin. Later at the house Barry was inside by himself while Iris was in the bathroom, just wanting to be away from all the people, when Joe wandered in. “Hey, bud,” he said. “Where’s Iris?”

“She went to the bathroom,” he replied. Then he remembered his manners, and how his mother said he should greet everyone. “Thank you for coming, Dr. West.”

“You can go ahead and call me Joe, son,” he said, but Barry was not about to get in trouble with his mother. He nodded anyway, though.

“How are you doing?”

Barry shrugged, because he didn’t want to cry. He could cry in front of his mother and Iris, but not Dr. West. He would think he was being a baby.

“It’s okay,” he said, sitting down next to him, “if you’re not okay, son. Your grandma was an important part of your life, and it’s okay to be sad. But I think she would want you to smile today. To do something that makes you happy just for her.”

“I don’t know what will make me happy,” he whispers.

“Mm. Well, I like to dance. Especially with Iris’ mom. You wanna know what I dance to?”

Barry shrugged. “I can’t dance,” he replied quietly. “I’m not good at it. Iris is better.”

“Well, Iris has dance lessons,” he pointed out. When Barry didn’t say anything, Joe rubbed his beard. “Alright, how about singing? There’s a song I like to sing that always cheers me up. You want to hear it?”

Barry shrugged again. “’Kay.”

“Alright, then.” Dr. West cleared his throat.

“ _Hand me down my walkin' cane_

_Hand me down my hat_

_Hurry now and don't be late_

_'Cause we ain't got time to chat_

_You and me, we're goin' out_

_To catch the latest sound_

_Guaranteed to blow your mind_

_So high you won't come down_

_Hey y’all, prepare yourself for the rubberband man_

_You’ve never heard a sound like the rubberband man_

_You’re bound to lose control_

_When the rubberband starts to jam_ ”

Dr. West had a nice voice, Barry thought. “Do you like that?” he asked. Barry nodded.

“You want to try? We can just do the chorus part,” Dr. West suggested. “Okay? How about I sing and then you join in when you want.”

Barry hesitated and then nodded. Dr. West was nice; he wouldn’t make fun of him. “ _Hey y’all, prepare yourself for the rubberband man, you’ve never heard a sound like the rubberband man_ …” he keeps singing, nodding encouragingly, and Barry eventually joins in.

“ _Hey y’all, prepare yourself for the rubberband man,_

 _You’ve never heard a sound like the rubberband fan_ – wait, sorry-”

“It’s okay, son – _You’re bound to lose control_

 _When the rubberband starts to jam_ ” Dr. West grins. “Good! Keep going.”

Barry grins and sings a little louder. “ _Hey y’all, prepare yourself for the rubberband man_

_You’ve never heard a sound like the rubberband man_

_You’re bound to lose control_

_When the rubberband starts to jam_ ”

They grin at each other and keep singing, over and over, so Barry isn’t quite sure why it happens. Everyone is outside and Iris is still upstairs, so it’s just the two of them singing. One minute he was singing the chorus, and then the next his throat was closing up and his vision was blurring and then tears were slipping down his cheeks. Dr. West pulled him into a hug and told him that it was okay, it was okay to cry, and his grandmother wouldn’t think any less of him for it.

Barry watches as Iris keeps talking about something that Bree wants her to do in the Hall of Justice. He remembers that he stopped crying before Iris came back down; nobody but him and Dr. West knew about it. Iris still has no idea why he likes that song so much, since he’s never told her. He’s often wondered whether Joe would like him. Iris has assured him that he would, but she’s supposed to say that, and he can’t exactly ask Francine, can he?

“…even better hacker than Smoak,” Iris finishes. “Barry? You okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Good. What was I-”

She’s interrupted by a shrill beeping coming from the iPad, and she grabs it immediately. “What’s that?” he asks.

“It’s the alarm to check on McSnurtle,” she replies, her eyes focused on the screen. He frowns, looking at his watch.

“Iris, that alarm isn’t supposed to go off for ten minutes.”

“I know that,” she says quietly.

“So why is there another one?”

“This is the alarm for me to check her general wellbeing _before_ we check her temperature.”

He stares at her. “Iris, give me the iPad.”

“She’s really far away!”

“She is not,” he points out. “Or the proximity sensor would have sent us a message.”

“And look, her temperature is a little higher than normal.”

“Iris,” he laughs. “No, it isn’t.”

“It is! It is, look – and McSnurtle shouldn’t be so far…”

Barry chuckles. “Is this what you’re going to be like when we have-” He stops himself just in time, but Iris is still frowning at the iPad. “Is this what I’m going to be like when we have what?”

He swallows, trying very hard to think of a way out of the fact he almost blurted out that he’s expecting to have kids with Iris, and she looks at him. “What? Barry, why are you looking at me like that?”

“N-No reason. But you should stop worrying, Iris. She’s fine. In fact, we have to get home and get ready for my dad’s anyway, so let’s get her out of there so she can get dry.”

Barry stands and starts to pack up while Iris moves to the edge of the pond and holds her hand over it. One of the reasons they’ve come to such a secluded place is because nobody can see Iris use her powers. McSnurtle comes floating out of the pool and into Iris’ waiting arms, where she’s placed a blanket to help her get dry. Then they head back to their apartment, hand-in-hand, Barry thinking about what he said. Or _almost_ said. Iris is so focused on getting back so they can pick up the pies that she’s hardly noticing that he’s so preoccupied. And thankfully they figured out how to keep their mind’s separate from each other so they don’t _accidentally_ hear what the other is thinking. Because if Iris had heard him thinking that he wanted to have kids with her, she’d probably think that he’d lost his mind.

Even from when he was a kid, one of the only things in life that he’d been sure about was Iris. He never really imagined his life without her, because for most of his life, he simply hadn’t been without her. They danced at Prom together. They learned to drive at the same time. They went to Disneyland before college, and when he was at college, being away from his best friend was the only bad thing about it. Visiting each other and going home for the holidays and talking to her on the phone were the only times he didn’t feel completely unbalanced. They were there at each other’s graduations, she supported him through applying to grad school, he talked her through her police academy exams. He remembers the moment that she told him she loved him that Christmas, and he’s always wondered what made her tell him then. And then after all the craziness of lightning and spies and doppelgangers on alternate earths, he realised that Iris had always been the only girl he knew how to love in the way that you were supposed to. He asked her to move in with him because he wanted her there with him, and yeah, maybe that was kind of fast, but she’s his Iris. His forever.

 _But that doesn’t mean you tell her you want kids with her, dumbass_.

He admits he has been thinking about it, but only in short spurts, like when Francine mentioned finding Iris’ old baby clothes in the attic, or last week at the Hall when everyone was congratulating Clark and Lois and Lois mentioned that Clark’s mom was already talking about kids. But he’s only just recovered from asking her to move in with him after a couple of months. He kind of figures _hey could you pass the milk and before I forget the landlord called and oh by the way I’d totally like you to have my tall, freckled babies_.

Yeah, maybe he should keep that to himself for now.

***

“…starting to think we didn’t get enough pies,” Iris says. Barry laughs down at her.

“You’re just saying that because you’re hungry.”

“Damn right I am. What’s your dad making again?”

“The sea bass from Fiji.”

“He knows there are three metahumans at dinner, right?”

“Mom told him like four times, so I hope so,” he replies, and Iris nods. Nora still hasn’t told Barry – or Malina or Eddie, for that matter – that she and Henry are dating. Hopefully they act normal enough so that she doesn’t have to say anything. She looks up at Barry, who’s holding the pies. She doesn’t know what happened, but he’d been kind of preoccupied since they got back from taking McSnurtle on their walk. She had asked him what was wrong, but he just replied that it was work.

“Look, there’s Jesse and Mal,” she says, as they turn the corner that leads to Henry’s condo. Barry starts scowling and she laughs. “Barry.”

“What?”

“Would you quit making that face?”

“What face?”

“The “my sister has a boyfriend and I can’t handle it” face.” She laughs when he realises. “Bar, come on. I thought you were cool with it.”

He glances at them as they come up from the opposite side of the street, Malina explaining something while Jesse fiddles with his tie with one hand, the other holding a bag of something. “I am cool with it,” he says, and she looks at him. “Alright, it’s just – Jesse? Really? The guy’s an asshole.”

“True,” she admits. “But she likes him, and he makes her happy. And she does know sixteen different ways to kill a person.”

“Seventeen. The thing with the chopsticks, remember?”

“Oh, wow, I forgot about that. Look, just be nice, okay? The poor guy’s nervous enough.”

Henry’s condo is near the outskirts of town, a sleek, stylish affair that’s located in the same neighbourhood where Dr. Wells and Jesse have their apartments. Barry looks at her as Jesse and Malina approach them. “What does he have to be nervous about? He’s a literal medical doctor who works for a superhero team. Dad’s gonna love him.”

“So? I’m a superhero, you think I wasn’t nervous about meeting your dad as your girlfriend? He keeps three guns and a bottle of arsenic in his Range Rover.”

“But he was going – Dad keeps a bottle of arsenic in the Range Rover?”

“Mm, under the passenger seat. Hey, guys,” she says, once they meet Jesse and Malina in front of the pathway to Henry’s. “I like your dress, Malina.”

“Thanks, Iris,” she beams cheerfully at her. “Hey, beanpole. Hey, you got the pies, did you get cherry?”

“We did,” he replies. “Did you guys get the wine?”

Jesse’s eyes widen. “W-What?” he splutters. “I thought we were getting the salad! Eddie said in the group chat that we were supposed to bring the salad-”

“Jesse, relax,” Iris interrupts, smacking her boyfriend. “You guys had the salad, we had the pies, Eddie and Chess had the wine. He’s just screwing with you.”

“Sorry, Jesse,” Barry says sheepishly, but he’s grinning. They start to walk up the pathway together. “So, what were you guys up to today?”

“We went to the Hall to hang out,” she says, and Jesse laughs.

“We weren’t “hanging out”. I was updating the medical protocols for you, Iris and Chesca, since they don’t really have a team doctor.”

“And we were playing with the giant bazooka,” she adds, and Iris frowns.

“Giant bazooka? When did we authorise a giant bazooka?”

“I don’t know, founding member of the Justice League,” Jesse replies sardonically, “when did you authorise a giant bazooka?”

“All weapons and machinery have to go through a vote if they’re bigger-” Iris breaks off and shares a look with Barry. “Hal,” they say together. She lifts her watch. “Gideon?”

He pops out, blue and amiable. “Yes, Iris?”

“Remind me to call Hal Jordan and ask her why she bypassed the weapons security protocol in order to put a giant bazooka in the Hall of Justice.”

“Can do.”

“Ay,” Iris mutters, and everyone laughs as they get to the door and Barry rings the doorbell. Henry opens it, jovial in a chef’s hat and apron.

“Hey, everyone! Glad you could make it!”

“Finally!” Chesca says as they all troop into the house. She’s there with Eddie, helping to set the table. “I thought you guys would never make it.”

“Dessert and salad,” Henry nods, “wonderful. Jesse, good to see you.”

Jesse shakes his hand. “You too, He – Mr, um…sir.” Henry blinks and looks at his daughter.

“He alright?”

“He’s just nervous,” she says. “Jesse, you can just call him Henry.”

“He has a gun,” he says quietly, and Henry grins.

“Hey, what you can’t see can’t hurt you.”

“ _Dad_!”

“Kidding!”

Eddie comes out the living room to greet them. “Where have you guys been? We were here an hour ago.”

“We were taking McSnurtle for a walk,” Barry says, taking Iris’ jacket off. “And you know you were here talking about spy stuff with dad. Hey, mom, I didn’t know you were here already.”

Nora blinks and smiles, and Iris feels a wave of panic because she knows from Nora’s thoughts that she and Henry had been spending time together before she got here. “Well, I was just helping Henry with the vegetables,” she says smoothly. “You know Francine and I have been playing around with some different growing techniques, and we wanted to try them out.”

“Yes, Nora was helping me with the vegetables,” Henry adds helpfully.

“Right,” Barry says easily, while Iris makes a face at Nora. “Do you guys need any help?”

“I can help!” Iris says quickly. The salad jumps out of Jesse’s hand and hovers in mid-air. “Everyone else go relax.” Eddie frowns.

“We can help, Iris-”

“It’s no problem!” She shoves Nora and Henry towards the kitchen. “Come on, everyone’s hungry!”

As soon as she’s shoved them in the kitchen she faces them both, her hands on her hips. “Okay, this is getting ridiculous. You have _got_ to tell them you’re dating!”

“Why?” Henry wants to know. “We’re taking things slow, isn’t that a good thing?”

“Because they’re starting to suspect something, and it will be worse if they find out instead of you telling them,” she says. “They’re going to think you don’t trust them.”

“Of course we trust them,” Nora says carefully. “It’s just…Look, Iris, for the longest time, it’s been me and Barry, and then you came along. It’s been…amazing to get Malina back and Henry back, and get to have Eddie, but this is a big deal.”

Iris regards her for a moment. “You’re more worried about what Barry will say,” she says finally. “Aren’t you?”

“Well, Iris, I wasn’t exactly his favourite person when I came back into his life,” Henry points out. “When I turned up, he said I should stay away from you,” he says to Nora, “and when I told the people at CCPN that I was looking for _you_ ,” he says to Iris, “he threatened grievous bodily harm on me if I ever went near you.”

“He was kidding,” Nora and Iris say together, and Henry stares at them.

“I don’t know why everyone insists on saying that when we all know he wasn’t kidding.”

“Look, Barry will be happy for you guys,” Iris says, rubbing her temples. “And even if he isn’t, it’s something I am begging you to work through it because I have an ulcer called “Henry and Nora are dating” and it’s getting bigger each day. At this point, I just want to tell Barry myself.”

“Tell me what?” Barry asks idly, walking into the kitchen. Nora blinks.

“Barry! I thought you were helping set the table,” Iris says. He looks between all of them.

“Yeah, I was,” he says. “Eddie and Malina sent me in here to ask whether you wanted to use the silver gifted to you by the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan for helping to stop the coup, or whether the normal silver was okay.”

“Normal silver,” Henry replies quickly. “Normal silver is fine.”

Barry stares at them all again. “Everything okay in here?” he asks slowly.

“Fine!” Iris says, bounding up to him and grabbing his hand. “They don’t need me in here, why don’t I come help you?”

“But-”

Iris reaches up to kiss him. “You are _so_ cute, you know that? Come on, let’s go.”

***

If you’d told Barry a year ago that he’d be having dinner with his long-lost secret agent father, not-dead sister, secret agent adopted brother, mother, a superhero doctor, a superhero mechanic, and his superhero girlfriend, he would have thought you were on drugs. But now, sitting here talking about the time Superwoman threw Iris off a roof in Metropolis, it _does_ feel totally normal. Well, most of it.

“I think the thing is that she was so _quick_ ,” Iris continues, passing the salad to Eddie. “I mean, the thing everyone always thinks about when they see her is flight, and super strength, and the laser eyes. But everyone forgets that she’s fast, too.”

“Faster than The Flash?” Malina asks, and Jesse frowns.

“No, Earth-52 Barry, according to Dr. Snow-”

“The Dr. Snow that isn’t a murdering psychopath-” Chesca adds helpfully.

“-right, currently runs at Mach-6, and he gets there in under a minute. According to the Justice League records, Superwoman takes a little longer to get up to that speed.”

“How is he?” Eddie asks. “It’s so weird to know that there’s a Barry out there who’s a metahuman.”

“Yeah, and one who runs,” Malina adds. “I mean, I know Iris said that you ran track in college, but dude, you run like a duck.”

“Hey, this “duck” was the fastest man alive at Berkeley,” Barry shrugs, and Iris smiles.

“Yeah, I mean I think they’re doing…okay. I told you guys what’s going on with Iris, right? About…their Savitar?” They all nod. “Well, Savitar got out, and then they lost Wally, and they got him back, and then Barry and Iris kind of…took a break for a little bit. But they’re back together and they have some leads on Savitar, I think. So hopefully they’ll be fine,” she finishes, and everyone nods. Iris is leaving something out, though, because Earth-52 Barry and Iris aren’t just back together – they’re engaged. Barry doesn’t know but she’s not entirely sure how to drop that into the conversation without freaking him out. _Oh, hey, our doppelgangers are getting married as soon as they get that pesky speed god out of the way_.

“Well, I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Nora says firmly. “We’ve all been in worse situations.”

“Oh, yeah, remember that newspaper that said Iris was going to die that was basically a countdown clock?” Chesca asks. “They’ve got this. And if they need our help we’re there, right?”

Iris nods. “That’s what I told them. Anyway, how’s life in secret agent land? Anything new to share?”

Nora laughs over her potatoes and Eddie, Malina and Henry all share looks. “You know, I’m not sure,” Eddie says. “It’s been pretty quiet with Waller being on sabbatical.”

“Waller’s on sabbatical?” Jesse asks, but Henry shakes his head.

“Sabbatical is just the word we use when someone high up in the organisation is doing something…that maybe not everyone should know about.”

Chesca pauses with the fish halfway to her mouth. “Um. Are we going to wake up with a new President tomorrow?”

“No,” Henry laughs. “No, nothing like that. At least, I don’t think it’s like that. He would have emailed me.”

“How lovely that the fate of the free world is often talked about through Google mail,” Nora mutters, laughing. Iris looks around. “So, what’s he doing?”

Everyone pauses. “Well,” Malina says. “We can’t tell you that. But if, for example, someone wanted to talk to the head of MI6, or the head of the CIA, or the president of Interpol, or the president of Interpol, or the director of the DGSE, or the director of the SVR, or anyone with a similar status, they should…probably wait until next week.”

“ _Malina_!” Eddie says, while everyone stares at her. “How do you know that? Your security clearance level isn’t that high!”

“You’re surprised that the mind reader knows things she isn’t supposed to? I don’t have as much self-control as Bambi Eyes.”

“Um,” Nora interrupts. “Remind me what the SVR is, again?”

“It’s what the KGB became after the Soviet Union dissolved,” Barry answers, still looking at his sister. Nora blinks.

“Alright. Who wants dessert?”

“Let’s talk more about security clearance,” Chesca says, entertained. Barry and Henry get up to go help with the dessert. “Do I have one?”

“Everyone has one,” Eddie says, “and Malina’s isn’t high enough to know where the head of A.R.G.U.S. and the director of M.A.I.M.E.D. is hiding, so-”

“Relax, choirboy,” Malina says, waving a hand. “I’m not going to tell anybody. What, you think I want Waller on my ass for insubordination again?”

“How many times has Waller been on your ass for insubordination?” Iris asks, and Malina moves her potatoes around.

“Um. Just a half a dozen of times. Ahem…this year.”

“ _What_? Why?”

“Because she keeps hacking into the computers for her own personal interest,” Eddie replies, irritated. She throws her hands up in the air.

“It’s a training exercise!”

“You hacked into the personnel files of everyone in Combat and Self-Defence!”

“I was trying to figure out what to get Sipowitz for his birthday! Oh,” she says suddenly, “did you know he used to be a mime?”

“ _Malina_!”

“I – I can’t with you,” Eddie mutters, and everyone laughs. He turns to Iris. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you, Iris – check your emails. Waller wants a meeting with you.”

“Really?” she frowns. “Why?”

“I don’t know, he just said that you weren’t responding. And it’s really important; he keeps calling me at my apartment.”

“She literally never checks her emails,” Jesse says. “You still haven’t responded to my email about a ping-pong table for the breakroom.”

“Oh, I saw that,” Iris says, sipping her wine. “I’m just ignoring it.”

“What? Why?”

“Yeah, a ping-pong table is actually one of the more decent ideas that Dr. Asshole has had,” Chesca adds.

“Because when we put a foosball table in the breakroom, you, Jesse, Eddie and Linda almost killed each other.” Jesse points at Eddie.

“Because he’s a _cheater_ -”

“I am not, you’re just jealous because-”

“Do you see?” Iris mutters to Malina as they start arguing. “Do you see what I deal with?”

“Anyway,” Eddie says, ignoring Jesse, “answer your emails. He’s a pretty big deal, in case you didn’t already know.”

Just then Barry, Nora and Henry come into the room with the pies. “So what was everyone up to today? I think this is the first day off for the Miracle Workers in a while.”

“Well, we were in STAR Labs looking at medical procedures,” Malina explains. “Like, you know how when you’re training with M.A.I.M.E.D. they do that thing where they leave you out in the wilderness for three months and you have to be able to look after yourself?”

“Yeah,” Eddie and Henry say together, while everyone else stares at them. Barry clears his throat.

“Sure, because that’s obviously what the Girl Scouts is _for_.”

“Haha. Well, being a metahuman now, I need to learn different methods. Like how to clean wounds before I start healing and they seal up before I can do that. Like the time your crazy ex-girlfriend shot your current girlfriend.”

“So glad we can joke about that,” Barry mutters, and Nora laughs.

“Jesse taught you how to do that already?” Iris asks. Malina beams at him.

“Yeah, Jesse’s been teaching me lots of things.”

“He’s been what?” Barry frowns.

“Ab-About medical care,” he splutters quickly. He looks between both of her brothers. “I’m teaching her about…medical care.”

“So McSnurtle is getting bigger,” Iris says quickly, putting a hand on Barry’s arm, who is still glaring at Jesse. Chesca catches on and clears her throat.

“Really? That’s great! Did you guys get that enclosure that Mal recommended?”

“No,” Iris admits. “Barry said we didn’t need it.”

“It was a waste of money and it wasn’t even that nice. The one I built is much better.”

“You _built_ a turtle enclosure?” Eddie demands, and Barry shrugs.

“It wasn’t a big deal. Iris showed me the kind of one she wanted, and I downloaded some specs off the internet.” Nora laughs.

“Was it like the time he built those shelves?”

“No, it was worse. I had to stop him from putting a waterfall in.”

“Okay, look, the waterfall would have been cool,” Barry points out. “And the shelves was – that guy was ripping you off, I’ve always said so-”

“What about the time you built Nora a china cabinet?” Iris asks.

“Or the time you fixed all the doors in Iris’ apartment?”

“Or all the times you wouldn’t let me take my car to the dealership to get checked out?”

Barry folds his arms and gives her an obstinate look, silent, and then says, “They rip you off there! I’ve always fixed your car, there’s been nothing wrong with it that I couldn’t handle.”

“Aw,” Chesca says. “Barry wanted to be Iris’ knight in shining armour.”

“My hero,” she says sunnily, kissing Barry on the cheek. Eddie rolls his eyes.

“You two are so sappy.” Malina raises an eyebrow.

“Aren’t you the one always singing Chesca songs on your guitar?”

“That, I’d like to hear,” Barry says and Henry grins.

“I have my old guitar upstairs, if you want to show off?”

“You know,” Chesca says, “he _is_ pretty good. Dare I say, even better than Barry?”

“Yeah, sure, lets not get ahead of ourselves,” he scoffs. Eddie folds his arms.

“Oh, really? Dad, lets get the guitar. Barry’s not the only good singer in this family.”

“I never said I was the only good singer in this family,” Barry points out. “I said that I was the _best_ singer in this family.”

They both start trash-talking each other and Iris looks at Malina. “You know, sometimes I think you just like to start the fights.”

“I mean, you’re not _wrong_.”

***

“Mom – Mom, it’s _fine_ , really,” Iris says as she walks back into the precinct. “We can have dinner on Sunday, and besides, we have movie night at yours on Thursday, right? Right, so go be all romantic with Cecil. Hey, the way he’s treating you, I don’t have to send the Green Arrow after him. Mom – I’m kidding. Uh-huh. Love you too. Bye.”

Linda’s smiling when Iris hangs up. “Aw, your mom sounds so happy.”

“She is,” Iris agrees. “Which is great, because I really didn’t want to have to send Olivia after him.”

“Iris, I thought you were kidding about that.” Iris frowns.

“Why would I be kidding about that?”

“You know what? Never mind.”

“Alright,” she shrugs. She hugs her. “Thanks for lunch, it’s always fun to go hang out at Wayne Industries. Are you on duty tonight?”

“Yeah, me, Wally and Mal. Although with her being there I bet Jesse is going to come too.” Iris makes a noise in agreement. Iris thinks they’re pretty sweet, and everyone seems okay with it apart from Barry. He spent half of the dinner glaring at him, and Iris isn’t quite sure why.

“And Chesca says she might drop in before dinner with her folks,” Iris adds. “Apparently you guys are working on some new modifications for her gauntlets?”

“Yes, and don’t worry, we’ll use one of the designated training rooms next time.”

“I didn’t _mind_ you guys hitting watermelon with Chesca’s sonic blasts,” Iris says. “Its just that you guys keeping managing to hit Jesse with it and he always calls when I’m busy.”

“Don’t hit Jesse with watermelon. Noted.”

Iris laughs and wishes her goodbye before traipsing back up to her office. The fact that she managed to get away from her lab to even get lunch with Linda is a miracle, given how much work she has to do. And there’s something else she needs to take care of, something about an email-

“West?”

“Yeah?” Iris turns around to see Rose standing in the doorway of her lab with someone she doesn’t immediately recognise. “Your two o’clock is here,” Rose says. “Name’s Jake Tapper – says he’s from the paper?”

“Oh!” Iris says, remembering. “Of course, Jake, right, come in. Thanks, Rose.”

He walks towards her desk, eyeing her as she gets her notes in order. “Is this a good time?”

“Yeah, sorry, I was just out to lunch with my friend Linda and I forgot this was the meeting I had. I have your notes…here,” she says triumphantly, pulling out a folder of the notes she’d prepared the day before. Jake raises his eyebrows.

“Linda…Park? She works at Wayne Industries, right? The one dating your cousin?”

Iris looks up at him and Jake laughs. “Barry talks a lot. I was just making sure I got everything right.”

“Oh,” she says. Well, that she can believe. She gestures for him to sit down. “So, your assistant sent through all the stuff you would need for your article. You said you’re tackling the environmental crime angle with this situation?”

“Yeah, because that oil spill is gonna be pretty bad for the ecosystem for at least the next ten years,” he explains. He pulls out his notepad and article drafts. “Now, you said that you completed your investigation into the tanker and the materials it was made with…”

The next hour or so passes with Jake making points about his article and Iris giving him quotes about it. He’s written about the long-term effects of what could happen, similar environmental attacks in the area, and how liable the company would be even if they found out it was a meta. Jake’s whole thing is that if it _wasn’t_ a meta and was just some freak weather accident, you could, theoretically, tie it to global warming, because it was such an odd weather phenomenon. He’s incredibly shrewd, Iris finds, coming to conclusions she herself wouldn’t have reached if it weren’t for the fact that she hung around Barry all the time. She supposes that all reporters are suspicious about something. He’s smiling when he packs up his stuff.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a more concrete answer,” she says regretfully. “The FMCSA sent me their report, and they’re definitely not liable.”

“It’s alright, Iris,” he replies. “I appreciate the time, and I thought this would be the case. But like we said, even if it wasn’t them, we do have to look at the influence on global warming on this kind of thing. You could say that a crime has already been committed, in a sense.”

“You’re right, and I never thought of that. I’m looking forward to reading what you write. And then I guess once Miss Miracle is done with her investigation, you’ll get an answer.”

Jake regards her. “Barry’s helping with that, isn’t he? With the investigation.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s just helping her with recon work, I think. Gathering information where she can’t. I guess no matter where you go, you’re always someone’s assistant,” she jokes. He laughs, but there seems to be something hollow in it.

“I guess he tells you about that kind of stuff all the time.”

“I mean, yeah, he does, but I don’t pay that much attention to it,” she replies. “Once you’ve heard one superhero story, you know them all, right?”

Jake keeps looking at her. The other thing she noticed – Jake has a very unnerving stare. She now knows exactly how he’s able to navigate crime so easily. “It must be a relief,” he says after a second. “To have her protecting him. I don’t know how I’d sleep at night if someone I loved was helping a superhero. She must care about him a lot.”

“She protects him,” she says, trying to keep her voice even, “because it’s her job.”

“Of course, and she’s very good at it. I mean, she saved your mom that time, right? Barry must have asked her to.”

Iris realises right then that she can’t read his mind; the blank void nothingness that indicates this person’s thoughts are closed to her is what greets her. She resists the urge to clench her fists. “My mother had been kidnapped from Iron Heights, and the police informed her.”

“And by the police you mean Barry’s mother?” Iris lifts one should in a shrug.

“I’m not sure. I was busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“Busy being worried about the fact that my mother was kidnapped,” she practically snaps, but Jake is still giving her that look. Like a cat that’s found something particularly interesting to play with.

“But she’s safe, which is the important thing,” he shrugs. “It must be nice knowing that you’ll always have a superhero ready to save your family. Must be one of the advantages of being best friends with a superhero.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, Miss Miracle. She must be pretty close with you guys if she’s willing to save Nora Allen and save your mom and always, _always_ save your boyfriend.”

Iris looks at him for a second and then clears her throat, gathering up her papers. “The relationships that Miss Miracle has with anyone she considers a friend are her business,” she says calmly, though she doesn’t feel like it. “And I have work to do.”

Jake doesn’t say anything for a moment and then someone in the doorway clears their throat. “West?” Captain Singh says. “I need – Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Captain,” Iris says. “Jake was just leaving. It was nice to see you again, Jake.”

“You too, Iris,” he replies, smiling. “Thanks for all your help.”

Iris watches him thank the captain and then leave, and the older woman turns to her. “You alright, West?” she frowns. “He giving you any trouble?”

“No,” she assures her, making a note to talk to Barry. “No, everything’s fine.”

***

Barry yawns as he goes up the elevator in STAR Labs. The Excellence in Journalism Awards are soon so everyone has to give interviews about the time at the paper. He, Scott and Jake had to do several, Scott because he was always on the news, Jake because of all the crime scandals he’d broken the previous year, and Barry because of his work with the Justice League. Doing all he segments, not to mention all his own work, took hours, and it’s why he completely missed dinner with Iris. And he can’t even go home yet, because he has to pick up some stuff from his office in the lab before he gets home.

“…Smoak has nothing on you,” he hears Chesca say as he walks in. Linda, Malina, Chesca and Jesse are all sat around the terminals, watching Malina type. “See, there you go.”

“Hey, people, what’s up?”

“Hey, stringbean!” Chesca says fondly. “How was work?”

“Work was fine. What are you guys doing? Is Malina hacking again? Because-”

“Relax, dude,” Linda says. “She actually needs to get some practice in, so Freddie organised some hacking exercises for her. We’re actually hacking into the cameras at the Town Hall so we can all watch you win your award.”

He blinks. “Really? You guys are watching?”

“Duh, of course we are,” Chesca says. “We’ve ordered the food and everything. It’s gonna be a great night.”

Barry laughs. “Well, that’s good to know. Have any of you seen Eddie? His assistant said he’d be here.”

“I’m here!” Eddie himself calls – and he walks out of Linda’s workshop carrying a harpoon gun. Barry’s eyes widen.

“Uh…Hey, Eddie.”

“Barry,” he smiles warmly. “What’s up?”

“Uh, could you…” he mimes lowering the harpoon gun, and Eddie obliges.

“Sorry. What do you need?”

“I just wanted to thank you for helping out with the case,” Barry explains. “I mean, it’s definitely a meta, but we needed to rule it out.”

“No problem, anything I can do to help. Do you know what we’re doing next?”

“Iris is having a meeting this week to talk about it, I think. And, um,” he adds quietly, glancing at the others. He moves them away from the group. “Did you look into that…thing?”

“Thing – oh,” he says quickly. “With Linda. Yeah, I started a couple of days ago. Sorry, the koi carp thing got in the way.”

“Koi carp?”

“Remember when I said I had to help a guy insure his koi carp? Yeah, well, turns out he just needed money to cover the fact that he’s smuggling bricks of cocaine through his fishmongers. Of all the insurances places in all the towns in all the world.”

“Right,” Barry chuckles. Eddie’s life is always so entertaining.

“So, it looks like I have a story for you when you want it,” he says. “But yeah, I put a tail of my own on Linda, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s following her. Is she sure?”

“Well, she was really worried,” he says. “And she _does_ work for Wayne Industries. But if there’s nothing…”

“Nothing that I could see,” Eddie shrugs. “But I’ll keep an eye out. What are you doing here so late, anyway? You’re not on duty all week.”

“Had to pick up some stuff,” he shrugs. He eyes the harpoon gun. “Eddie, seriously, where do you get this stuff?”

Eddie brandishes the gun. “Oh this? It was a gift, wanna see-”

“EDDIE!”

***

Iris is curled up on the couch watching a documentary when he gets home, McSnurtle settled in her lap. “Hey,” she calls. “You’re home.”

“Finally.” He trudges over the couch and sinks heavily into the armchair, massaging his shoulders. Iris turns down the TV.

“Tough day?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. I keep closing my eyes and seeing newspaper layouts.” Iris gets up and puts McSnurtle back in her enclosure on the balcony, before nudging Barry off the armchair and onto the floor. He looks up at her, curious, but she just sits and positions him in between her legs. He sighs in relief when Iris starts kneading his shoulders with her hands. “Metahuman strength,” she says, “has many advantages. Better?”

“Much better,” he says, closing his eyes. “How was your day?”

“Blood spatter, toxicology reports, fingerprints,” she shrugs. “Same old, same old.” She bends down to kiss him and he holds her there for a moment, cupping her cheek. “Hi,” Barry says quietly.

“Hi. You want some dinner?”

“I kind of want to shower first,” he grimaces. “Literally, I have ink all over my hands and stage makeup on me. That stuff sucks.”

“Right, your interview.” Iris stands up and goes to put Barry’s dinner in the oven while he takes off his tie. “So they’re playing it before the awards were announced?”

“Yeah, all my achievements, some stuff with Missy, that kind of thing. You’re in it a lot, actually.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I am?”

“Well, Miss Miracle is,” he admits. “And the Justice League.” Iris furrows her brow.

“It’s not like a lot, is it? There’s all that stuff about the metahumans you found out about? And the time you busted the Baldwins for illegally evicting people? I would hate for everyone to think that the only reason you’re doing any of this is because of me.”

But Barry just shrugs. “Everything I do is for you,” he says simply. “What’s for dinner?”

“Baby back ribs, sweet potato fries, and the rest of the pies from Sunday dinner.”

“Mama Ida’s recipes at work again?”

“You know, I thought she was just being a typical grandma,” Iris says, “you know, obsessing over what I eat, but it turns out Southern food is actually a pretty great way to get in a lot of calories, which works for my metabolism. Southern food, ideal for a metahuman. Who’d have thought?”

“I guess Central City better be glad that Miss Miracle is a Black woman,” he chuckles, shifting some hair out of her face.

“Look, _we_ know that, but I really wish everyone else did.” She bites her lip. “So, Jake came by work today.”

“Ugh, sorry about that. Was he an ass? I know he can be a know-it-all.”

“Not…really. Just, you know, he asked me some questions took some quotes, all that stuff. And then we started talking about you, and Miss Miracle, and he kind of…said something…” Barry stares at her.

“What did he say to you?” he asks.

“It probably wasn’t – he was probably just being nosy-”

“Iris,” he interrupts. His voice is calm, measured, but there’s a steely glint in his eyes that she doesn’t often see. “What did he say to you?” She sighs.

“He started asking me all these questions about Miss Miracle, and how closer all of us are – you, me, her, our families. He kept talking about how she rescued my mom and your mom, and how it must be nice that a superhero is always going to save my boyfriend.”

Barry clenches his jaw. “He said that to you?”

“Yeah. Does he know something, or…”

“No,” he says immediately. “Or, I don’t think so. I don’t see why he would. I mean, he’s an investigative reporter, he’s bound to be curious.” He frowns down at her. “You’re not worried, are you? Because if you are, then-”

“Barry, please,” she laughs, waving a hand. “I’m fine. I just wanted to know whether someone was planning on writing an expose on me.” Barry grins and moves towards her.

“We could do an expose on you right now…”

“Barry!”

“Kidding. Mostly.”

“Jackass,” she mutters, turning back to the oven, but she’s grinning. “Look, I’m not worried, it’s just that I like to keep track of who knows my secret.”

“Right, of course. Look, I’ll talk to him tomorrow, make sure he knows where everyone stands on Miss Miracle.”

She smiles gratefully and kisses him on the cheek. “Thank you. Your food’ll be done after your shower.”

“Okay,” he says, and then he tilts his head at her. “Hey, do you remember Christmas?”

Iris snorts. “You mean spending half of it FaceTiming with Jesse and Chesca because we were trying to figure out how to navigate Earth-2 and all they could talk about was all the tech they were going to steal and show to Linda when we got back?”

“Haha, no – no, I meant the Christmas before.”

She pauses in the act of programming the oven. “You mean Calamity?”

“No. Um. When you – when we…talked.”

Iris turns to him. Barry’s looking at her kind of apprehensively, which is how she knows something must be on his mind. He’s never been shy around her so she always thought that he’d be the more confident one in their relationship, but she’s realising that making their relationship romantic has put them at more or less an even level. Seeing Barry – her Barry who is always so charming and outgoing and confident – this shy around her always makes her love him just a little bit more. “You mean when I told you how I felt about you?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “What…made you tell me? What made you tell me right then?”

“I really like having bad timing?” she jokes. She takes her glasses off and cleans them with her shirt. “I was going through a lot, that month. With going crazy and attacking everyone, and Olivia visiting, and then the Task Force. And I was realising that it was getting really…hard, looking at you and loving you every day and lying about _everything_ that was going on in my life. Every time I looked at you I felt like I was lying to you. You’ve always been the best part of my life, and the lies were ruining that. And something my mom and Chesca said made me realise something.”

“What?”

“The night that my father died,” she says. “I came down the stairs, and I saw Calamity in the living room. And she saw me, and she used her powers to keep me frozen in place. Nobody ever believed me about it, so I never got over it. And until I told you, I’d spent my whole life still in that living room, boxed in, not letting myself move forward. I was too scared to tell you how I felt about you, and I guess that was the point where I was starting to feel stifled by being stuck there. So I told you.”

Barry pauses for a moment. “You said you weren’t expecting anything,” he says quietly. “Because I was with-”

“Patty,” she finishes. “Yeah. I wasn’t. I mean, I’m not going to lie and say that if the man of my dreams decided that was the moment he wanted to be with me I was going to say _no_ ,” she says, making them both laugh. “But I saw how happy you were with her, and I wasn’t trying to ruin it. I was just trying to be honest. And I guess I sort of…owed you an explanation as to why I wasn’t always so jazzed to hang out with her.”

Barry gives her a small smile. “Yeah, I noticed that. But she tried to kill everyone, so I guess we’re even.”

“Good times,” she laughs again. “What brought that up?”

He shrugs absently. “I don’t know, I was just…thinking about where we are, and where we’re going, and I was just wondering about how we got here in the first place.”

She frowns slightly, smiling. “Where are we going?”

“Hm?”

“You said ‘where we’re going’. Where are we going?”

Barry blinks at her, and he gets that look that he got when they took McSnurtle to the pond. “Nowhere. Not, um – not _nowhere_ , I just mean that we…love each other, and we’ve always loved each other, and we always will s-so, I guess we’re kind of going nowhere if we look at it that way,” he finishes, rubbing his head. Iris stares at him for a full five seconds.

“Bar,” she says finally, trying not to laugh, “I think you really need some dinner.”

“Right,” he agrees. “Dinner, right.”

***

If it weren’t for the fact that he really wanted to win, Barry would have said that the whole hoopla surrounding this awards situation wasn’t worth it. Now, according to Erica, they had to attend a mixer for all the nominees as per tradition. According to the Mayor’s office, it was to “foster friendships and encourage goodwill between the diverse range of news and media outlets throughout the city”.

Scott, raising an eyebrow as Erica finishes reading the memo, laughs. “What they mean by that is so that we trash talk each other enough to get hyped for the awards, and then whoever loses is extra hyped for next year.” Several different people point at Scott and say, “True story.”

Barry laughs and Erica tries not to. “Alright, alright, I hear you. But we have to go, hear me? And it’s open bar and casual dress code, so think of it like getting drinks on a Friday.”

“Except it’ll be with people from the Central City Citizen,” Barry points out. “I don’t think any of us really feel like playing nice with them.”

“Especially after some of us got our first date with our girlfriend plastered all over their entertainment site,” someone points out, and Barry blushes as everyone laughs.

“Hey, now,” Erica frowns. “I thought that was sweet.”

“Look, if I can help them out on a slow news day while on a date, I won’t complain,” Barry shrugs. “But they won’t exactly be winning any awards with that approach.”

 “Good. Now, like I said, it’s casual dress, Bar 52 down by Infantino Street, everyone turn up on time – that means you, Allen – and stay at least three hours. Significant others welcome, open bar, do not embarrass me or I’ll have you reporting Central City’s sanitation updates for the next month.” She glances at her watch. “Okay, lunch orders.”

Everyone moves off and Barry gathers up his stuff. Scott taps him on the shoulder. “Hey, are you and Iris coming to this?”

“Me, yes. Iris no,” he replies. “She’s on duty tonight, and Malina can’t cover – she’s got a date.”

“I didn’t know your sister had a boyfriend.”

“He’s not her boyfriend, they’re just dating,” Barry says somewhat grumpily. He’s still not quite used to the idea of Malina liking anyone, let alone Jesse. Scott tuts.

“I really wanted Naomi to have someone to talk to that wasn’t going to fawn all over her. I figure once you’re a superhero nobody really impresses you that much.”

“It’s your fault for dating a supermodel. And – how did you meet her, anyway? Iris told me she’s one of Olivia’s supermodel friends.”

Scott stares at him. “Barry. Have you seen me?”

“Right,” Barry chuckles. He looks around to see that Jake is finishing a conversation with one of the interns and the room is mostly clear. “Hey, give me a minute.”

“Sure.”

“Jake?” Barry calls, and the other journalist looks up briefly. “Allen,” he says, sliding his laptop in his case. “Good to see you.”

“Yeah, you too. So, Iris told me that you came by the precinct yesterday.”

“I did. She was very helpful. I remembered to thank her, didn’t I?”

“Oh no, she’s not mad or anything. It’s just that she told me you were asking her some questions about Miss Miracle, and she wasn’t really comfortable with it,” he explains. Jake just shrugs.

“Well, I didn’t mean to make her uncomfortable,” he replies. “I was just asking questions.”

Barry resists the urge to snap at him. “Right,” he says slowly. “I get that. We would just appreciate it if, in the future, if you wanted to know anything about Miss Miracle, you ask me.”

Jake looks at him, finally. “I didn’t want to find out about Miss Miracle. I wanted to find out about the relationship between Miss Miracle and the two of you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve just always found it interesting how close you guys are,” he shrugs. “I mean, getting to _you_ has always been a pretty sure-fire way to piss her off. I was just wondering whether getting to Iris would have the same effect. Or her mom. Or _your_ mom.”

Barry stares at him; in the background, Scott looks up from his laptop in alarm. “Jake,” he says calmly, “I’m only going to say this once, but I want to be very clear. You do not talk to my girlfriend, my family, or anyone else I care about about anything to do with Miss Miracle. You ask me or you ask Google, and if neither of us want to tell you, you can go ahead and take that as a sign that you shouldn’t know. Are we clear?”

Jake regards him. “Google won’t tell me what I want to know.” Barry folds his arms.

“And what, exactly, do you want to know?”

“Anything a good investigative journalist would want to know. Miss Miracle has saved your mother, your girlfriend’s mother, and your girlfriend. Now, even though she’s no hotshot detective, she’s probably handled evidence to put away some the biggest criminals in this city. Is Iris really sure she, CCPD’s best CSI, wants the whole world knowing that she’s one of Miss Miracle’s besties?”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Barry snaps.

“Well, I was just wondering whether Miss Miracle would do anything to help Iris if, say, one of those criminals targeted her because they realised exactly how close all of you are. It would be a shame if someone slipped up and mentioned that Iris West might be another way to get to Miss Miracle.”

“ _What did you just say to me_?”

“Okay, okay.” Scott appears from behind him and puts his hand on Barry’s chest, who’s stepped up to Jake without realising. “Everyone calm down. Jake, you need to mind your business.”

“That’s not-”

“Did you hear me stutter? Implying that you’re going to “slip up” and broadcast the fact than an officer of the law is close with Miss Miracle in order to see whether criminals will take notice of her isn’t illegal, but it’s shady as shit and you know it. Now, Barry is your subordinate, which means that even though I know he wants to lay you out on this table right now, he _won’t_ ,” Scott says, giving Barry a look, “because he knows it will get him fired. However, you are _my_ subordinate, and if you keep going the way you’re going, I have no problem laying you out on this table. And believe me, if you don’t start minding your business, _I will lay you out on this table_.”

Jake stares at them both for a minute, before walking off. Scott turns back to Barry. “You need to calm down.”

“You want me to calm down?” Barry demands. “Scott, he just threatened Iris. You know he’s writing an article and using her as the source – he could just as well slip in some line in about how Iris is one of Miss Miracle’s close friends or something, and that puts a target on her back.”

“Which is why,” Scott says evenly, “you need to calm down. You haven’t worked with Jake as long as I have – this seems like he’s working an angle on something.”

“Working an angle? For what? And why would he need Iris to do it?”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Barry,” Scott says sarcastically, “but you are _very_ protective of your girlfriend. Jake knows that, and he knows it’ll get a rise out of you. You can’t play into his hands. Besides, Iris _is_ Miss Miracle, she’s safe.”

Barry shakes his head. “It’s not just Iris, Scott. It’s her mom, and my mom, and my sister, and Eddie, and my dad, and _you_ , and all the rest of our friends. You don’t know the minds of some of these people like I do – Colin threatened to kill everyone I loved if I didn’t keep quiet about his plan. Captain Cold and Heatwave almost killed Chesca’s sister just to get her to build something. Thalia Thawne changed her name to Patty Spivot, moved to a different state, and dated me for a _year_ just to get revenge on my father. There’s nothing I can about the fact that people know we’re dating, but I don’t want it broadcasted any more than it already is that Miss Miracle is close to me.”

“Barry, you’re panicking,” Scott says, and Barry rubs his face. “Those are all worst-case scenarios. And while I do admit that you guys have… _extremely_ shitty luck,” he frowns, “there’s nothing to indicate that Jake’s not just being nosy. So my suggestion is that instead of thinking of ways to trip him up on the way to the coffee machine, you ignore him. Act like everything’s normal, that today was a misunderstanding, and that you get along. Don’t give him anything.  If it’s nothing, then it passes. If it is…well, don’t help. Okay?”

Barry sighs. “Alright, fine. But how the hell am I gonna spend a whole evening pretending I can stand that guy? He’s such a jackass.”

Scott raises an eyebrow. “Well, do you remember when I was dating Iris and you had to pretend that you didn’t want to punch me in the throat me every time you saw me?”

Barry folds his arms, feigning confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, like you haven’t been completely in love with her the entire time I’ve known you,” he grins. “Besides, I don’t blame you. I _am_ the finest man Iris ever dated, after all.”

“Which is why she’s dating me instead of you?” Barry points out. “Besides, you’re all dopey happy with Naomi. Don’t think I haven’t heard you bragging about how “awesome” she is to everyone who’ll listen.”

“Oh, I’m supremely talented,” Scott says easily. “I can be better-looking than you and whipped at the same time.”

“Well, you may think that you’re the finest man that Iris ever dated, but I’m going to be the _last_ man that she ever dates, so…”

Scott folds his arms, his expression between impressed and surprised. “Barry Allen. For real?”

Barry shrugs. “Iris is it for me,” he says simply. Scott grins, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Well, hey, I’m happy for you. Make sure you invite me to the wedding. I promise I won’t even show you up.”

“Look, it’s not like I’m going to ask her tomorrow,” Barry laughs. “I mean, we just moved in together. It’s way too soon. I just…I _know_ , you know? And let’s be real, I’m never going to do any better than Iris.”

“Oh, dude, right there with you. Because I’m fine, but Naomi is literally a supermodel who went to Princeton.”

“ _How_ does Olivia know these people?” Barry mutters as they walk out of the conference room. Both of them see Jake talking to Wendy and Charlie, Barry’s intern; both look like they’re looking for an exit strategy. “I’m going to have to get so drunk to like that guy.”

“Bar 52 is about to see something real special.”

“You know, he used to be a rodeo clown? Malina did some hacking and found out.”

“And here I stand without pictures, and you walk around calling yourself my friend?”

***

“This is boring, I’m bored.”

Chesca frowns at the terminal computer. “Bored? Why are you bored?”

Iris rolls her eyes. “There is, like, _no_ crime out there. I’ve been on patrol for almost three hours, and I’ve barely left this place.”

“Well, Central City’s finest is on ten today,” her friend shrugs. Her frown deepens. “Oh my God, does the copyright office really need all of this? Do they want my firstborn next?”

“I told you, I don’t know what drugs they’re doing.”

“Well, a girl’s gotta eat. Are you sure there’s no crime?”

“Nope.”

“Fires?”

“All taken care of?”

“Robberies?”

“Dropped all of them off with Nora.”

“Cats stuck up a tree.”

“Mozzarella the tabby cat is safe and sound,” Iris says, and her friend laughs.

“Well, that is what happens when you’re Central City’s favourite miracle. Why don’t you go visit someone?”

“Mom’s at dinner with the other tutors from the college, Linda and Wally are visiting her mom, Nora’s on duty, Henry and Eddie are meeting Waller, Jesse and Mal are on a date, and Barry has some work thing. Although it’s almost midnight,” she adds, glancing at her watch. “He should be back by now.”

Chesca taps on the screen, frowning as she brings up everyone’s locations from the trackers in their phones. “Yep, there he is. What’s he doing on the east side of town? You guys live in midtown.”

“Yeah, but the Keystone City Patriots are playing the Central City Sirens today, which means drunk college fratboys and loud sports fans all over the plaza,” she explains, pointing at the map. “It’s much quieter this way.”

“I’ll say; there’s no one around him for at least a mile. What is that place, anyway?”

“Mostly abandoned warehouses. Liv wanted to buy some of them, actually, I think for the food division of Queen Incorporated?”

“Queen Consolidated has a – you know what, never mind.” Chesca stands. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, apparently drinking jumbo-sized strawberry milkshakes from Big Belly Burger isn’t good for the bladder. Go figure. Don’t do any missions without me.”

“I will most definitely not do any missions without you,” Iris promises. She watches Chesca leave, and then comes around to the computer that’s displaying Barry’s coordinates. She puts them into her suit, nodding when the voice repeats them, and blinks out of existence.

***

Barry thinks he did pretty well tonight. He mostly stuck with the people from CCPN, but he also mingled with several of the news anchors from their TV station that was also owned by Morgan Edge. He even found the writer from the Central City Citizen who took the picture of his and Iris’ first date from Twitter and wrote a story on it and pretended that it was all just jokes between friends. Everyone was buzzing with the anticipation because the next time these people would all be in the same room again, it would be at the awards ceremony. Unfortunately, unlike these people, Barry also helped a team of superheroes in his spare time, so while they could hang around for the whole night, after his mandatory three hours were up, he had to go.

“Well done for not punching Jake,” Scott says as they’re saying their goodbyes, and Barry laughs.

“Thanks, but I think Naomi was about to. Which, honestly, I would have paid to see.”

“Hey, he’s the one who assumed that she wouldn’t be able to say anything when he asked the group about what was going on in Syria.”

“You’re more attracted to her now, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I’m going to marry that woman.”

Barry takes the long way back to the apartment, wanting to avoid the sports teams that will be spilling out into the Plaza after the game. The streets are empty, unsurprising since it’s so late, which is why Barry’s surprised that he doesn’t hear it. Or, hear her. Most people would be pretty shocked at being grabbed by someone from behind, pulled into and alleyway, and slammed into a wall.

Most people, however, are not dating Miss Miracle.

She’s kissing him before his back is fully against the wall, sucking on his top lip and then his bottom one and drawing a soft groan from him that she swallows up. Barry’s hands find her waist to pull her into him – not that he really needs to, since she’s got him pinned to the wall with her hips, and despite the fact that the lightning did nothing for her height, it _did_ make her stronger than the average human. He couldn’t move even if he wanted to. He breaks away from her with an audible gasp, and he opens his eyes to a pair of brown ones, and lips that are still brushing his.

“Hi, Barry,” she smile against his mouth, and he laughs.

“Miss Miracle. Aren’t you supposed to be on duty?”

“I am on duty. Do you see anybody dangerous around?”

He runs his hands up the fortified leather of the suit, unsurprised that he feels a gentle but insistent thrum under his fingers. He asked her about that once, after sex, when he noticed that her entire body was alive with electricity whenever they were together. Iris had laughed, waving a hand as she tried to get her breath back. “Oh, that’s the Mindscape.”

He’d blinked. “And it’s here because…”

“Because it likes you, doofus.”

“Yeah, you’re going to have to explain that, sunshine.”

She had turned over to face him, eyes still bright. “Well, you’re my lightning rod. You’re my biggest connecting to the Mindscape, but in case you haven’t noticed, you’re also the reason my powers develop. So when it…senses you, I guess, it kind of wakes up. More so when I’m excited.”

It’s semi-addictive, the feeling of all that power lancing through Iris’ body and pulsating under her skin – he always finds himself irresistibly drawn to it, to her, like he’s as connected to it as she is. It’s like a drug where he’s the one controlling the hits, and the high gets better each time. He always wants more – one more kiss, one more touch, one more taste. It’s practically criminal, what Iris does to him.

Barry smiles as Iris runs her leather gloves up his chest and rests them around his neck. “You’re right, Miss Miracle, there _aren’t_ any people around. And there weren’t any before you got here. So what are you doing in this part of town?”

“Well, I was bored – there being no criminals and all, and I decided to visit my favourite journalist.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I bet you say that to all the reporters in Central City.”

Iris leans up and captures his mouth in a kiss that has him resisting the urge to yank down the zipper of her suit and hoist her up around his waist. She rakes her leather-clad fingers through his hair and bites down on his bottom lip, drawing it out between her teeth. “There are other reporters in Central City?” she breathes, grinning wickedly.

Barry surges forward and kisses her again, cradling her face in his hands, nipping hungrily at her lips with each one. Iris lets out a whimper and grasps the collar of his shirt, her weight sinking into his as she presses closer to him. They’ve done this before – more times than they should, probably – on rooftops, in alleyways, outside of whatever dangerous situation Iris has just pulled Barry out of because she can’t decide whether to hit him for worrying her or hug him in relief. There’s something just… _insanely_ hot about it, kissing in the dark like this when they both know they’re not supposed to. It reminds him of all the times they met on the Jitters rooftop, when they kept coming back to each other even though everyone in their lives had told them to stop. All the times he was drawn to this mysterious superhero that had picked him to be her voice. Once, early on in their relationship, he asked her why she kept leaving him so abruptly during their meetings, and she said it was to prevent things like this.

“Sometimes it was an emergency,” she said. “And sometimes I hadn’t finished my patrol so I had to get back to it. But other times it was…well, if I spent any more time like that, with me in the suit and you looking at me like you did, I was going to kiss you. And once I started, I didn’t know whether I could make myself stop.”

He told her that, secretly, he’d always hoped that she would.

So, yeah, they’ve done this before, and they’ve thought about it before, and some of the time they’re able to make themselves stop. Other times? Other times they need a little help.

Barry feels a shock of electricity that definitely _isn’t_ because of Iris, and she breaks off with a muffled grunt of frustration and turns her head. “ _What_?” she growls, and it takes him a minute to realise that she’s talking into her headset. She’s still holding a fistful of his shirt. He licks the taste of her off his lips, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“You’re supposed to be on duty!” Chesca tells them shrilly. “I swear to god, the two of you are going to be the death of me – can’t y’all do this at home?”

“Sorry, Chesca,” Barry says sheepishly, and she huffs. Iris frowns.

“Where were you? I’ve been…busy for fifteen minutes.”

“I…well…”

“You called Eddie, didn’t you?”

“Excuse me, he called me, and we only spoke for a little. Besides, I wasn’t making out with my boyfriend in public _in costume_.”

“There’s nobody _here_ , we checked.”

“Whatever. There’s a robbery in progress on Sixth, and you should be happy I only used the small charge this time.”

Iris sighs and looks back up at Barry. “Duty calls,” she says regretfully, straightening his shirt. He shrugs, dragging his gaze up her body.

“Probably best that she interrupted us, because I wasn’t about to stop any time soon.”

After all of that, Iris blushes, and he laughs warmly. She fixes her mask on her face where Barry has shifted it. “I’ll see you at home?”

“See you at home.”

Iris reaches up to kiss him, but Barry catches her chin gently for another one when she lets go. “Go save the world, sunshine.”

She beams at him and then disappears around the corner. Barry waits five minutes and then walks off in the opposite direction towards their apartment. And it’s none of their faults, really. Perhaps if Chesca had come back from her phone call with Eddie quicker, she would have spotted him on the monitors. Perhaps if Iris had thought to do a sweep off the area instead of just relying on Chesca’s assessment, she would have heard his thoughts in her mind. And perhaps if Barry had been mindful of who had been watching him at the party all night, he would have seen the person in the shadows, armed with a state of the art camera, taking pictures of Miss Miracle kissing Dr. Barry Allen in the dark.

***

Iris sighs, rubbing her eyes. In front of her lies every piece of evidence that they’ve collected to do with the case. And not a single piece of it adds up. Barry found every instance of weird weather phenomena stretching back two years and then worked with Chesca to find out what caused them. From what they can see, even though the weirdest stuff happened _after_ the Particle Accelerator explosion, everything that looks deliberate only started in the last five months or so. Plus, like Barry said, there’s no rhyme or reason to the attacks – no pattern in the victims, in the area, the time of day, nothing. She’s starting to worry that it’s staring her right in the face, but that she’s too stupid to see it.

She shakes her head and shoves the papers to one side, taking a sip of her coffee as she turns to her computer. It’s her day off today and she’s the only one at the lab, strangely enough – Chesca has a meeting with Wayne Industries about some weird thing that she’s developing with Linda, and Jesse and Dr. Wells are at the Hall of Justice updating the medical protocols for everyone so that Bruce has them in Gotham.

Iris flits through her Facebook absently, hoping that something will inspire her to see something that she’s missing. Chesca, Wally, Malina and Barry are currently in the middle of a meme war that has something to do with The Godfather, so half of her feed is pictures of Vito Corleone. She sees some other vaguely interesting things – her ex is getting married, and a nice picture of Scott, Barry and Naomi from the party a few nights ago – but then comes across Wally’s page. Their family members are all excited about the cookout, which Iris hadn’t realised was their biggest one in years because someone’s grandmother is coming from Virginia and someone else is on leave from the military, and on and on and on.

She’s still avoiding going, and her mother and Wally have handed guilt duties to Linda, who’s talking about how they have these cookouts every year and the food is _great_ and everyone ends up doing the electric slide.

“It took me like, three years,” she’d said, “but I can totally do it now! And you taught Barry that dance already, right? I saw him do it when he got drunk at Eddie’s birthday party. So even though he is still the palest white boy I have ever seen, at least he can dance.”

Iris had laughed at that, admitting that having her as a best friend meant that Barry certainly wasn’t slacking when it came to dancing. And she _did_ kind of want the chance to be around so many Black people. Even though she hadn’t gone to an HBCU, she’d made sure to tell Nora that she was going to college in a population that had more than two dozen Black people in the city. Sometimes you just want to be around people who look like you, and as much as she loves Barry and Nora – and as much as she knew they love her – that’s a void they’ll never be able to fill.

Barry has remained very carefully neutral about the whole thing, saying that he’ll support her through whatever decision she’s going to make. And Iris is pretty sure that he knows as well as everyone else does that if he made a case for her to go, she’d probably go. She’s wondering how long it’ll take them to switch tactics and bring him in. The last time she was in that house, though, she’d never felt more unwelcome. Everyone kept looking at her weird, her grandmother was unbearably awkward around her, and her grandfather ignored her until he started talking about her mother. That was when she decided to leave – and then got attacked by Calamity and traumatised for her trouble. She isn’t sure that she wants to revisit any place that made her feel as worthless as she did that night.

But…well, it’s still a family. A place where she can get love and support, and from people who apparently want to offer her those things now. Her life would be so much easier if she _could_ just give in, if she could get over everything that happened and let them love her. And there was something else she was thinking of, something so silly and trivial and honestly she was probably jinxing it, that was at the back of her mind. When she was younger, and she used to daydream about marrying Barry, there was always a niggling disappointment that if she ever worked up the courage to tell him how she felt, and by some miracle he reciprocated, if they got married she’d barely have anyone there to witness it. Only her mother and some friends, probably. She had gotten used to having a small circle of support over the years, given her circumstances – Great-Uncle Rudy helped Nora move her into her dorm at college, and he drove her mother to her graduation when she got leave to visit, Nora and Barry were both there when she graduated from the police academy, and all of them were worried about her during the coma. Of course she’s happy with the family she found since she got struck by lightning, but now that she sees Barry with his family, she can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have hers. A big family means a lot of people on her side of the church – not that she thinks that Barry is anywhere close to thinking about marrying her. It’s shallow, but it’s true. But maybe she deserves that after everything.

An insistent beeping sounding from the terminals brings her out of her thoughts, and Gideon pops up onto the screen. “Incoming video call from Earth-2,” he says pleasantly. “Identifying caller as Jay Garrick, calling from Central City School of Applied Science.”

“Accept the call, Gideon,” Iris says quickly. She doesn’t think that Jay would call unless it’s an emergency, and will Earth-52 Barry still wrestling with Savitar, she doesn’t want to take any chances with her friends. Gideon nods.

“Certainly, Iris.”

In the next second, Jay appears on the screen, her large bookshelves and various pictures decorating the wall behind her. “Iris?”

“Jay, is everything alright? Do you need help?”

But Jay laughs. “Everything’s fine, Iris. But I do need to talk to you, and it is a matter of some importance.”

“What is it?”

“It seems that the Society may need my help in the foreseeable future with something. Apparently Martha Wayne has found a potential alien energy source of which the Luthors are trying to take advantage.”

“Because of course they are,” Iris laughs. “Do you need me to assist you?”

“No, although thank you for asking. I’m calling because I have no idea when I’ll have to leave, and when I do, I’ll have no way to contact you.”

Iris frowns. “Is there anything specific you’d be needing to contact me about?”

“The situation of Helena Wells’ powers coming back. I have some theories and I’m speaking to people I know, but I haven’t got a concrete theory yet. If I do get something together but it’s too late to contact you, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be sure to pass it along somehow.”

Iris nods after a moment. Honestly, she, Chesca and Jesse were so focused on helping Dr. Wells deal with the fact that she _had_ powers again that they hadn’t really focused on the _how_. She had asked Jay to look into it though, seeing as the older woman had more experience of how the Mindscape worked. “Okay. What’s your theory so far?”

“All I have is that something must have changed within Dr. Wells herself in the months after she was released from Waller’s bunker. What happened?”

“Well, she got out,” Iris agrees. “But then her life went right back to normal – well, apart from Jesse and the fact that there are new metahumans on the team.”

“Could you send me her medical records from then until now? If she’s alright with that, of course,” she adds quickly, and Iris types a reminder on her phone.

“I’ll ask her. And thanks, Jay. We really appreciate it.”

“Of course, Iris. And tell Helena not to worry. We’ll find out why this is happening. We’re miracle workers, after all.”

***

Meanwhile, across town in his office, Barry is trying to remember that he actually _likes_ being a journalist. The award ceremony is next week, and Erica has gone around making sure everyone who’s nominated is writing an acceptance speech even though they may not win. She told everyone that it’s because she wants them to think positive, but Scott texted him and told him it’s really because a few years ago someone from their side didn’t write a speech at all because they thought they’d wing it if they won, except they got plastered during the ceremony and CCPN was the laughing stock of the media circles scene for months.

He doesn’t see the point, though – there’s no way he’s going to win. He’s too new, his writing isn’t as good as he wants it to be, and his subject is way too specialised. It doesn’t help that he’s the only one writing about such a topic in his category, so it’s not like the judges have something of equal value to measure against it. They could very well decide _not_ to hand it to him just because of that.

Iris thinks he’ll win, though. Every time he brings up the ceremony she just shrugs and confidently says that they’d be idiots to pick anyone but him. Barry has no idea how she’s so confident – but then, she’s always been his biggest supporter. He knows that he couldn’t have gotten where he is today without Iris.

There’s a knock on the door and Barry looks up to see Jake smiling at him. He resists the urge to glare at him, nodding instead. Jake hasn’t said anything untoward since the whole thing with him basically threatening Iris. Barry had started to think that Scott was right, that he was planning something, but he has no idea what it could be or why he would need Iris for it. “Jake, what’s up?”

“Nothing much. How’s your speech coming along?”

He shrugs. “It’s coming along. How many different ways can you say “thank you to my mom, thank you to my girlfriend, thank you to my sixth-grade English teacher for recommending that I read _To Kill a Mockingbird_ before the other kids”?”

“Right. But won’t you be thanking the Justice League too? You did write your editorial on them, after all.”

Barry laughs. “Right, but they’re not the ones who made sure I actually went to sleep at a decent hour instead of spending all night writing about the time Miss Miracle and Superwoman played foosball.”

Jake has that look about him again, that one where it looks like he’s playing a game with you and he’s about to land a killing blow. Barry looks back at his computer. “Anyway, I have a lot of work to do before I get home, so-”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that, Allen.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that you can say things like “I watched Miss Miracle and Superwoman play foosball”, “he replies. Barry blinks.

“Did you…miss the part where I’m pretty much the only person she trusts to write about her and her team? Clark Kent does the same thing with Superwoman and Batgirl gets all her messages out through Commissioner Gordon.”

“But we’re not talking about them, we’re talking about you.” He walks in fully, shutting the door behind him.

“And then I thought, isn’t it weird,” Jake muses, sitting in the chair across from him. Barry resists the urge to kick him. “That every time Allen needs help, Miss Miracle is always there to save him?”

“Only if you never paid attention,” Barry replies in a bored voice. He digs in his pocket and gets out the watch that everyone knows has Barry’s personal distress signal in it. “She saves me because I ask her and we’re friends.”

“Is that all you are?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, like I said, she’s always there to save you. Even when you couldn’t possibly have that watch with you. You get quotes from her minutes after she’s defeated someone. You seem to follow each other everywhere - unless you really think that nobody noticed that when you went to see Hamilton in Metropolis this month with your girlfriend, she started the Justice League and you were there to report on it. And an idiot would see that she’s insanely protective of you.”

He shrugs. “I run her Twitter account.”

“Allen, from the minute she defeated that Woodward chick, nobody has touched you. Everyone knows that if they lay a finger on Barry Allen, Miss Miracle will light their ass on fire.”

He pauses. “I also run her Facebook page.”

But, frustratingly, Jake just looks even more smug. For the first time during this encounter, Barry actually feels worried. Jake gives him a half smile. “But then I thought some more. Really thought about Barry Allen and Miss Miracle. And I thought about how amazing you think she is, how you never let anyone else write about her, and God help anyone who says anything bad about her.”

“Do you have a point, Jake?”

“And then I remembered that Wendy was writing that article about her, and I asked her why you guys changed direction. She said that she was happy that you were able to reach a compromise, because she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t have been able to get it out. And she said it’s because she thought you were in love with her.”

Barry remembers almost too late not to give anything away, instead raising an eyebrow. “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Jake. You sure you didn’t hurt yourself?”

Jake just laughs. “It’s not a big leap, Allen. She’s a superhero. She runs around saving people in a suit and a mask, and it’s pretty clear she thinks you’re the bees knees. You honestly think nobody has fantasised about being in your position? About being the guy the incredible, awe-inspiring and sexy superhero will move mountains for?”

“Oh, you want to write her some fanmail? Because you could have led with that.”

“So you’re not in love with her?”

“Is that what you think?”

“I did. Until I remembered Iris.”

“What does Iris have to do with anything?”

“Well, she means the world to you, Allen. You light up when you see her. You’re always talking about her. You got her a horse-drawn carriage for your first date, for God’s sake - and now the whole damn city knows that Barry Allen loves Iris West more than life itself. So I wondered what would make him what to risk all of that so he could date Miss Miracle.”

Barry folds his arms. “You think I’m cheating on my girlfriend with a superhero?”

“I think your girlfriend is a superhero,” he counters. He pulls out a folder and opens it up on his desk, and Barry’s mouth goes dry. “But it turns out that, after all that, I don’t actually have to think anything.”

Barry stares at the photos in horror. They’re from a few days ago, when Iris was on her patrol and she found him on the way back from work and they kissed in the alleyway. It’s dark and you can see more of Barry as he has his hand cupping Iris’ cheek, her head tilted to the side, but the gold of Miss Miracle’s suit is unmistakable.  _Shit_.

“I thought, there is only person on this planet that Barry loves more than he loves Miss Miracle, and that…is Iris West. But wouldn’t it make just as much sense if Iris was Miss Miracle? So I started following you. I made notes of where she appeared, how quickly she came to you, and every instance of you being saved to her. I almost gave up, too. Aren’t you glad I didn’t?”

“This isn’t what it looks like,” he gets out, his voice hoarse, but Jake just grins.

“I think it is. I think Iris is Miss Miracle. I think she has been from the beginning. And I think you fell in love a superhero, which is going to be great for the National Writer’s Union and the International Federation of Journalists when they find out that one of its members is sleeping with their most famous subject. What’s the tagline you have on your blog? She’s justice and I’m truth?” Jake laughs. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that, Allen. Because pretty soon, everyone’s going to know the truth about the two of you. And you’re going to get the justice you deserve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part II coming as soon as I can!


End file.
